104 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Wednesday Affernoon Session. 



First to engage the attention of the society upon the opening of its fourth 

 session, AYednesday afternoon, was the annual election of officers. 



For president, the secretary was instructed, by a unanimous rising vote, 

 to cast the ])allot of all for T. T. Lyon of South Haven. It was done, 

 applause accompanying. 



Messrs. C. J. Monroe and L. D. Watkins were appointed tellers and a 

 ballot taken for secretary, with resiilt that Edwy C. Reid received every 

 vote cast. 



L. W. Pearsall was unanimously re-elected treasurer, the secretary cast- 

 ing the ballot. 



By the same means, R. Morrill of Benton Harl)or was chosen member of 

 the executive board in place of W. A. Brown of the same place, resigned. 



The other vacancies on the board (the terms of W. K. Gibson of Jackson 

 and H. W. Davis of Lapeer expiring) were filled by election of L. D. Wat- 

 kins of Manchester and Prof. L. R. Taft of the Agricultural college. 



Chas. W. Garfield was chosen vice-president. 



A telegram of greeting was received from the Missouri State Horticul- 

 tural society, in session at Lebanon, and by direction of the meeting an 

 answer was retitrned by the secretary. 



ARSENICAL SPRAYING. 



Taking up the subject of arsenical spraying, the society listened to the 

 following paper on the subject by Prof. A. B. Cordley of Michigan Agri- 

 cultural college: 



"The plum curculio can be successfully combated by spraying with 

 arsenites. Until the last few years entomologists have maintained that 

 this was impossible, and, from what was known of the life history of the 

 curculio, it seemed that the statement could not be denied. It was argued 

 that as the female curculio placed her egg within the fruit, the larvae, when 

 hatched, is beyond the reach of poisons, and no account was taken of the 

 fact that the mature insect is a leaf -eating beetle and can consequently be 

 poisoned. Even Achilles had one vulnerable point. The curculio could 

 not hope to be less susceptible. 



"Horticulturists, however, having secured such satisfactory results in 

 destroying the codlin larvse, with the arsenites, came to the conclusion that 

 equally good results could be obtained by spraying for the curculio. The 

 results have shown that this supposition was not entirely unfounded. 



EXPERIMENTS AT MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



" For the last two years, under the direction of Prof. Cook, I have con- 

 ducted experiments to determine the value of arsenites in this warfare; 

 but, owing to the limited facilities in the shape of bearing peach and plum 

 trees at the college, have failed to demonstrate to my entire satisfaction 

 many points of interest. Two years ago we sprayed both cherry and plum 

 trees three times — June 6, June 12, and June 20. We used London 

 purple, one pound to one hundred gallons of water. The result was that 

 none of the cherries and but few of the plums were stung, and I think 

 most of these were stung before the first application, or at least before the 



