82 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
of box is employed as the fruit is shipped 
in carload lots. The boxes are placed in 
the car and held in place by strips. As 
an additional precaution the Winter Ha¬ 
ven house is using a metal hook to hold 
the lid in the center. Very few cars are 
iced. Towards the end of the season for 
the mid-season fruit some cars of over¬ 
ripe fruit are either half or fully iced. 
The two houses in this section handle 
all their fruit through the Florida Citrus 
Exchange whose methods of operation do 
not need to be described at this time. Fruit 
must be tightly packed and placed on the 
market with practically no decay. This 
decay must not appear before the dealer 
has had a reasonable time to sell the fruit. 
I wish to emphasize once more that fruit 
carefully and attractively packed will ship 
sound. - 
Dr. O. W. Sadler, Mt. Dora 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
Having been appointed one of a com¬ 
mittee on Packing and Shipping, I re¬ 
viewed the reports on all the usual steps 
of the operation from trees to packing 
house, and through packing house to mar¬ 
ket, and found every point so fully dealt 
with, and the results so thoroughly de¬ 
monstrated by numerous experiments ex¬ 
tending over seven years, by the Bureau 
of Plant Industry, represented here by 
Mr. H. J. Ramsey, that there is very little 
to be said, further than to emphasize with 
all the force the English language can ex¬ 
press that it .pays and pays big, to use the 
utmost care in handling citrus fruits. 
Every grower should obtain a copy of the 
latest bulletin on the subject, No. 63, by 
the IJ. S. Dept, of Agriculture. 
At last year’s meeting of this society 
in DeLand, I made some remarks on one 
process in the packing of fruit which for 
the past three years has impressed me as 
being of the utmost importance, and cap¬ 
able of vast improvement—I refer to the 
Perfect Drying of Fruit after washing. 
With the advent of whitefly and sooty 
mould, washing has become imperative, 
where they exist. On page 26 of bulletin 
63, we find that carefully handled fruit 
not washed showed 1 per cent decay after 
2 weeks, while the washed showed 4.1 
per cent. 
In the commercially handled fruit, not 
washed showed 3.6 per cent, while the 
washed showed 10.2 per cent. 
From this test it is shown that up to 
the time of these experiments, washing 
was the cause of 3.1 per cent decay in 
the carefully handled fruit, and 6.6 per 
cent of that commercially handled. 
All the shipping experiments have de¬ 
monstrated that Blue Mold is the chief 
form of decay. 
Laboratory experiments have shown 
that blue mold is a fungus, of the Genus 
Penicillium, and that these fungi require 
heat and moisture for their development. 
From this last fact we get a hint as to 
the cause of increased decay following 
'washing of fruit — moisture. 
Let it be understood that my subse¬ 
quent arguments are based on the suppo¬ 
sition that the utmost care from tree to 
packing house, and through all steps' in 
the packing house to car, including wash¬ 
ing, have had the best management as 
to personal and mechanical handling; 
