66 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
club and share the cost of the fumigat¬ 
ing outfit, which is kept at the disposal 
of each of the members in turn. Such 
a plan might be followed in many cases 
in this State. A few orange growers 
with a crop worth annually $10,000 or 
$15,000 would not be put to an unrea¬ 
sonable expense in the joint ownership 
of an outfit costing $1,000. Fumigation 
by the contractor system as it is now 
done to a great extent in California, 
may also come into use. The plan 
which can be most strongly recom¬ 
mended is for each orange growing 
county in the State, when the proper 
time arrives, to maintain an outfit large 
enough for the needs of the orange 
growers within its limits, and to pro¬ 
vide for fumigation under the direction 
of a County Horticultural Commission. 
The average annual loss due to the 
white fly in the infested groves in 
Florida may be conservatively estimat¬ 
ed at 33 per cent. Taking* into consid¬ 
eration the reduction in number and 
size of the fruit and the indirect loss 
through the necessity for washing the 
fruit and subsequent deterioration in 
its shipping quality, the total loss 
for the state is not less than three hun¬ 
dred thousand dollars per annum. Ac¬ 
cording to the Eighth Biennial Report 
of the Florida Commissioner of Agri¬ 
culture, there were in 1903, slightly 
over three million citrus trees in the 
State, more than one-half of which 
were non-bearing. The foregoing esti¬ 
mate of a loss of $300,000 per annum 
is based upon these figures, placing 
the number of infested groves at one- 
eighth of the entire number. Accord¬ 
ing to this estimate, there are at pres¬ 
ent, omitting nursery stock, about four 
hundred thousand infested trees in the 
State of Florida. An avreage of fifty 
cents per tree would be an ample al¬ 
lowance for fumigating the infested 
citrus trees in the State. This would 
give us $200,000 as the estimated ex¬ 
pense of fumigating these trees. The 
work of Prof. Gossard and the work of 
the Bureau of Entimology during the past 
few months furnishes evidence that no 
further loss would be occasioned by the 
white fly for two or three years; hence the 
sum of $200,000 invested by the citrus 
growers of Florida who suffer losses 
from the white fly, would result in the 
prevention of a loss of at least $600,- 
000. This point is made not as a prac¬ 
tical recommendation, for the adoption 
of the practice of fumigation should 
be gradual, but simply to' provide a 
basis for the estimation of the desir¬ 
ability of using this treatment in indi¬ 
vidual groves. 
While it is generally considered that 
in Florida the natural enemies of the 
purple scale are so effective that any 
direct treatment is unnecesarry or un¬ 
profitable, citrus groves are frequently 
met with where this scale is a serious 
pest, and where the losses prevented 
by fumigation would amount to sever¬ 
al times its cost. In conclusion, the 
writer would express his conviction 
that in the case of the majority of the 
groves, the destruction of the purple 
scale and other true scale insects would 
represent an increase in profit which 
would, by itself, offset the actual cost 
of fumigation, leaving as clear gain the 
benefits derived from reducing the 
white fly to a negligible quantity. 
