FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
69 
great deal of trouble this spring. These are some of our en¬ 
emies, but we have some friends in the insect world. One, I 
would like to find the name for; it looks like a little tuft of 
down on legs, and is very active in destroying scale. 
Then there is the little beetle, known as the lady-bird; the 
one most common is black with a red dot on each wing; an¬ 
other, not so common, is orange colored or red. The larva of 
these insects may be seen on dead twigs, or pine straw that 
has become lodged in the orange trees, and may be seen 
crawling about over the leaves. It looks like a little black or 
yellowish hairy worm, furnished with legs, and is often killed 
hy persons who do not know them, thinking they are an in¬ 
jurious insect of some sort. These little friends destroy great 
numbers of scale insects. One bad thing about our spraying- 
is that we destroy these friends along with our enemies, and 
it is a question if we do not lose in the end. 
DISEASES. 
Mai di goma , or foot-rot is a disease of the orange that ha& 
and is causing more destruction in seedling groves than any 
disease known to the orange. It seems to be almost as much 
a mystery as ever, and no one that I know of has yet ventured 
to say what the cause of it is. I have noticed that it seems 
to be most prevalent after a freeze. After the freeze of 1886 
there was a regular epidemic of foot-rot. That would seem to 
indicate a defective circulation of sap, would it not ? We all 
have our theories in regard to it, and mine is this: That at 
the time of a freeze the sap vessels or veins are contracted or 
dried down, and when the warm weather comes after the cold 
the roots commence forcing sap into the trees again* and the 
vessels not being able to receive the amount furnished them, 
burst through the bark in boils or sores. These sores often 
appear six feet from the ground, and even more, although the 
trees are most generally affected at the collar, and the main 
root just below the surface. The best means for stopping it 
seems to be by cutting away the diseased portions of t he bark 
and exposing roots for a distance of two feet around the 
trunk. That would indicate that in setting a grove or replac¬ 
ing trees it would be a good idea to plant on slight ridges or 
mounds, as the soil tends to work to the trees all the time, and 
if we do not set them in this manner, in a few years we are 
apt to find our trees in slight hollows. I should think the best 
way to avoid the trouble would be to use sour or bitter-sweet 
stock. The sour stock rarely has foot-rot, while the bitter¬ 
sweet has the reputation of having never had a case of it. I 
have seen trees budded on sour stock standing with every 
sweet tree around affected, and yet the trees budded on sour 
were perfectly healthy. The disease may be readily distin- 
