Placud on a Nation-widh Basis 225 



disease. No fungus being found associated with the trouble, 

 bacteriological methods had been put to use in Washington. 

 Germs were grown on beef peptone, glycerine, potato agar, and 

 nutrient gelatine and broth preparations. But 200 inoculations 

 from pure cultures failed to yield any definite result.'"'"'' Swingle, 

 therefore, began to study this subject soon after arriving in 

 Georgia.. By letter of June 12 Galloway directed Swingle to gather 

 all the facts he could concerning the disease in Florida. On June 

 23 Swingle advised Galloway, " We start for Florida tonight. 

 Send plusia disease cultures to Lake City." 



Smith and Swi/igle "' went via Jacksonville to Lake City where, 

 after an afternoon at the Florida Experiment Station examining a 

 peach orchard of two to three hundred young trees and coming 

 across a disease like yellows or rosette but believed neither, they 

 spent the evening with Dr. Neal. From Lake City they proceeded 

 to Palatka where more groves were studied, and then took the boat 

 on the St. Johns River to San Mateo where more disease specimens 

 were collected and preserved, particularly of scab and Mai di 

 gomma. By June 30 they were in Boardman where they came in 

 contact with the foot rot disease on lemons and orange blight. As 

 to the blight, Smith wrote in his note book, " This is the first place 

 where this disease has given us any satisfaction." Dr. G. C. Lamar 

 took them southwest to the hills, or high hammock land, and they 

 examined examples of a disease known as " Frenching." The next 

 day they were in Citra, a large shipping point of the Florida 

 citrous mdustry and near where orange groves sold at one thousand 

 dollars per acre, and there encountered the first undoubted cases 

 of the die-back disease. At this point, lemon scab was so serious 

 that growers were considering digging up whole groves. They 

 were now in the heart of the grove areas of the state, since, except- 

 ing along the ocean and gulf fronts, the entire state land area 

 south of Lake Okeechobee was still almost completely uninhabited. 

 Smith wrote in his notes: " Florida is a fiat land full of malaria, 

 mosquitoes, flies, and jiggers. It is inhabited principally by North- 

 ern people who have gone there to grow oranges or escape con- 

 sumption. Agriculturally it is poor but there are great possibili- 

 ties." Southwest from Citra they "went to Ocala, and thence to 

 Eldorado, a way station on the north shore of Lake Harris. Lemon 



"^Report of the Chief of the Division of Vegetable Pathology for 1891: 361. 

 ** This account is based on Smiths diary or book of notes kept on tlie journey. 



