FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
63 
Mr. Stevens. At vvhat temperature did 
you begin to fire? 
Mr. Waite: 31 degrees one night and 
30 degrees the other. 
Mr. Stevens : What condition was the 
grove ? 
Mr. Waite: In bloom. 
Mr. Stevens: Did you have any good 
effects from the firing ? 
Mr. Waite. One of the trees was 
burnt by the fire; it was not 'frosted. 
(Laughter.) 
Mr. Stevens: Was any injury done 
to the trees you did not fire ? 
Mr. Waite: Occasionally. Just a little 
bit frosted, here and there. 
Mr. Stevens: Mr. Billings, did any¬ 
one fire except you? 
Mr. Billings: No, sir. 
M,r. Stevens : Were other groves hurt 
at all? 
Mr. Billings : I know of one that was 
hurt. Most of them were not. 
Mr. Stevens: Now, gentlemen, I have 
asked these questions for two reasons; 
one is I have been firing for about forty 
years. I began firing the first day of De¬ 
cember, 1876; nearly forty years ago, and 
I have had wonderful success with firing; 
that is, I got the fires going and saved 
my fruit. The other fellow who did not 
fire saved his, too. (Laughter.) I fired 
on the 21st of November. I started my 
fires when it was down nearly to 27 de¬ 
grees. It only went down to 27 degrees. 
I fired fifty acres that I was trying to 
save the fruit and new growth. I did 
save it I thought. In one of the groves 
where I did not fire, some of the trees 
were killed clear to the ground. But some 
of them were not hurt at all. 
Cold goes in spots. When I fired the 
22nd of March, I was caught napping. I 
think it was the only time I was caught 
napping since I have been in the business. 
That night it was 44 degrees at 10:00 
o’clock, and cloudy, and I had no idea it 
would clear and the temperature would 
drop so quickly. About half past two, I 
was called and it was down to 30 degrees. 
The groves were full of bloom. It had 
cleared up and the temperature had 
dropped steadily. We got the men out 
and started the fires in the most exposed 
groves as soon as possible; we fired 
twenty acres in a few minutes. In fifteen 
acres there were 400 fires; in that fifteen 
acres there were about 2700 trees. In that 
grove, the cold did some damage in spite 
of all the fires. In the five acres we fired, 
I saw no damage; nor did I see any 
damage in the groves we did not fire. 
A few nights later, on the 24th, we 
fired again, except the five acres which I 
did not fire, they were not hurt. 
I use coke stoves in every place except 
about 200 oil heaters : the Marks heater. In 
the fall, when I fired them, I had poured 
in kerosene with just about enough crude 
oil in it to keep the darkies from stealing 
the kerosene. They worked splendidly. 
Afterwards I got crude oil and filled them 
up. This time when we fired, we got 
them going first and when we came 
around later, we found a good many had 
exploded. The base sat there with a 
great lot of burning oil around on the 
ground, part of the stove here and part 
over yonder. 
Mr. Hebmer had informed me that 
every time he used his heaters, he had to 
