STATE HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 89 



gTub or perfect state, then shall we be able to raise fruit free from its injuries. Our 

 experiments should all tend in the direction of improving the methods of destroying 

 the grub, and of jarring down and killing the beetle. In fact, the jarring of the trees 

 and killing of the little rascals must henceforth be considered as part and parcel of 

 stone-fruit culture. You may argue, and with reason, that, with the utmost dili- 

 gence, you can never succeed in entirely subduing this enemy, for it will breed in the 

 forest, will in some few cases perfect in the fruit that hangs on the tree, and will come 

 in upon you from your neighboi's : — granted. In like manner, you may cultivate your 

 land year after year, so that not a single weed shall ever go to seed upon it, and yet 

 you can never entirely subdue the weeds. But would you therefore cease to cultivate, 

 and let the weeds overrun you? It is useless to seek for good without evil, and the 

 man who wishes to raise stone-fruit without fighting the Curculio ought to read Henry 

 "Ward Keccher's advice to him who wanted an easy place. 



The more united the eflbrt to fight the Curculio, the less work will there be for 

 each; but even where one determined man is surrounded by negligent and slovenly 

 neighbors, he will be rewarded for his elTorts. If this Society could only devise some 

 means to insure concerted action in this respect among its own members, a great point 

 would be gained. The negligent fruit-grower can not be brought to duty by legisla- 

 tive means, but might not this Society, by resolution, make it obligatory on its mem- 

 bers to fight Curi'Ulio, if they grow stone-fruit, by voting itself plenary power to fine 

 such members as prove recusant? At all events, as we were advised last winter by 

 Ml-. L. C. Francis, in his excellent essay on the Plum, let us fight it out on the jarring 

 line, if it takes all summer, and it will take all summer, for the trees should be 

 jari'ed regularly, from the time the fruit is set until it is ripe. 



I have little patience with those persons who claim that fruit cannot be protected 

 from the Curculio by the jarring process; or that it will not pay to carry on the busi- 

 ness when this work is necessary. As a general rule, such persons were never guilty 

 of jarring a tree, or, if they were, they did not pursue the process systematically. 

 All who properly pursue it for a number of years are successful. Judge Brown, Dr. 

 Hull, and many other members of this Society, can attest the truth of this assertion. 

 Dr. Trimble, of New Jersey, never once failed to obtain a good crop of plums, 

 apricots and nectarines for ten successive years, though his more neglectful neighbors 

 could not succeed. Ellwanger & Barry, of Rochester, N. Y., J. J. Thomas, of Union 

 Springs, N. Y. , and a host of prominent Eastern fruit-growers whom I might men- 

 tion, all testify to its efficacy and success, when followed up year by year, and as to the 

 cost, Mr. Parker Earle, of South Pass, in an able article in a recent number of the 

 Rural Mw Yorker, demonstrated by the actual figures of those who had kept an exact 

 account of the labor used, that it costs a trifle less than eight cents per tree to run one of 

 Dr. Hull's machines during the Curculio season! No one will claim that the crop is 

 not worth saving at ten times such a cost I 



NATURAL REMEDIES. 



Dr. Trimble has lately communicated to me the fact that he has discovered a true 

 parasite upon the larva of the Curculio. The sooner it makes its "appearance in the 

 West the better, for no such parasite has ever been detected here yet. It was well 

 known that ants destroyed the grubs as they left the fruit to enter the ground, but up- 



