Winter Mcctinsr. 2i)5 



"Cs 



the men clumped in some lime when I could not be there — simply dumped 

 in enough lime to make what he thought ought to be there. Now, of 

 course, that is a thing that cannot be condemned too strongly. If you are 

 going to make the mixture you have got to do it according to the formula, 

 or not at all, and if a man attempts to do spraying without measuring the 

 different ingredients, and who will say that this barrel holds 35 gal- 

 lons, when it might hold 40 gallons, will not make a success of the 

 spraying operation. 



What happened here is something we could not foretell. I want to 

 say those apples I am passing around were sprayed about ten times. 

 They were sprayed about every three or four weeks, from the very first 

 appearance of the apple until the end of the sason ; and during- the summer, 

 during that tremendous heat, something came, which we could not have 

 foretold, namely, the chemical action which was introduced in that fruit 

 on account of that extreme heat. The chemical action which takes place 

 upon blue stone or anything, was entirely too hard on fruits this summer, 

 and the lesson we can learn from that is to take into consideration the 

 seasons in which we are working. Nothing can be made absolutely ac- 

 cording- to a formula. You can't harvest the apples on the 15th of vSep- 

 tember every year. You have to harvest them when the apples are ripe, 

 and the same way you can't apply a cast-iron rule to the spraying or 

 cultivating of anything. You have got to use a little independent judg- 

 ment in the use of the process. The same will be true with the spraying, 

 and the only trouble with us we didn't know what the relation between 

 heat and spraying was so as to handle it, and the chances are that we will 

 not have a summer like this for many years, and the next year we will 

 spray with the same formula, and I have no doubt the results will be as 

 good in spraying for Bitter Rot and the Scab. 



For the sake of those that do spray each year, I will say that Mis- 

 souri is not the only State. We conducted our experiments in six differ- 

 ent states ; we tried it in Illinois, in West Virginia, in Virginia and Mary- 

 land, but in every one of those states we got potato apples. 



As to the variety of fruits attacked, we found that almost without 

 exception the Ben Davis apple was one that was burned the worst, and 

 the Jonathans were burned very little, and the Willow Twig practically 

 not at all, in Illinois, and the same thing held true in Virginia. 



Now, that indicated evidently something in the nature of the fruit, 

 which I do not believe has anything to do with the thickness or thinness 

 of the skin. The Ben Davis is a thick skinned apple. There is some- 

 thing evidently in the susceptibility of the Ben Davis that made it more 

 susceptible to this. It is in the variety and the nature of the fruit, conse- 

 quently you can't blame the Ben Davis apple for it, and you can't blame 



