ed to that season, that Florida lands will carry from two to
three times the number of cattle that the average Texas range does.

I find, too, that a great deal of the range offers a splendid hog feed
from the cabbage palm, the seed of the palmetto and from the mast found
in the shinnery. It would seem, therefore, that an appreciable number of
hogs may be produced without extra cost on most Florida ranges. While
they will not sell for the top prices unless fattened on some
concentrate, they bring a very fair figure as against combined result
and overhead charges, and should be a big factor in revenue and one that
we do not have in Texas.

Your lands are singularly free from pests. To illustrate, it cost us
something over $75,000 to kill prairie dogs on about 450,000 acres of
Texas lands, and outside of the shinnery lands the great bulk of Texas
lands have been populated with prairie dogs, which in bad times take at
least one-third of the grass. You do not seem to have the screw worm,
which bothers us a great deal in very wet weather.

You can own your posts at a comparatively small cost and with normal
prices of wire I should say could construct your fences for
three-fourths of what it costs us. You have no very long drives for your
cattle when shipping them, and in the matter of winter help to your
cattle it will cost very little as compared with what we have to spend
in Texas. To give you an idea, we are buying $50,000 worth of feed to
winter a herd of 25,000 head of cattle. While your season here will
permit you to get through with very little extra cost, if any, I think
that you should make a provision for some concentrate, so as to have it.
In Texas, when the grass is all gone, the use of cotton seed cake is
limited when not taken in conjunction with a good filler, and there is
never a time when you at least don't have a good filler. It is simply a
matter of getting a little concentrate on it and cutting out the weak
cattle and concentrating them to such winter help.

You are right where we were in '82--large areas of land, in which our
problem was to make them carry themselves without cost, or pay a small
interest until such time as they would sell at good value. We had very
low values on cattle, long distances from the railroads--in fact, every
possible disadvantage, but these lands have always paid for taxes and
overhead expenses and have always given us a little something in
addition, and are at a point now