FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
51 
what he wrote us a few days ag*o in re¬ 
gard to the situation, so they must have 
gone to rot very suddenly. You will no¬ 
tice he says they are rotting green on the 
trees. 
If your peaches arriving here Monday 
are in good shape and the Elbertas begin 
to show any rot here, we are going* to 
put them in the cold room, because the 
last few cars of peaches you shipped us 
have been the finest you have ever shipped 
in the last few years and the trade are 
more than pleased with them. I could have 
sold ten cars today as easily as one at 
these prices. I never saw them any bet¬ 
ter size and better color. 
H. B. Williams. 
I hope that I have now impressed upon 
your mind three things. First, that there 
is a good demand for Florida peaches. 
Second, that if properly grown we have 
the best flavored and best keeping peach 
of the year. Third, that there is money 
in it. 
Now for the troubles and vexations. 
And I assure you that the path of the 
peach grower is not strewn with roses. 
Neither can he lay on beds of ease and 
wait for nature and our climate to bring 
forth fruit in abundance. Nature and 
climate if yoked together, and intelligent¬ 
ly worked will produce wonders. But 
it wont answer to let them run loose. 
Oh yes! they will continue to work. But 
as if vexed at your presumption in yoking 
them together, and working them for 
your benefit, they voluntarily enlist in the 
enemies forces. Nature has created an 
insect or a form of plant life to prey on 
and feed off of every other form of in¬ 
sect or plant life in existence, and our cli¬ 
matic conditions are such as to rapidly 
develop these forms of insect and plant 
growth which could be justly termed ene¬ 
mies of mankind. Therefore if we would 
succeed in the cultivation of peaches, 
plums and pears all of which are especial¬ 
ly subject to these enemies, we must eith¬ 
er stir ourselves and find nature’s way of 
controlling them, either by parasitic or 
predacious insects or fungus, or find arti¬ 
ficial means of combating them. 
As the peach is the first and most im¬ 
portant of the fruits under consideration, 
will dwell more at length on Ihe troubles 
of the peach grower. It commences with 
the nurseryman at the time the pit is 
planted for no sooner is the little seedling 
fairly taken root, than an enemy is ready 
to devour it. This enemy is the Nema¬ 
tode Angoulula, commonly called iroot 
knot. For a remedy or a preventative 
from this nematode, we are forced to 
appeal to nature for no artificial means 
for controlling or eradicating, praticable 
for the orchardist, has been discovered. 
The preventative nature provides is the 
planting of the nursery or the orchard on 
virgin soil, not subject to washes from 
old field land. This nematode, the An- 
g'oulula, is present in all our light south¬ 
ern soils, and only needs the presence of 
plant roots pleasing to his majesty’s pal¬ 
ate for him to feed upon to multiply in 
myriads and so infest the land that a 
young peach tree, however healthy when 
|#aced there, cannot thrive. The only 
known means of eradicating this pest 
from the soil is heating it to a high de¬ 
gree, or the saturation of the earth 
with bi-sulphide of carbon as sugges¬ 
ted by Mr. Bessey in his valuable pa¬ 
per on Nemiatodes. This is sometimes 
practiced for potting earth for green¬ 
house or bedding plants, but not practical 
