STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 211 



PREPARING, DRYING, SHIPPING, CANNING. 



Nothing rewards so well as carefully preparing for market. Right here 

 I want to say that there will always he failures among fruit growers, as 

 there are in all other occupations. One man will make money with sheep, 

 and his neighbor with equal chances will lose; one man will succeed with 

 wheat, and another fail; and so one man will succeed with fruit, and his 

 neighbor may fail. Every step, from planting the tree to marketing the 

 fruit, tells upon success or failure, and it becomes important that every 

 step should be right. Generally the man who will take interest enough to 

 plant well, and prune and cultivate well, is the man who will take care of 

 his fruit when it comes. Still, there are some who plant and cultivate and 

 prune well, who do not know what to do with their fruit. If you are pick- 

 ing green fruit, pick it at the right time; put in good shape to be attract- 

 ive to the eye; don't mix good, bad, and indifferent, but sort your fruit, 

 and you may be sure your first-rate packages will bring more alone than 

 all your crop, mixed higgledy-piggledy, and you will have the balance 

 left." 



In drying, do the same. Keep the first-class fruit by itself. In the 

 market, dried fruit that has been first bleached, will bring three to five 

 cents more per pound, and the extra cost .will not be one half a cent per 

 pound. Extra nice fruit, or fruit well put up if not extra, will always sell, 

 while often your mixed of good, bad, and worthless, will not sell at all. 

 Find out what form of packages take best, and adopt them. The package 

 often sells the fruit. Be provident in looking ahead for your market, and 

 making provision for picking your fruit. If you can find a buyer for your 

 green fruit at the orchard, let him have it, unless you can see a clear 

 advantage in handling it yourself. As a rule the canners pay all they can 

 afford. But you should always have it within yourself to take care of 

 your fruit, and this needs no great outlay. By cooperative effort we can 

 always handle our fruit to profit, if by no other way. 



INSECT PESTS. 



I shall not attempt to give you treatment of insect pests in this paper, 

 but shall only give a note of warning, and tell you what you can and 

 ought to do for self-protection. 



There is no great mystery about practical entomology, at least to an ex- 

 tent such as will serve general purposes. You ought to see first that your 

 tree, when you plant it, is not infested. Get yourself a cheap magnifying 

 glass; buy Matthew Cooke's book on insects, injurious and beneficial to 

 fruit, and study it. Ordinarily you will with the aid of your pocket-glass 

 and this book be able to name the insect, 4 and at once can find the remedy 

 in the book. The remedies are inexpensive. You should have a spray 

 pump or syringe and you are equipped. When I hear a man talking 

 about his not being able to rid his orchard of injurious insects, I sometimes 

 think the Lord made a mistake in not making the man the insect and the 

 insect the man. If you watch from the start and apply remedies at once 

 when the pest appears the work is easy. If you find something you can't 

 name, and don't know its habits or history, write to the State Fruit Inspec- 

 tor and send him a specimen bug and he will aid you. Not only watch 

 your own trees, but keep an eye on your neighbor's, and see that he does 

 his duty. He has no right to keep a breeding place to overrun you, and 

 the law will protect you against it. Get your children interested in bug 



