FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
145 
there are about eight feet high at the 
entrance, and they have been loaded with 
oranges up to the present time, and suf¬ 
fered no damage whatever. 
We fired with oil pots and wood. We 
fired, I suppose, about seventy-five fires 
to the acre. We fired, altogether, I should 
think, in the neighborhood of pretty 
nearly two hundred acres in three dif¬ 
ferent groves, and you could tell where 
firing was not done right to the line, you 
might say, right to the rows of trees. In 
fact, the Florida Grower published a 
couple of weeks ago a photograph of a 
pineapple grove at Sutherland, Florida, 
where you really could tell to the row of 
trees where the firing took place. There 
was a ten-acre pineapple grove and ten 
acres of Tardiffs. The pineapple grove 
was fired adequately, and hardly a leaf 
was touched, and the fruit went to the 
market and averaged over $5.00. The 
Tardifif grove, the trees lost a good many 
leaves, some wood and most of the fruit. 
In the grove west of that there was no 
loss at all, the fires protected it absolutely, 
and the groves south of that, also scarcely 
anv loss occurred. 
At Dunedin where we fired, there was 
no loss at all. Where we did not fire, the 
trees lost their leaves, most of them, they 
lost some wood and most of their fruit. 
We feel that firing practically insures 
your grove and your crop. If you fire, 
there are no “ifs” and “ands” about it. 
Wood is as good as anything you can 
use, if you can get it. But it may very 
frequently happen, when you need it the 
most, you can’t get it. 
The first man who fired in our neigh¬ 
borhood, fired in ’94-’95. He had pur¬ 
chased his grove without any money 
whatever, had made his living up to this 
time, and had these large trees loaded 
with fruit. With this threatened loss 
staring him in the face, late in the after- 
noil he went out in the woods and hauled 
in lightwoocl and saved his crop. He 
started the idea of firing in our vicinity. 
A little time ago, one of the speakers 
asked the question about what a man can 
do while he is waiting for his grove to 
come on. There are people in our com¬ 
munity, who make their entire living off 
their places. There is a man in Largo, 
I think you can put him down on any 
forty acres in Florida and he can make a 
good living without any trouble whatever. 
And there are lots of others just like him. 
(Applause.) 
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