no 
AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
may be expected to transmit to their offspring can grape breeding be put 
upon anything like a satisfactory basis. 
The following paper was read by the author, Mr. G. L. Taber: 
FRUIT NOTES FROM FLORIDA. 
BY G. L. TABER, GLEN ST. MARY, FLA. 
Mr. President, Members of the American Pomological Society, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : 
Fruit notes, this year, from the South, as from other sections, are almost 
inseparably connected with freeze notes; and if this brief paper from Florida 
has as much to do with freezes as fruits, it will perhaps, under the abnormal 
conditions that have prevailed, be pardonable. 
For, as some of you may have personally experienced, and the rest have 
doubtless read, we had some weather down our way last February the like of 
which the “oldest inhabitant” had never seen, and, in common with fruit 
growers of a younger generation, hopes never to see again, and for three days 
the orange and other subtropical trees throughout a large section of Florida 
stood white-robed, stiff and stark, an apt, although isothermally incongruous 
reminder of the “sheeted ghosts” in Whittier’s “Snow Bound.” 
Then, when the first great shock was over, and nature, in a kindlier mood, 
had freed the trees from their unwonted load of snow and ice, came the days 
of suspense; of eager and yet fearful watching, to see what the final outcome 
was to be. We saw the leaf stems shrivel and the leaves lose their lustre, 
and day by day assume a lighter color, and we knew the foliage was gone. 
But what of the trees themselves? Would they survive? Would the orange 
trees that were not banked go to the ground, and, where banked, would they 
stop at the banking? We cut through outer bark on twig and branch and 
trunk, examined the inner bark and cambium layer, and applied all known 
tests of sight and smell and taste, and were finally forced to accept the fact 
that the tops were also gone. Then came the question whether to cut the 
trees off at a given point at or near the ground before the sap should by 
“souring” carry the dividing line between sound and affected wood lower 
down, or whether it were better to let the trees shift for themselves until 
this line of demarkation, as yet but imaginary, became fully apparent. Some 
of us followed the one course and some the other, and of those who cut the 
tops off before this line of demarcation was fully established, many were 
for awhile still left in doubt as to whether the stumps they had left repre- 
sented in reality the foundation for a future orchard or only the headstones 
for their buried hopes. 
Now I would not for a moment have it understood that all sections of Flor- 
ida suffered alike. On the contrary, as is but natural, the southern counties 
suffered less than the northern ones, and there are in some of those southern 
counties groves that were practically unhurt; from which good crops of fruit 
will be shipped the present season. While this is true, yet the fact remains 
that the freeze covered a very large proportion of the state, and the losses 
to the fruitgrowers were extremely heavy. 
