STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 133 



the trees. The efficacy of spraying to destroy the canker-worm 

 is unquestioned. 



With the more extended use of poisons to prevent the ravages 

 of the codling-moth, we find more uncertainty as to their effect. 

 And this is necessarily so from the nature of the enemy we are 

 fighting; its work is done before we know, for a certainty, that 

 it is on hand, ready for business, although it must be confessed 

 that the " exceptions" are only numerous enough to " prove the 

 rule" and it generally is, with us, on time. 



My own experience in fighting the apple-worm has been con- 

 fined to the past two seasons, and from this short experience, I 

 could keep very close to the facts, and still land myself on either 

 side of the fence I wished. 



To illustrate: in 1888 I sprayed the trees in three orchards, all 

 of them three and some four times at intervals of about a week. 

 Not a very long time elapsed, after we had finished, until I heard 

 that my men were saying that I had sprayed my trees so much 

 as to injure them, and as a consequence the apples were all drop- 

 ping off. 



This was true to the extent that in places the leaves were some- 

 what scorched, and in one orchard of Willow Twigs the apples 

 did nearly all drop off. Now, if this one orchard had been the 

 extent of my operations, I could hardly have escaped ascribing 

 the spraying as the cause of the mischief, but when I looked 

 around and found the same variety in an adjoining orchard, that 

 had the same treatment, or a little more of it, loaded with the 

 fairest fruit they had produced in years, I concluded I must look 

 elsewhere for the causes and could not land on the non-spraying 

 side of the fence just yet, and denounce spraying as only an 

 in jury to trees. 



As the season advanced, I found my apples generally fair, 

 smooth and with scarcely any wormy ones among them. This, 

 certainly, looked encouraging, and spraying seemed to be a 

 success. But one thing rather bothered me; an orchard which 

 we did not spray at all, seemed to be almost as free from worms 

 as the others, and as apples came into market and to the cider- 

 mill, the general remark was " no wormy apples this year," and 

 these apples came from persons who did not spray — many of 

 them had, probably, never heard of such a thing — and if they 

 saw the work in operation would inquire if we were sprinkling 

 the trees because it was so dry and the trees needed watering ! 

 Clearly 1 was still astride the fence, and not ready to drop on the 

 other side and call spraying a perfect success, without further 

 investigation. 



|H In 1889, owing to rainy weather, we were late in commencing 

 operations and sprayed our orchards only twice, and portions but 

 once. The results seemed as diverse as the previous season. In 

 common with many other sections of the State a large propor- 



