FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
41 
gained. We must be ignoramuses indeed 
if we cannot gain by the benefit of six 
years' experience, yet we have had ex¬ 
cessive decay from blue mold this sea¬ 
son. 
I have already said that the fruit is 
not put up dry in the great majority of 
cases. If I am wrong, I will be glad to 
have some one correct me. The very 
best packing houses which had the best 
reputation last year were putting up 
fruit wet enough to wet the papers. 
I took this matter up with Professor 
Rolfs by letter. He could not answer all 
the questions involved to his satisfaction, 
so he took it up with some one else. He 
again could not answer it satisfactorily 
to himself, so he sent it to another—the 
professor of physics. 
Right here,, I want to call your atten¬ 
tion to this fact: Our packing houses 
today are run by mechanical dryers. 
They are run by mien who have made 
a study of mechanics, ignoring the laws 
of physics. You know that the use of 
mechanics means force, and force, with 
oranges, means injury—and decay. 
I want to say further, that clipper cuts 
and injuries of that kind have been con¬ 
sidered the sure cause of rot. I tried a 
little experiment with that, too. After 
all the good fruit was shipped this year, 
I went through the grove and found a 
few culls. I took the best of them and 
the worst of them and made big clipper 
cuts, as big as my thumb nail; then I 
took the long stem and pricked the rind 
in several places, after washing the fruit. 
To make sure it was dry, I put it in the 
oven for fifteen minutes where the wo¬ 
man was ironing. It got so hot I could 
not handle it well. Then I wrapped it 
tight in wrapping paper and packed it 
up as tight as I could in one of the fruit 
jar paper cartons, and put newspaper all 
over the cracks, shut it down tight and 
put the package away with the fruit still 
warm. 
I left it there eleven days. That is 
about the length of time it takes to get 
to Philadelphia or Chicago. Then I open¬ 
ed it up. There was not a single clipper 
cut or injured spot decayed. Some of 
the spots where I had baked it, had not 
decayed, either, much to my surprise. 
The baked part of the rind had sunk 
down and was as thin as tissue paper, 
but it had not blue mold decay. Of 
course it would not stand the pressure 
of shipping. 
Some of the grapefruit I put in there 
were culls, and most of the grapefruits 
were decayed, but none of the injured 
spots—I had thoroughly dried the in¬ 
jured. 
The point is, if we can dry the fruit 
thoroughly, we can prevent the decay 
that otherwise would take place. 
I think we have been led astray by 
the adoption in Florida of too many 
California methods. California is so dif¬ 
ferent from Florida, You don’t find the 
moist atmosphere in California. Their 
physical geography is no more different 
than the climatic conditions under which 
their fruit is raised. You’ don’t find 
mountains in Florida, as in California, in 
sight of their orange groves. They can 
easily pre-cool their fruit, because they 
