132 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



do SO by competition". But two years ago we found arsenate 

 of lead running all the way from 8% to 20% arsenic. Now it 

 is difficult for me to advise a fruit grower how much arsenate 

 of lead to use when it varies in that sort of way. The same 

 thing is true of fungicides. Your own Maine Station has got- 

 ten out a bulletin in which they show the value of various pre- 

 pared Bordeaux mixtures, and we find the copper sulphate in 

 those Bordeaux mixtures runs all the way, as I remember it, 

 from 26% to 51% in the dry mixtures and in the wet mixtures 

 from 8% to 76%. It is very difficult to advise a man how to 

 use such a prepared compound. Of course the directions on 

 the package tell how to use it; but your Station has also shown 

 that these prepared mixtures are exceedingly expensive for a 

 man to use on a large scale. 



Now there is a market and a place for these prepared fungi- 

 cides and for a great many of the insecticides which we might 

 call sort of proprietary compounds — they are not standard com- 

 pounds like Paris green and arsenate of lead — but if we are 

 going to use them, we want to know what is in them ; we want 

 to know what we are buying, and get what we are paying for. 

 That is a thing upon which we are all agreed. By having 

 national legislation in this • matter we can do away with the 

 necessity for legislation in almost all states, because these insect- 

 icides and fungicides are manufactured in three or four states. 

 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio manufacture, 

 I presume, nine-tenths of all the insecticides and fungicides 

 used in this country. The great bulk is made right around New 

 York state. It seems entirely unnecessary for every state to 

 have a law and provide a chemist, when by having it put in one 

 bill in Washington, it will provide for the whole country, com- 

 ing into interstate commerce. This will be a great benefit to 

 the manufacturers. They see that it is to their advantage in 

 that way. 



Now there are various state laws. New York enacted a law 

 very drastic, much more severe than the proposed national law. 

 Texas has a very peculiar law as regards insecticides. The 

 manufacturers have to put a label on every package, which they 

 have to buy from the state chemist and it costs them half a cent 

 a label, no matter if the package is only worth five cents. It is 

 a manifest injustice to the manufacturer. It is an undue bur- 



