I. The Spraying of Trees. 



•"^ ^ PRAYING has now come to be an established part of the 

 ^ work of fruit-growing. With all that has been written 



>^ upon the subject^ the fruit-grower should now be compe- 

 /\ tent to perform the ordinary spraying of his trees without 

 / I further advice. It is not my purpose, therefore, to enter 

 \_y into any detail respecting the general methods of spraying, 

 but rather to set down some disconnected hints and obser- 

 vations which have suggested themselves to me in a somewhat 

 extensive inquiry into the conditions of fruit-growing in western 

 New York, and which appear to have received only incidental or 

 minor attention from writers upon spraying. 



1. Spraying is only one of the requisites to success in fruit- 

 raising. — Spraying has come into use so quickly, and so much of 

 the attention of teachers and experiments has been given to it, that 

 many people have come to look upon it as the means of salvation of 

 our orchards. If spraying is to have the effect of obscuring or 

 depreciating the importance of good fertilizing, then it might better 

 never have come into being. Trees must grow before they can 

 bear, and this growth depends upon food and proper conditions of 

 soil, more than it does upon the accident of immunity from insects 

 and fungi. There are four fundamental operations upon which all 

 permanent success in most kinds of orchard culture depend, and I 

 think that their importance lies in the order in which I name them, 

 — tillage, fertilizing, pruning, spraying. Spraying is the last to be 

 understood, but this fact should not obscure the importance of the 

 other three. 



2. Spraying is an insurance. — There are always elements of risk 

 in the growing of fruit. The chief of these is frost, a difficulty 

 which will never be completely under our control. The second 

 great element of risk is the injury wrought by insects and fungi, 

 and the greater part of this injury can be averted by the sprays. 

 Now, it is impossible to foretell by any considerable length of time, 

 if any or all of the difficulties which are liable to harass the fruit- 



