FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
49 
probably 150,000 trees in Cuba, I pre¬ 
sume 60 or 70 per cent of them have 
been attacked with gummosis. At the 
time I saw it, it resembled foot rot, al¬ 
though in the wrong place. I thought it 
was foot rot. The trees were infected 
just a little above the ground. I soon 
found that I knew nothing about it. They 
thought that my coming from Florida, of 
course I would know just how to cure it, 
but I had to confess that it was some¬ 
thing new to me. In one of the groves 
they had a good deal of trouble with 
lemon trees largely on account of this 
trouble with gummosis. Several experts 
visited Cuba, and some of them claimed 
that the trouble was with the roots. I 
did not believe that. 
When the disease started, we cut it 
back just as the Professor says, into the 
clean wood. We scraped it, and treated it 
with Carbolineum, but soon found that 
it burned the trees. We weakened it, and 
found it worked better. Some of the 
trees, however, died, and we concluded 
to burn them. We had the trees cut off, 
and new shoots came up, and some of the 
finest trees grew from those old roots. 
The disease never started on those trees 
until about the second or third year; that 
seems to be the time when the disease be¬ 
gins to develop. At first, I thought it 
was brought about by something the trees 
had taken up from the soil. 
In the first grove of one hundred acres, 
I never saw trees grow more beautifully 
than they did for two years. Then, after 
a wet season, the disease broke out all 
through the grove. Out of 8,000 trees, 
about 7,000 were affected. It seems as 
though the extreme moisture had made 
soluble in the soil something which the 
tree had taken up to excess. The tree 
was just like a person whose blood is bad 
and boils had broken out. We began 
treating them just as the Professor sfated, 
by cutting out, cleaning away and using- 
several insecticides. Some trees were 
healed up in a short time, and some of 
them seemed to entirely recover. But we 
soon found out that if the knife used in 
scraping the trees was not absolutely 
clean, it would inoculate another tree, so 
we had to put the blade into the fire and 
burn it after treating every diseased tree, 
to keep from carrying the disease all 
through the grove. 
I was on the Isle of Pines about three 
weeks ago. I went into one of the larg¬ 
est groves on the Island. It is a hand¬ 
some grove, but all through it I noticed 
vacant spots, and in walking through I 
noticed trees with great sores on the side, 
some of them healed and some of them 
bleeding badly from the disease. It 
seems to me that unless they do some¬ 
thing very soon, they are going to lose 
a very valuable piece of property. As I 
stated before, the disease is much more 
prevalent there, and works much more 
rapidly. 
This disease seems to be more prevalent 
in the hammocks and in the lower lands, 
like those on the Manatee River. They 
seem to have considerable trouble there. 
I know several people in that section who 
are troubled with it, and they are going 
to lose their groves if drastic measures 
are not taken. 
In nursery work, we very frequently 
begin budding, say in July or August. 
This is something we ought not to do. 
Very frequently you will find a whole lot 
of those trees will gum, in a manner very 
