FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
never have become so badly infested as 
they were. 
A great many people will disagree with 
me in my belief that insecticides are of 
very little use in fighting the white fly. I 
will add to that statement, however, that 
I think this applies particularly to our lo¬ 
cal conditions. In the first place, an oil 
solution does not mix well with our hard 
artesian water; in fact, it will not mix 
at all until we have added from five to 
ten pounds of whale oil soap to a barrel 
of water. This in itself is sufficient to 
kill the larvae in the early stages. We 
also have conditions in our East Coast 
hammock which are very favorable to 
the growth of fungus. These hammocks 
are low and damp, and we have remarka¬ 
bly heavy dews all summer, which tend 
to keep the trees damp and help the 
growth of the fungus. In other locali¬ 
ties where the ground is dryer and they 
have more trouble in starting the fungus, 
the oil emulsion may be very satisfactory. 
I may add, however, that the fungus 
must be applied very thoroughly and 
very systematically. It is a general prac¬ 
tice in our locality to spray fungus after 
every rain. 
I have heard that the brown fungus is 
very hard to start, and that it could not 
be started except by late summer or ear¬ 
ly fall applications. We sprayed several 
times in April, 1912, with the brown 
fungus more as an experiment than be¬ 
cause we thought it would take, but in 
, the summer these trees literally turned 
brown. I think every larva had a brown 
spot on it, and the tops of the leaves 
from a distance looked fairly rusty with 
the spores which had been developed. 
101 
We then took the leaves from these trees 
and mixed them with leaves containing 
the red fungus and sprayed the two to¬ 
gether throughout all of our groves. The 
brown fungus took better in the spring 
than from the later application. We 
are now spraying all the new growth on 
the trees with a mixture of the brown 
and red fungus, and we look for a great¬ 
ly diminished crop of fly when the sum¬ 
mer brood hatches. 
This is merely a statement of my ex¬ 
perience with the fly under the condi¬ 
tions as we find them at about the north¬ 
ern limit of the East Coast hammocks. 
In other localities, where the conditions 
are different, unquestionably different 
methods will have to be employed. But 
had we sprayed fungus properly each 
time, instead of spraying emulsions, 
there is no question in my mind but our 
fly would have been placed under con¬ 
trol very much sooner than it has been- 
DISCUSSION. 
Mr. H. B. Stevens: I would state 
that I helped to introduce the fungus 
and was the first one to get a successful 
“catch” of the brown fungus. We used 
to use sprays, but no matter how care¬ 
fully you spray, the fly is going to go 
through there, whether or not. We could 
not get ahead of it. 
We have been very successful in spray¬ 
ing for scale with fungus. We sprayed 
as we do for the red and brown scale and 
the whitefly. For the last several years 
we have kept the scale down by the use 
of fungus, using nothing more than the 
