FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
37 
making any money out of it—don’t want 
to, except by holding fruit for high 
prices—and I will give you the same 
chance I have of doing this after this 
year. But wet oranges can be kept. I 
feel assured that the bad keeping 
qualities of fruit that went down last win¬ 
ter must be from some other cause; or 
wet fruit is not allowed to dry properly 
before it is shipped to market. I have 
many times taken injured fruit, laid it 
up on a shelf in my packing-house, and 
had it keep perfectly until dried up, 
showing that it should go to market in 
good shape if properly cured. 
Dr. Kerr—Next year you are going to 
impart to us this information, and do you 
intend to send around samples of the 
boxes of oranges that we may test them 
as I did, or not? And another thing I 
wish to know, is it possible that there 
was ever a cloud upon the East Coast 
oranges ? 
Mr. Hart—The Turnbull hammock 
oranges shipped very poorly twenty-five 
years ago, so much so that it was consid¬ 
ered about an even question whether 
they could be got into market in sound 
condition or not; but it is not so now. 
BLEMISHES CAUSED BY THE THRIPS. 
I 
Mr. Butler—In the last remarks the 
gentleman forgot that a large proportion 
of the South Florida growers were form¬ 
erly North Florida growers and went 
down there. I don’t know if this disease 
(blemish or scar) attacks us much, and 
I would like Mr. Hart to give the cause 
of that disease. 
Mr. Hart—I always concluded that 
that was caused by the thrips in the 
bloom. 
Mr. Butler—I thought so, although 
sometimes it almost took on the form of 
a scar. 
Mr. Hart—That would occur when 
there was a dieback tendency in the tree. 
It always seemed to me that was caused 
by the thrips. 
Dr. Inman—I think probably between 
the oranges on the East and on the West 
Coast there is very little difference. I 
have shipped quite a lot of fruit this sea¬ 
son, and of my oranges I have not lost a 
box by decay. In March I shipped or¬ 
anges to Columbus, Ohio. Last season 
I shipped oranges in April which were 
used in August, and not three oranges 
in the box were decayed. 
Mr. Porcher—This gives me an op¬ 
portunity of speaking as to the thrips. 
Thrips can be controled by spraying to 
some extent, at least. On pine land 
they will get away from you, but on ham¬ 
mock land the use of caustic potash and 
whale oil soap will destroy them without 
danger, and no marks will be upon the 
fruit. In addition to this, when the blos¬ 
soms fall and the little oranges are as 
small as a pea, you can detect the work 
done by the thrips at once. In the same 
way that you destroy these thrips you 
kill the young of the common scale, you 
destroy the purple mite, you prevent 
danger from the red spider or hairy mite, 
and you give your trees a health and 
vigor that usually nothing else can give. 
In other words, no insect, enemy or 
friend, working in conjunction, can pos¬ 
sibly live. And I, therefore, say that 
with spraying, if done intelligently, the 
thrips can be done away with. When 
we come to spray and you ask a man 
what he has done, he will say two or 
three times in a year, when fifteen would 
be best at start in some cases, and I may 
say six to ten times a year. At this 
