FLORIDA .STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
07 
sprays killed close to ioo per cent. Rec¬ 
ognizing the inferiority of the V. I. spray, 
as at present manufactured, the agent of 
the Cooper Nephews & Co. has verbally 
agreed to remove the spray from the 
market until it has been perfected. 
We are not so much in need of a good 
spray, of which there are a number, as 
we are in need of thorough spraying. It 
is money thrown away if the work is done 
carelessly. For instance, last winter two 
groves here were sprayed with an effec¬ 
tive insecticide, but the work was done 
in such a half-hearted manner that only 
about 50 per cent, of the fly was killed. 
Consequently, this spring the fly is very 
abundant and the foliage blackening, and 
it is already evident that the trees will 
be as black as last season. Naturally, the 
owner feels that spraying is a failure be¬ 
cause he sees that his money has been 
thrown away. He does not realize that 
personal supervision together with a little 
educational work with the sprayers and 
an outfit more in keeping with the size of 
his trees, would have produced far differ¬ 
ent results. 
Mr. Skinner: I want to stand up for 
the work the Government people are 
doing. They have gone into this whitefly 
proposition pretty thoroughly. I have 
spent, I suppose, $5,000 in fighting the 
whitefly and if I know anything I ought 
to know a little about it. I thought a 
year ago that spraying was the thing, but 
now I am not so sure of it. In some in¬ 
stances those who have sprayed their 
groves thoroughly have more whitefly 
than those who have not sprayed their 
groves at all, and that with groves right 
side by side. I can show you groves that 
have never been sprayed that two years 
ago were just a miass of black pollution 
that today are as clean as any groves you 
every saw, and that without the introduc¬ 
tion of any fungus, except, perhaps, the 
white-fringed fungus that is native to 
the west coast. Of course, eventually we 
will find the solution of the problem, but 
I am free to confess that I think we are 
still working in the dark. 
Mr. Temple: I, too, would like to say 
a little something about the whitefly prop¬ 
osition. For more than two years, I gave 
that my hardest study. I simply ate, drank, 
slept and dreamed “white fly.” I spray¬ 
ed, I fumigated, I applied fungus, I have 
done everything that anybody would rec¬ 
ommend. I fumigated one of my groves 
and had it done in the most thorough 
manner possible; so thoroughly that I 
killed nearly all that year’s crop. That 
was in February, and I had more smut 
in November than I had in February. In 
other sections of my grove where I have 
sprayed, the result has been reasonably 
satisfactory. 
With the fungi, I think I have gotten 
the best all around results. I firmly be¬ 
lieve that if you apply your fungus thor¬ 
oughly, steadily, intelligently, that once 
in three years you will get a fairly clean 
crop. 
But, gentlemen, if the best we can hope 
for is a clean grove once in three years, 
I would take an axe and cut down all my 
orange trees and plant the groves to 
peaches, which may be profitable, or cam¬ 
phor trees, which are beautiful. The or¬ 
ange industry is not worth a snap of 
your finger if we are going to depend on 
what we know to get rid of the whitefly. 
