The Whitefly Investigations 
Dr. E. W. Berger. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
The whitefly investigations have now 
been in progress for nearly four years. 
It is the purpose this evening to review 
the general results in a few words and to 
state briefly the recommendations for 
whitefly control as they apply under va¬ 
rious conditions and localities. 
Previous investigators of the whitefly 
worked along about the same lines that 
the investigators during the past four 
years have worked. They sprayed, found 
and studied some of the fungus diseases, 
fumigated and gave the best advice war¬ 
ranted by the investigations. We, in¬ 
cluding the representatives of the Bureau 
of Entomology with headquarters at Or¬ 
lando, and the several members of the 
State Experiment Station, have taken up 
the work where our predecessors left it 
off; and while their work would natural¬ 
ly be along more general lines, it has fall¬ 
en to us to continue the work more ex¬ 
tensively in special directions. Thus 
while Dr. H. J. Webber, back in the 90’s, 
sprayed and observed the work of the red 
and brown fungi, and Professor Gossard 
later fumigated, it fell to the lot of Dr. 
Morrill and his associates at Orlando, 
Fla., to make fumigation so simple that 
any one who can weigh and measure and 
count feet can fumigate. The Experi¬ 
ment Station at the same time has found 
several more fungus diseases, namely the 
yellow fungus ( Aschersonla flavo-citrina) 
the cinnamon fungus ( Verticillium het- 
erocladum ,) and the white fringe fungus 
(Microcera sp.), and has perfected the 
spore-spraying method of introducing and 
spreading fungus. It has refined spray¬ 
ing by directing attention to its peculiar 
applicability against the younger whitefly 
larvae, and has found that the so-called 
whitefly consists of two species, namely, 
the white-winged species ( Aleyrodes cit- 
ri), and the newly discovered cloudy- 
winged species (A. nubifera). These are 
all steps in advance, but who knows that 
other investigators coming after us may 
not carry the investigations as much far¬ 
ther as we believe that we have carried 
them beyond our predecessors. We come 
and look and see a few things clearly, 
but how many important points we may 
not see! 
The speaker is of the opinion that the 
higher points of the whitefly investiga¬ 
tions have been reached except perhaps 
the one of finding more of its natural en¬ 
emies in the Orient or elsewhere. It is, 
of course, difficult to know what the out- 
