THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 215 



cover crop in coiiiiiKni use, wliile Mclilotus indica, beinw an upright 

 growiiiii' plant, offers less oppdrtuiiity for the growth of this fungus. 



I\rr. C. 0. Smith of the State l^ithologieal Laboratory at Whittier 

 has done a great deal of work investigating this lorni of decay, and has 

 prepared a bulletin on the subject, which will, no doubt, be available 

 soon, and whieh I am sure will be of interest to all lemon growers. 



Brown centers, so called, have caused a great deal of loss, cspeeially 

 dui'ing the last two seasons, and so far we have been unable to place 

 this loss in tlie avoidable decay column, but Dr. Webber and his assist- 

 ants are at work on this problem, and we expect to know more about 

 the cause and control of this decay soon. 



A great deal has been said about the different classes of labor 

 employed in picking, and no doubt the good or bad standing the dif- 

 ferent classes of pickers have is very largely due to the kind of super- 

 vision exercised. The right picking foreman will get good results from 

 almost any of the different classes of help that are available. If a 

 regular inspection of each picker's W'Ork is maintained, any poor work 

 is soon discovered, and if the inspections are properly followed up, 

 decay that results from long stems, clipper cuts, and scratches from 

 thoi-ns and dead brush Can be gi'catly reduced, but the responsibility for 

 the work must be definitely fixed in order to get best results. 



The damage caused by rough handling in the field is not easily 

 detected by inspecting the fruit in the packing house, unless a very 

 careful and minute examination is made of each lemon. Rough hand- 

 ling should 1)6 guarded against by the foreman on the ground, and he, 

 in turn, should be regularly checked up. It is very important that 

 great care should be exercised in the handling of lemons. They should 

 never be dropped any distance at all, not even an inch. The importance 

 of this may be demonstrated by taking a lemon and dropping it about 

 two inches onto a dry board, and if it is dropped so that it falls on the 

 point, a moist spot will appear on the boarcl. showing the lemon has 

 been damaged. 



The picking bag should not be too large. A bag that will hold about 

 twenty-five pounds of fruit is used by some of the most careful concerns, 

 and the opening in the bag should be so arranged that the picker's hand 

 \v\\\ have to put the lemon in the bag, instead of dropping it into the 

 opening. A wide, open-topped bag .will catch more small bits of dead 

 branches and the short pieces of stem that come from making the second 

 cut. 



The clippers should be carefully gone over to make sure they are 

 sharp enough to make a clean cut. Sometimes the blades get sprung 

 apart so that they leave a small sliver of the woody part of the stem. 

 This will cause more damage than a long stem, as it is so sharp that it 

 cuts into every lemon it touches. 



Great loss by decay has been caused by permitting picked lemons to 

 remain in the grove during a rain where the soil is badly infested with 

 brown or cottony rot. 



One of the most common mistakes in handling the boxes on and off 

 the wagons is to allow a box to drop off the cleat at one end of the box 

 below and come down on the lemons, and then be pulled across before 

 being picked up. 



