138 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
all properties. It was in this way that I 
found the true state of affairs on the East 
Coast and the following is a fairly ac¬ 
curate statement of the case: 
A great majority of the larger growers 
and a good many of the smaller ones who 
have been in the business for a long time, 
have planted out small nurseries designed 
primarily for their own use. Generally, 
however, they plant too largely and as a 
result they have a few buds to sell, aver¬ 
aging from 500 to 5,000 per year. 
It is not within my province to discuss 
the relative merits of the large and small 
nurseries. Both have their own advan¬ 
tages and disadvantages. The fact re¬ 
mains that the small nurseries are quite 
a factor in the citrus industry as a whole, 
for they make up in numbers what they 
lack in size and in the total their output 
is immense. As a factor in the industry 
they demand our careful consideration. 
Comparatively few of these small nur¬ 
series have been inspected. In some cases 
the owner is honestly ignorant of the law 
while in others he thinks that the law 
should apply only to the large nurseries 
and that he should be exempted. Such 
a nurseryman will say that he planted his 
own seed, took the bud wood from trees 
on his own place, does all the work in 
his nursery himself and has received no 
trees from an outside source in years. 
Therefore he reasons that there is no 
chance at all of his having any disease in 
his nursery and that he should not be 
asked to go to the expense of an inspec¬ 
tion. 
The fallacy in this reasoning is at least 
three fold: 
First. The nurseryman’s knowledge of 
diseases and insects is generally so limited 
that he is not in a position to say that his 
grove is free from disease. For instance 
one nurseryman such as I just described 
who stated he had been in the business 
twenty years, pulled off a leaf covered 
with purple scale and asked what it was. 
And yet this is our most common insect 
pest. 
A candidate for life insurance is not 
allowed to decide whether he is in good 
health or not. Why should a nurseryman 
be allowed to say whether his nursery is 
free from disease. 
Second. Diseases and insect pests have 
a way of springing up without any ap¬ 
parent reason right in the middle of a 
grove or nursery. I have in mind a 
grower located 40 miles from the nearest 
whitefly territory who suddenly found 
some of the insects in the very middle of 
his grove. Spray as he might, he could 
not exterminate them and they spread to 
his nursery and he soon had a whitefly- 
infected nursery despite the fact that he 
planted his own seed and used his own 
bud wood. 
Third. Visitors coming into the nur¬ 
sery may carry insect pests or fungus dis¬ 
eases in, or on their clothing. For example 
I cite the case of a nurseryman who was 
operating without certification. He was 
positive that his nursery was clean be¬ 
cause he had planted the seed and fur¬ 
nished his own bud wood from his own 
grove. But on inspection I found a 
couple of trees covered with snow scale 
(Chionaspis minor). The infection had 
evidently been carried in by a visitor for 
the only trees in his whole place that were 
infected were along the walk entering his 
