FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
51 
into the question in print. The whole 
question can be solved in some other 
way, and it should be done. 
Mr. Carlton: There is no doubt but 
that refrigeration is practically prohib¬ 
itive. Since a good many of us have to 
depend on ventilators, I would like to 
ask if in your opinion the ventilated cars 
are adequate. It is my experience that 
there is nothing that can remove the 
moisture better than thorough ventila¬ 
tion. 
I think a good deal of criticism could 
be brought to bear on our packing houses, 
too. In many instances our packing 
houses are kept closed almost air tight, 
from twelve to fifteen hours, every day, 
the doors being opened only when the 
fruit is being packed. We should have 
ventilators that are arranged to keep cur¬ 
rents of air moving over our fruit as 
much as possible. That will remove 
moisture more than anything else. 
Mr. Thompson: I just want to say 
one word in regard to refrigeration. We 
have had a little experience at Florence 
Villa along the line of refrigeration, in 
that we felt that was the panacea for our 
troubles, and from an experimental stand¬ 
point. We put some cars under refrig¬ 
eration and shipped them at the same time 
we shipped other cars without refrigera¬ 
tion. The result in the market was not 
in favor of refrigeration any more than 
the other. That has been our experience 
and so far as our packing and ventilating 
the cars; we always strip our cars; that 
is, a space of six inches is left between 
the boxes for the air to circulate freely 
over them. We washed all of our fruit 
and dried it with a mechanical dryer. It 
would be impossible to do it in any other 
way. We find our fruit more attractive 
if it is clean, and while it is not absolute¬ 
ly dry, yet we shipped last week an av¬ 
erage of five cars a day, and we fixed it 
up in that way. 
It is rather a difficult proposition to 
dry in the sun. It cannot be done at all 
times successfully. 
We have had not over i per cent, de¬ 
cay. I think that is a pretty fair record. 
Mr. Ley: I would like to go back 
a few years from where this gentleman, 
Mr. Skinner, started a few moments ago. 
I think he said he had been shipping a 
period of thirty years. My shipping end¬ 
ed almost at that time, and I had quite 
a little experience in gathering and ship¬ 
ping according to the old way. In those 
days, such things as poor carriage was 
unheard of. 
Our method of gathering fruit was 
that followed by three boys. An orange 
tree of that time was no more thornless 
than they are today; notwithstanding 
that, one boy would get into the tree and 
throw the fruit to the one below, who 
would drop it on the sand. We didn’t 
have only about 200 or 300 barrels in 
those days (the square box was un¬ 
known), and we had no wraps, and I be¬ 
lieve the secret of its keeping qualities 
was in the drying process. The sand 
where the fruit was dropped was hot; 
so hot that it would almost blister our 
bare feet, and there was no moisture left 
on the rind of an orange that had lain 
there a few minutes. 
Of course, we did not gather oranges 
