68 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
that on foggy, rainy days the fruit is per¬ 
fectly dry within seven minutes after it 
enters the drier. 
After leaving the drier the fruit is au¬ 
tomatically delivered to the grading belts. 
These are wide white canvas belts which 
carry the fruit slowly by the men who 
grade the fruit in accordance with the 
house practice. 
The matter of the number and kind of 
grades that you will use is an important 
one, and one which should be given ser¬ 
ious consideration by the State as a 
whole. In California they used to grade 
Extra Fancy, Fancy, Extra Choice, 
Choice and Standard—five grades. At 
the present time most of the progressive 
growers there grade Extra Fancy, Fancy, 
Choice and Standard; while a great many 
are grading Fancy, Choice and Standard 
only, combining the old Extra Fancy into 
the merely Fancy grade, and the Extra 
Choice and Choice into the Choice, the 
Standard remaining as it always was in 
each case, merely a shipping Cull. 
The Winter Park house started out by 
abandoning altogether a true shipping 
cull grade, and ran three brands, the 
Angel, Bull-Dog and Camel, the Angel 
being the equivalent of Fancy, the Bull- 
Dog the equivalent of Choice and the 
Camel the equivalent of Standard. 
The National Orange Company of 
California, one of the most progressive 
producers in the State, have cut their 
grades down to two, their first grade be¬ 
ing “Orchard Run, which they so brand¬ 
ed, and the second grade being “Stand¬ 
ard, ” which they so branded. In this way 
they only have two grades, and in run¬ 
ning their fruit over the grading belts on 
their first selection they take out only the 
rank culls, which go to the cull heap, as 
usual. Their second selection is to take 
out everything that is not really first 
class, and ship it as a Standard, leaving 
all the rest of their product to go under 
the “Orchard Run” or “Run of the 
Grove,” as we call it in Florida, meaning 
just what it says—everything regardless 
of color or texture. 
At the Winter Park house we tried 
this method in the present season. We 
have only shipped a few boxes of the 
Angel brand (just sufficient to keep our 
trade-mark alive), for two reasons—in 
the first place, so that we might make this 
experiment, and, in the second place, be¬ 
cause there were not to exceed ioo boxes 
in the whole Winter Park crop this year 
high enough in class to ship under the 
Angel grade; so we took our regular 
Bull Dog grade and ran into it all the 
oranges that really graded above that 
grade, making of the Bull Dog a “Run of 
the Grove” grade for the year. 
On the other hand, oranges that would 
naturally run into the Bull Dog grade 
under a shade of doubt we # dropped into 
our Camel brand, thereby bringing that 
grade up a little ; and the result has been 
somewhat astonishing, in that there has 
seldom been a difference of more than 20 
cents a box between the Bull Dog and 
Camel grades, and, in many instances, the 
Camel grade has sold for more money 
than the Bull Dog grade. 
I am of the opinion that if a house 
wants to ship everything that is really 
shipable—and by that I mean, every or¬ 
ange that you are reasonably certain will 
carry sound to destination—you should 
run four grades, and this is based on my 
experience in trying it both ways. 
