74 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
handled. Charts II and III show the 
amount of decay in two individual ex¬ 
periments made this past season, where 
the fruit was held packed in the houses. 
CHART II. 
Sound, carefully handled. i.i per cent. 
Dropped 18 inches. 10.2 per cent. 
Commercial packed. 16.5 per cent. 
Through machinery. 18.4 per cent. 
Mechanically injured. 25.3 per cent. 
CHART III. 
Sound, carefully handled. 1.4 per cent. 
Dropped 18 inches. 9.2 per cent. 
Commercial packed. 19.8 per cent. 
Through Machinery. 11.9 per cent. 
Mechanically injured. 30.0 per cent. 
The sound carefully handled lots were 
picked under our personal supervision 
and the fruit was not dropped in any 
way. It was drawn to the packing houses 
usually on spring wagons, and packed 
without any machine handling. The 
dropped fruit was handled in identically 
the same manner, except that just before 
packing each orange was dropped sep¬ 
arately 18 inches on to the floor of the 
packing house or into the empty field 
crate. The series indicated by the words 
“through machinery” were handled in 
the grove as the carefully handled lots, 
but before packing the oranges were 
poured into the empty hoppers and were 
then graded and sized in the usual man¬ 
ner, and generally by the labor in the 
packing house. In all cases, the hoppers 
and bins were empty so the maximum 
amount of injury from the machinery 
was obtained. For this reason it was not 
uncommon for our experiments to show 
greater decay in the fruit carefully picked 
but run through the empty machinery 
than we secured in the regular commer¬ 
cial pack which had been picked and 
packed without any attention on our 
part. The boxes that made up the “Com¬ 
mercial Pack” were selected after they 
had been packed and were taken from the 
fruit coming from the same orchard in 
which we had obtained the other experi¬ 
ment boxes. The “Mechanically In¬ 
jured” lots were those in which each 
orange showed some abrasion. Clipper 
cuts, box injuries, finger nail scratches 
and stem punctures were the most com¬ 
mon. 
Chart IV gives the summary of the 
decay for all of the experiments that were 
made this past season, with the fruit 
held two weeks in the packing houses. 
CHART IV. 
Summary—Packing House Experiments. 
Sound, carefully handled. 2.1 per cent. 
Dropped 18 inches. 10.0 per cent. 
Commercial packed. 18.2 per cent. 
Through machinery. 20.3 per cent. 
Mechanically injured. 35.4 per cent. 
MARKET STORAGE TESTS. 
Aside from the experiments, where the 
fruit has been held in the packing house, 
about fifteen shipping experiments have 
been made. These lots have gone by ex¬ 
press, freight, and water and have been 
shipped to Washington. The average 
length of time in transit has been about 
7 days. Upon arrival the fruit was ex¬ 
amined and the percentage of decay 
noted. The fruit was then repacked and 
held in a common storage room and re¬ 
examined at the end of one week and 
again at the end of two weeks. At that 
time most of the lots were discarded, yet 
some boxes of carefully handled fruit 
were held for some time longer. 
The results of these shipments showed 
that all the lots except the injured fruit 
arrived at market in a fair condition. 
Chart V gives the data in detail. 
