142 Joitnial of Agriculture. [9 March, 1908. 



Mr. Koebele's guidance, the districts round the city where there are many 

 small native orchards, which are badly cultivated, and in a verv neglected 

 state. One of the chief industries in fruit is growing strawberries for 

 the city restaurants. On the road to Tres Marias, I visited the Agricul- 

 tural Show, where there was a very fine exhibit of cattle, chiefly Holland 

 and Swiss, but a consignment of Herefords brought over from California 

 was sold by auction and brought very poor prices. All the horses were 

 English, imported or bred from English stock, and were very fine animals ; 

 poultry was very well represented, so were pigeons and rabbits. Sheep, 

 as usual, were poor, and represented by only two pens of Cotswold. 



On the 5th November I left for Yutapec at 7 a.m., arriving there at 

 3 p.m. The Mayor, his Secretary, the Chief of Police, • Chief Fruit In- 

 spector, and a mounted escort met me, and took me to a house, where I 

 lived with a bodyguard of a policeman and a soldier during my stay. 

 The orchards of Yutapec consist chiefly of oranges ; the valley is rich black 

 soil, and is all under irrigation. All the trees are seedlings, and of con- 

 siderable size, and grown in a very irregular manner. The growers know 

 nothing about pruning, grafting, or budding, and apparently never cut 

 out a diseased tree until it dies out or is blown down, but the ground is 

 so rich and the climate semi-tropical that they nearly always have a crop 

 of fruit. The fruit is large and well fla\oured, and contains few seeds. 

 This district is the onlv one where oranges are grown for export, and the 

 Entomological Division has advised the State officials who have passed 

 laws to compel the growers to clean up their orchards bv burning or bury- 

 ing the infested fruit and windfalls. The expense of making the fur- 

 naces, inspecting the fruit, destroying the old wooden fences, and replac- 

 ing them with barbed wire, and the payment of the inspectors' salaries 

 is borne by the Federal Commission. The State authorities see that the 

 regulations are carried out, even to arresting a man who will not clean 

 up his orchard, or notify the inspectors when he is going to gather his 

 fruit. Any fruit arriving at the railwav station without an inspector's 

 certificate is not allowed to gO' on the train, and the owner has to get an 

 inspector to examine it there. Where wood is scarce all the oranges are 

 gathered into heaps, and an inspector punches a hole into the end of each 

 orange, and the next one injects benzine with a glass syringe, plugging 

 up the hole with some clay. I saw two men treat 358 oranges in 4c 

 minutes ; it is claimed that the benzine kills every maggot, and these 

 oranges are then allowed to rot on the ground. Even if cheaper than 

 burning, I doubt if this treatment kills all the maggots Labour, how- 

 ever, is cheap, the Chief Inspector gets 75 cents (is. 6d.), and the as- 

 sistant 50 cents (is.) for twelve hours work. The oranges are examined 

 while being placed in the crates, and the inspectors are very expert in de- 

 tecting damaged fruit. They are counted in threes, two hands of three, 

 or fifty-three hands, 318 oranges, to a crate. The oranges are worth 25 

 cents (6d.) a hundred in the orchard; the crates are carried to the rail- 

 way on mules. The wild oranges, which are sour and are made into wine, 

 are gathered and sold for 3 cents (id.) per hundred. 



Most of the orchards are small, ranging from 50 to 500 trees in this 

 district and other parts of Central Mexico, but larger orchards, more on 

 American plans, are now being planted in the north. The Department, 

 which naturally wishes to keep the export market in the United States 

 open, claims that it is only in this State that the fruit fly is found attack- 

 ing oranges. I have, however, records that it is found in other districts, 

 and it probablv has an extended range, but the methods that are enforced 



