98 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
studying their system of packing and 
handling fruit. At Riverside we were 
taken to the top of cpiite a high moun¬ 
tain, standing alone in the valley, where 
we could look down upon twenty-five to 
thirty thousand acres of thrifty orang'e 
groves with the San Bernardino range 
of snow-clad mountains to shelter them, 
and form) a noble background for this 
beautiful picture. 
Leaving Los Angeles, we continued on 
to San Francisco, then to Chicago where 
we were taken all over the city in an 
automobile, through the wholesale fruit 
districts, etc., then home. 
I hardly know where to commence; 
there is so much material I can only give 
you a little smattering. 
The president suggests that I give you 
an idea of the size of the groves, trees, 
etc. I will say that the trees, many of 
them, are not large; perhaps they may 
average something like ours, but I was 
taken through one grove, Mr. Powell's 
grove, at Azusa, where the record returns 
for California were -made. In one crop 
they made $5,000 off two acres. These 
trees were large and being budded at Va¬ 
lencia late, the fruit comes to market in 
the summer and fall and meets m> compe- 
tion. Further north, in Tulare County, 
large areas are being planted and a great 
many young groves are coming on. They 
tell me they are planting very heavily 
around that point. I am, told that the 
fruit raised is of a much finer quality, be¬ 
ing more like a Florida orange. I saw 
some of them at San Francisco, that were 
really very good fruit. 
Some of the California handling and 
packing system can be adopted and ap¬ 
plied by the large growers here in this 
state, but I want to tell you that the Cali¬ 
fornia orange will stand treatment that 
would put a Florida orang'e out of busi¬ 
ness. Take for instance, just the mere 
method of putting on the covers. They 
fill their boxes full of oranges level to the 
top, then they put on another layer. It is 
then put under the press and the cover 
brought down and nailed. Suppose we 
tried that with our fruit. The person who 
did so would be soaking wet in five min¬ 
utes from the juice flying from the or¬ 
anges. Yet Mr. Powell who has done so 
much to improve the methods in Cali¬ 
fornia, told me that the top layer did 
not show decay as much as the middle. 
A great many of the packers and ship¬ 
pers think they are handling fruit very 
carefully and they are taking a great deal 
of pains to do so, but there are those 
in Florida who can discount them in the 
handling and grading of oranges. They 
really don’t know what really careful 
handling and packing is. Perhaps they 
do not need to, however, as their fruit 
will stand much rougher handling than 
ours. They have been held up to us as 
models and justly so in many ways and 
they have many methods that we might 
follow to our advantage, but they may 
also learn much from, a careful study of 
Florida methods and practices. 
Some of the packing houses are operat¬ 
ed by the independents, and some, the 
greater number, of course, are under the 
fruit exchange management. There are a 
great many different methods, but in a 
general way they resemble each other. 
In some, the fruit is first washed or 
brushed and then it goes on to the belts 
that carry it along to be graded. After 
grading it goes into the long sizers, thir- 
