72 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
excess of that of the California navel, and 
as the juice furnishes the only food con¬ 
tent of the orange, further comment on 
this point is unnecessary. 
In a letter received from the manager 
of the Florida Citrus Exchange in New 
York city he enclosed a newspaper clip¬ 
ping reading as follows: 
“The real battle in the rival apple 
worlds of the East and West is the battle 
between Taste and Looks/’ 
And in his letter of enclosure remarks: 
“This tells in a measure the difference 
between navels and Floridas.” 
On a recent trip through the principal 
fruit markets in the East I asked many 
dealers that had been handling large 
quantities of the Winter Park brands at 
high prices, why they paid prices so much 
higher for those brands than they did for 
other brands under which really finer 
fruit was sold, and the invariable an¬ 
swer was “Because it keeps.” 
I fear that many growers fail to realize 
the importance in the mind of the retailer 
of this particular thing, that “it keeps,” 
and that the Florida orange will keep 
when properly handled we have demon¬ 
strated this year. 
As you all know who are shippers of 
citrus fruits, for some reason the decay 
this year has been exceptionally high, both 
from California and from Florida—re¬ 
port after report comes from the great 
markets of decay both in Californias and 
Floridas ranging from 7 to 10 per cent, 
and at times as high as 30 to 40 per cent 
in car after car (some cars having shown 
as high as 75 per cent decay), and until 
two years ago California fruit was 
sound delivered if it showed not to ex¬ 
ceed 3 per cent decay on arrival, while 
Florida fruit was allowed 7 per cent de¬ 
cay to constitute sound delivery—but, al¬ 
though this year has been an exceptional 
one for high decay, the Winter Park 
house, up to the writing of this article, 
has shipped, delivered, sold and collected 
for 34,755 boxes of fruit (oranges, 
grapefruit and tangerines), with an aver¬ 
age decay of a shade less than 1-7 of 1 
per cent—only five cars out of the 109 
shipped showing any trace of decay 
whatever, and in each case where this de¬ 
cay was shown we have been able to trace 
it directly to the conditions causing it, 
which were unnecessary and should have 
been obviated. 
DISCUSSION. 
Mr. Temple: I suppose every Associa¬ 
tion has just as much trouble as we do in 
the matter of culls. Now, this Black 
Feather brand is an innovation we have 
put in, in which we reverse the motto of 
the house. It used to be “Every doubt¬ 
ful orange is a cull,”'and now it is “Every 
doubtful orange is a Black Feather.” All 
we can say is that we sincerely hope that 
the Black Feather will shoot our house 
records so full of holes that the growers 
will let us alone on the cull proposition. 
Prof. Hume. Mr. Temple’s work as 
exemplified in his own district is a splen¬ 
did example of what one man can do in 
his own community. 
The subject has been broached that it 
would be a good thing to designate some¬ 
thing in the way of standard brands, or 
a standard system of grading, which 
might be known as the Florida State Hor¬ 
ticultural system of grading. This idea 
was suggested to my mind several months 
