FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
133 
to you my experience and observation 
during that time, which I think beyond 
a reasonable doubt establishes a fact. 
Truth and fact are homely and unat¬ 
tractive and always unpopular, but they 
are unalterable, stubborn things and will 
prevail. They are seemingly repugnant 
to the human mind and the plainer and 
simpler they are the more repellant they 
become. 
So, now, I am here, not to upset any 
of your previously accepted theories but 
in very plain phrases to tell you of the 
things I have seen, and my experiences 
in the last fifteen years in successfully 
combating this dr.ead disease known as 
mal de goma or foot rot, which disease to 
mention in connection with an orange 
grove meant sure death and the value of 
whole groves all but wiped out to such an 
extent that you could hardly get a grower 
to even talk about it for fear some one 
would conjecture he had the dreaded dis¬ 
ease in his grove and it would ‘pass along 
the ways.’ 
Sure enough, when Mr. Wright, the 
editor of the Grower was over in our 
county, he spent some thirty or forty 
minutes in my grove and wrote a very 
intelligent description of what I showed 
him as to my labors in this line, and the 
only criticism elicited from any one was 
from Mrs. Marian A. McAdoo, who said 
some doctor up in the state somewhere 
who had a great deal of trouble with foot 
rot, had an idea, just an idea, that it was 
from lapping of the roots, etc., etc. 
Now, the facts are that I have no more 
trouble than anyone else with the same 
number of old, bearing seedling trees. I 
can say that my work has been exceeding¬ 
ly interesting, if not a pleasure, when 
from symptoms well recognized even at a 
distance, I knew the cause and had a defi¬ 
nite idea what to do to bring relief. 
Right here I want to impress upon 
everyone connected directly or indirectly, 
or in any way interested in the sustained 
prosperity of South Florida, that orange 
culture is first, even before the much bol¬ 
stered and flickering ‘climate.’ When you 
allow all the old seedling orange 'trees to 
die, to go by the foot rot route, you part 
company with the best and catchiest 
phrase the state ever had “Sweet Florida 
Oranges” the fruit for which the world 
offers nothing in comparison. 
When I came to Florida some score of 
years or more before the freezes of De¬ 
cember, 1894, and February, 1905 ,1 heard 
from more than one source that a seedling 
orange grove was next to worthless and 
not to be desired, as you would spend 
many years in raising them and as they 
would come into bearing, they would die 
from foot rot. The very next winter sea¬ 
son the two freezes occurred and even in 
the most favored localities of the state 
practically all of the groves that were left 
were the seedlings, and subsequent win¬ 
ters added proof to show their great im¬ 
munity from low temperature. 
Then it fell to my lot to go into the 
orange business and to choose between 
disaster of freeze and ravages of mal de 
goma. The latter offered me at least a. 
few days of grace, so I bought the seed¬ 
ling groves and determined to fight the 
foot rot, but as is usual with all new 
buyers, I was very careful to buy groves 
not affected with the disease, as it was 
held in great fear, as one tree showing 
