FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
99 
ty-tvvo feet long, most of them. In some 
of the houses they use an electric sizer 
where the oranges are carried along on a 
belt until a certain size will trip a certain 
finger which causes it to be kicked off the 
belt into the packing bins. The fruit of 
California is all sized by the smallest 
diameter. Our fruit needs to be sized by 
the largest. Therefore, we have to have 
a different system, of sizing than they 
have there. They have a box-making and 
nailing machine that will nail from 1,200 
to 2,400 boxes a day. The machine turns 
them off very rapidly. One man to at¬ 
tend the machine can turn out 1,200 com¬ 
plete boxes or more; two men about 
2,400 boxes a day. Their boxes are made 
with two pieces on each side and this ma¬ 
chine turns them off complete. They use 
a fancy label that they paste on the head 
of the box, as you probably all know. 
Quite a number of packers of the state 
told me that they wish that they had nev¬ 
er been adopted, but still they look very 
pretty and they have a very great variety 
of designs. 
Instead of grading by number, they 
grade by brand and have a different 
brand' for each quality as put up. There 
is one packing house at Riverside that 
now stamps a little tag right onto the 
orange. When you unwrap the orange, 
there is a little elephant that stays right 
with the orange until it is eaten. The 
orange never loses its identity. Pre-cool¬ 
ing before shipping is being carefully 
tested there with very satisfactory results. 
The marketing system was explained at 
our last meeting. I will not attempt to give 
you that now, because I think most of 
you have had it through what Dr. In¬ 
man has said. 
Question—How far apart are the trees 
planted in the old groves and the new 
ones, and about what is the average crop ' J 
Mr. Hart—Well, the trees are planted 
at various distances as in this state and I 
think they will average about the same 
distance apart as on our hammock lands. 
I don’t think many of them are as far 
apart as in some groves on the pine land 
here. Those very large trees I spoke of 
covered only two acres and were much 
larger than any others I saw. I don’t 
know what their yield was in boxes but 
four, five and six boxes to the tree seems, 
to be about the average judging from 
what we could learn there. 
Ouestion—Tell us about the cleaning 
system: 
Mr. Hart—Most of the oranges are 
washed or brushed, although some are 
not. Where the fruit is clean and they can 
avoid it, many neither wash or brush it, 
while in other groves, all the fruit is 
washed. Some of it is run through a so¬ 
lution of permanganate of potash to kill 
all germs, but Mr. Powell told me that 
no chemical could be used that would 
kill the spores of blue mould. 
Dr. Richardson—Is that used in such 
strength as to color the orange any? It 
is one of the active discolorants of water 
and possibly it may color the fruit. 
Mr. Hart—No, I don’t think you can 
discover any effect of that kind on the 
orange. 
Dr. Richardson—It is used for the pur¬ 
pose of destroying germs, possibly. It is 
one of the best germicides known. 
Mr. Gillette—How does the quality of 
their Tardiff orange compare with ours? 
Mr. Hart—It is a thicker skinned 1 
fruit, and a darker red, but is not as 
