88 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
at the time of packing the weather was 
dry, while in a short time the condi¬ 
tions may be entirely different, and a 
lot of fruit injured in a similar manner 
to the first lot may show a heavy de¬ 
cay. The relation between the climat¬ 
ic conditions here at the time of har¬ 
vesting and the decay conditions upon 
arrival on the market is something we 
want to investigate further. How 
much good may be accomplished by 
blowing air over the fruit, I do not 
know. 
Dr. Phillips—I would like to ask 
what the gentleman thinks about using 
the brush. 
Mr. Tenny—If your fruit is not 
dirty, do not brush it. Do not handle 
your oranges any more than is abso¬ 
lutely necessary. If they do not need 
washing or brushing, don’t do it. They 
may be washed or brushed probably 
without serious damage, but make a 
practice of handling your fruit just as 
little as is possible. I know of no wash 
yet discovered that will kill the spores 
of the decay fungus and at the same 
time not injure the fruit. This fungus 
is the same that causes the blue mold 
on bread and other things, so the 
spores are ever present. It is not a 
parasite, it is a saprophyte; that is, it 
lives on dead tissues. It will not live 
on a live, healthy orange. 
Mr. Gibbs—What class of labor do 
you depend on in California for picking 
oranges ? 
Mr. Tenny—They have the Japanese, 
Chinese, Mexican and hoboes. I realize 
that you have hard labor conditions here 
in Florida, but we had this same thing 
to meet in California. But let me ask 
you this. If all your orange trees were 
transformed in a night to peach trees, 
wouldn’t you gather the entire peach crop 
without punching them or dropping 
them? Wouldn’t you? 
Mr. Hart—This seems to be an ex¬ 
perience meeting. Mr. Skinner was 
speaking about the question whether we 
could overcome the careless picking or 
not, and I would offer one suggestion 
which I got from Mr. Stevens in regard 
to that matter that has been of great help 
to me. That is, to have all your field 
pickers have a piece of chalk and put 
their numbers on the boxes. When it 
comes into the packing house, if there 
is any injury to the fruit that has been 
picked, you can identify the picker who 
did that work; then, of course, you can 
speak to your foreman and have him 
see that the trouble is corrected or the 
picker discharged. Where you have care¬ 
less pickers (and they will get careless if 
not closely watched) they think that their 
fruit goes in with all the rest so you can¬ 
not identify it, and consequently they take 
little pains. 
The next point is about the current 
of air in the packing house. I can take 
an orange and with my thumb nail cut 
through the cuticle clear around the or¬ 
ange and put it up on a beam and it will 
dry up and the wound will become air¬ 
tight. It can go into the market, if the 
conditions are fairly good, after it has 
left my packing house, in good shape. 
I believe a current of air is very import¬ 
ant in a packing house, and if you can 
sweep a dry current of air through, it 
will heal those wounds. 
Now, about the moisture in the atmo¬ 
sphere. If the fruit gets, cold during the 
night, and the morning comes up bright 
and warm, the orange does not warm up 
as quickly, and the warm air deposits 
