FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
87 
an artillery command, and the discipline 
under which it works may be very much 
the same. 
The men are divided into squads of 
four inspectors each, each squad having a 
certain number of groves or properties to 
inspect each week. The squad leaders are 
supplied with blank forms which are filled 
in each day, giving the number of trees 
inspected, the number of properties, names 
m 
of owners, if any infections are found, 
and also if any other injurious insect pest 
or plant disease is found. These reports 
are turned in each day to the foreman and 
a record is kept of the status of each prop¬ 
erty. From these reports a condensed 
weekly report is made out and sent to the 
Inspector of Nursery Stock at Gainesville, 
The Florida Growers and Shippers 
League at Orlando, and to the United 
States Department of Agriculture at 
Washington. The men are all supplied 
with linen suits as a protection against 
their coming into contact with the dis¬ 
eased trees. The suits are dipped in a 
bucket containing a disinfectant solution 
of mercury bichloride. As the report 
from each squad shows where any canker 
has been found, the fire wagon is at once 
ordered to the infected groves and the 
trees showing canker are burned. Where 
only one or two small trees are to be 
burned tbe small hand outfit is used, the 
fire wagon going' where there are large 
trees or larger numbers of nursery trees. 
For this purpose a mixture of kerosene 
and fuel oil is used, and up to the present 
time nine thousand seven hundred and 
sixty gallons have been bought and us - 
at a cost of $1118.00. This oil is used 
in a burning spray under about one hun¬ 
dred pounds’ pressure. 
There are in all in Dade county some 
twelve hundred groves or properties 
which must be inspected each month. 
This is the number of citrus plantings in 
the county. They range in size from five 
acres up to seventy acres, and contain in 
all approximately ten thousand acres. 
About forty per cent of these are bearing 
and sixty per cent non-bearing. The 
number of grove trees is between seven 
and eight hundred thousand. There are 
besides this approximately 3,500,000 nur¬ 
sery trees to inspect. In order to cover 
all of this ground once each month, you 
can readily see requires a lot of work and 
a large body of men. Besides this, we in¬ 
spect once every week those properties 
where any canker has ever been found, 
and it is in these properties where we now 
find almost all of the canker. A total of 
201 properties have at one time or an¬ 
other had canker. The men attending to 
these diseased properties do not go into 
the groves that have never shown- any 
canker; we do> this to avoid every possible 
chance of the men carrying* any spores or 
germs into clean groves. 
Our work in Dade county has not by 
any means consisted of an unbroken chain 
of triumphs. As I have said before, we 
inspect each week those groves where 
canker has ever been found; many of these 
groves have shown canker week after 
week;, some have gone past several in¬ 
spections and have again showed infec¬ 
tions. We have thought that after a 
grove had gone over twelve weeks with¬ 
out showing infection that it might be 
clean, but in a few instances some groves 
