FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
107 
fected so much that three-fourths of the 
trees died back to the trunk. 
I had read the bulletin written by our 
Honorable President about the destruc¬ 
tion of the San Jose Scale by the Sphae- 
rostilbe Coccophila or Red-head Fungus, 
but I did not know how or where to get 
it. But I succeeded in getting three or 
four small pieces of what was told me 
was black fungus. I put this on some 
of the worst infected trees early in 1905. 
I paid no .more attention to it. At this 
time I did not know the red or black fun¬ 
gus when I saw it. Early in the winter 
of 1905 I began spraying again and I 
kept seeing trees covered with the red 
fungus and I began to examine and I 
found where the trees looked red the scale 
was dead. I very carefully re-read the 
bulletin and found I had the red and black 
fungus both pretty well distributed over 
my orchard. I immediately quit spraying 
and wrote to Prof. Rolfs and stated the 
facts to him and asked him if I could 
safelv trust the orchard in the hands of 
the fungus, and he replied I could; and I 
have not used my spray pump since. By 
January iqo6 I could not find a live Scale 
in my orchard. 
Earlv in the spring of 1906 I cut al¬ 
most all the trees back to the trunk and 
by the fall of 1906 I had almost as good 
an orchard as ever. The Scale were so 
completely killed that I almost lost the 
fungus. 
During the fall of 1907, during a long 
spell of dry weather, the Scale appeared 
in large numbers, sufficient to do a little 
damage; but as soon as we had some rain 
the fungus verv soon appeared again and 
destroved the Scale. 
In May iqo6 I introduced both the Red 
and Black fungus into the 300-acre or¬ 
chard of the Gainesville Orchard Com¬ 
pany, near Archer, which at the time was 
very badly infected with the Scale. The 
fungus spread very rapidly and within a 
few months the Scale were all dead, and 
the trees put on a nice fall growth of 
healthy wood. 
In June 1906 I introduced both the 
Red-head and the Black fungi into the 
500-acre orchard of the Griffing Florida 
Orchard Company at Komoko, with the 
same results and the fungus has held the 
Scale down completely ever since. 
During the summer of 1907 I visited 
nearly all the peach orchards in the State 
and I only found one orchard that was 
not affected with the San Jose Scale. I 
introduced the fungus in nearly all, with 
the same results, so far as I have learned. 
My experience has shown conclusively 
that the fungus is not only by far the 
cheapest, but also the most effective re¬ 
medy for both the San Jose Scale as well 
as the orange Scale. 
After obtaining the genuine fungus, of 
either variety, the application is very sim¬ 
ple. Just tie a small piece of wood con¬ 
taining the fungus, in about every tenth 
tree, and your work is done not only for 
one year but as long as you have an or¬ 
chard. One man can make the applica¬ 
tion on about twenty acres per day. 
I very seriously doubt if spraying is 
the best means of fighting any of the in¬ 
jurious insects of Florida. What we need 
to do is to find out through our Experi¬ 
ment Station what the natural enemy of 
these insect pests is and then use it to 
exterminate it. 
And here permit me to say that I do 
not believe we, as horticulturists, appre¬ 
ciate the work our own Experiment 
Station is doing for our fair State. They 
have redeemed the peach, plum and Ja¬ 
panese persimmon industries from com- 
