IN FLORIDA 47 
over the entire shore region sometime in early autumn; this 
perhaps being the mating season. At such times I have seen 
acres so thickly covered with them that they almost touched 
each other. 
Something may be done in the way of destroying them by 
dipping a wad of cotton, oakum, old cloth or anything that is 
an absorbent into gasolene, putting it into a fresh hole and tightly 
closing it with mud. Small pieces of bread partly coated with 
Rough on Rats or any roach paste will be eagerly eaten by them 
with fatal results. It is almost impossible to protect anything 
from their ravages. I have set a barrel with the heads knocked 
out over some choice plant, pushing it well down into the earth, 
only to find a little later that one or more of these wretches had 
tunneled under the rim, come up inside, and utterly destroyed 
my plant. The best protection I have found is to stick branches 
of trees or palmetto leaves closely around a plant several rows 
deep, but even this often fails. 
Rabbits are sometimes very destructive, being especially bad 
during the dry, cold weather of winter. I have never been able 
to catch one though I have had several traps that were war- 
ranted to get them every time. A gun in the hands of a good 
marksman, or pieces of apple doped with rat poison or roach 
paste, will help to keep them down. They are prone to cut off 
the leaves and stems of young palms, and these may be protected 
by setting branches or palmetto leaves around them in the manner 
directed for protecting from land crabs. Sometimes, however, 
they manage to push these away and destroy the plant. 
There is a wood rat that makes his home in and around our 
dwellings that often is very destructive to plants, especially to 
epiphytes. I have only been able to get a very few of them with 
traps or poison. After one or two are taken the rest become wise 
and rob the bait from traps with immunity. There is a prepara- 
tion made by the Pasteur laboratories which works by inocula- 
tion, that seems to be a good thing. 
I can say but little about the many plant diseases which work 
destruction for every grower. I have spoken of Orchid blight 
elsewhere and I consider sulfur an excellent remedy for various 
blights, or perhaps a preventive. It sometimes happens that a 
