The chief fruits from Florida are oranges and grape-fruit, which will grow only where there is no frost. Grape-fruit grows in bunches like big, yellow grapes—that’s why it is called “grape”-fruit. Grape-fruit was at first thought not fit to eat—too bitter and not sweet like an orange; but people have learned to like it. More grape-fruit grows in Florida than in any other place

Once there was no Florida at all—the United States had no “paw” sticking out into the sea. It grew a paw and this is the way it grew it. The sea was warm and shallow and in the sea there lived millions, billions, trillions of little animals, each like a tiny drop of jelly with a tiny stony speck in the center, or a tiny stony shell on the outside, and millions and billions and trillions of these little sea animals died. As they died, millions, billions, trillions of these stony specks and shells fell to the bottom of the sea like a snowfall of chalk dust, and this piled up until the water was filled up. This stony, bony, chalky pile is lorida. On this kind of ground of which Florida is made plants grow very well indeed. In fact, this soft, chalky ground is so good for growing things that people dig it up and send it to other States to be put on the ground to make vegetables grow better.

Long, long years ago, before there were any people on the World, our whole country was at the bottom of the sea, and a great deal of our country was made under the sea just as Florida was made, from bones and shells of sea animals. This kind of bone and shell rock—for it is rock—is called limestone, because if you burn it it makes lime. Limestone is really bone-stone; stone made of the bones of sea animals. Then the earth wrinkled and crinkled and rose out of the water and formed our country. We know it was once under the sea because in many places now, high above the sea, even on mountain tops, we find this limestone with shells and bones of fish and other sea animals still showing in it. Marble, the most beautiful of all stone, is a kind of limestone, for it also is made of bone. People build houses and palaces of it and make statues and tombstones of marble or limestone.