STATE POMOI^OGICAL SOCIETY. 1 23 



culture I do not necessarily mean ploughing the orchard every 

 spring and using the harrow and keeping the ground clean and 

 free from growth of any kind until the fall and letting the or- 

 chard go into winter in bare soil. But certainly for the first 

 part of the season the orchard should be ploughed and har- 

 rowed a few times, — at least those orchards should where these 

 pests are doing very much damage. 



A few weeks ago, about the middle of September, a number 

 of orchard growers wanted me to look at some of their trees, 

 and tell them what was the matter with the fruit. We found 

 that practically all the trouble was the trouble that was illus- 

 trated by this Northern Spy apple that you just had before you. 

 As Prof. Bonus has said, those apples have all the appearance of 

 being infested with the railroad worms. It is possible, how- 

 ever, that it may be another species of a closely related insect 

 that is troubling them. But whether it is the apple maggot, or 

 the curculio. or another closely related pest, the remedy is pre- 

 cisely the same. It is clean orchard culture. Most fortunately 

 indeed in this trip a few weeks ago that I mentioned, absolutely 

 clean culture had been practiced in the orchard that I went into, 

 this season and also the season before — an orchard almost with- 

 in your own city limits. And that orchard, surrounded by other 

 orchards of the same varieties that were badly infested with this 

 trouble, was almost practically free from it. Perhaps five per 

 cent, perhaps in the case of trees near the other orchards ten 

 or even fifteen per cent of the apples upon those trees were 

 infested with this trouble, but there is a great difference between 

 90% or 95% sound fruit and 90% or 95% blemished fruit. So 

 whatever that particular species may eventually be found to 

 be. that is causing this trouble in our Northern Spies and some 

 of our other varieties, that remed}' seems to be the one which 

 will do the work. 



There is another thing in connection with orchard sanitation 

 that should be mentioned. A great many of our orchards are 

 not set in block form. The trees are scattered along stone walls 

 or along fences in such a position that they are not only difficult 

 to spray but it is almost impossible to cultivate close to them. 

 Perhaps we cannot get within four or five feet on either side. 

 Under such circumstances, if the railroad worm or the apple 

 curculio gets into our fruit w^e have a very difticult task to get 



