134 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
signs of it, it mattered not the extent of 
the grove, it was generally passed by and 
not to be considered at all. It so hap¬ 
pened that upon the third place I bought 
(excellent in many ways) there was one 
tree badly affected with, as they all term 
it, “foot rot,” and I was advised by my 
venerable old friend, who spent nearly 
half a century raising orange groves and 
working in them, to dig this one tree up 
and haul it out in the woods and burn it, 
taking the dirt around it too' because the 
dirt was contaminated with a fungus 
which had produced the disease of mal 
de goma in the tree, and there was no 
cure. All of which I promised to do. 
Further, it would permeate the whole 
group and infect all of the trees of the 
grove. For some reason I did not get 
to do this as early as I had -expected and 
in the following spring, while fertilizing 
the grove I made a personal investigation, 
and, in digging I found two large roots, 
rotten and gone, but enough of them left 
to show that they crossed one another 
very close in or almost immediately after 
leaving the body or trunk of the tree. 
Getting back a few feet you could readily 
see, at least I thought at that time that I 
could see, following directly up the fiber 
of the trunk of the tree to two or more 
large limbs, which also were dead. It 
appeared to my mind that this case of 
foot rot was certainly local as to this tree 
and was the fiber of the trunk the con¬ 
necting link between the dead roots and 
the dead limbs that showed a variation 
from the generally accepted theory of 
encircling the trunk at crown roots. 
Upon further digging and cutting away 
of rotten wood and seeing the havoc 
wrought to that once great fine tree, I 
was in a frame of mind to deny nothing, 
the germ theory, the fungus theory or 
the sour sap theory, as any child could see 
that they were all present, in fact abund¬ 
ance of evidence was there that every evil 
influence in nature was present and had 
left their devastating mark upon this once 
monarch of the grove, the production of 
which counts or is equivalent to a genera¬ 
tion of man. 
I never thought of a remedy, it seemed 
past all remedial agencies, so near death. 
It did occur to my mind that back beyond 
all this destruction was certainly a mal- 
factor of constitutional formation. Here 
the proposition confronts you, the cause. 
The effect is plain and can be seen not 
to be denied, but the cause, “there is the 
rub.” The proposition is, has been and 
will be to the end of time, to divine the 
cause and define the law. 
As to the sour sap and fungus theory, 
both evidently present but here burrowing 
between the bark and the wood in the 
rich carbonated sap, the course of which 
would be the way of least resistance, and 
this, inversely, would allow it in the weak¬ 
est part of the circulation of the tree. 
Thus it manifests itself at the change from 
the perpendicular to the horizontal plane 
or where a free flow of sap is restricted, 
as in the crotch of roots and limbs. But 
here the question is: how did either or 
both get in there, (in their well protected 
berth) and I don't believe anyone at all 
acquainted with modern, scientific re¬ 
search would deny that there is a way 
or reason for their entrance, as the fun¬ 
damental scientific principle which so well 
established this point is: 
