SPRAYING THE APPLE ORCHARD 61 



there are no other questions or suggestions we will stand adjourned 

 until 9:30 tomorrow morning. 



After listening to two very enjoyable numbers by the Falls City or- 

 chestra, the meeting adjourned until July 22nd, 9:30 A. M. 



WEDNESDAY, July 22, 



9:30 A. M. 



The President: First on our piogram this morning will be a paper 

 by Mr. G. E. Merrell, of the United States Department of Agriculture, on 

 the subject, "Spraying the Nebraska Apple Orchard." 



Spraying the Nebraska Apple Orchard. 



G. E. Merrell, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



The problem of spraying the apple orchard has probably received 

 more attention from the experiment stations, and more discussion and 

 speculation as to its merits by the farmers and fruit growers than 

 any other single subject in the whole domain of Horticulture. A few 

 words of the history of this important practice may not be amiss on this 

 occasion. If we look backward a space of twenty-five or thirty years we 

 find that the art of spraying is still in its infancy, and that it is developing 

 along two different lines on the opposite sides of the Atlantic ocean. About 

 this time, probably in 1878, the introduction of thie downy mildew of the 

 grape, an American disease, into the grape growing districts of south- 

 western Europe, caused the native fruit growers there to experiment with 

 various powders and liquid preparations for the purpose of preventing 

 oir curing this serious imported fungous disease. In the year 1882 the 

 attacks of mildew were very severe and but. few grapes ripened in the 

 infested territory, except some along the highways. The maturity of 

 this highway fruit was due to the following cause. It was the custom 

 of some growers who had vines easily accessible to bad boys and other 

 human marauders to coat these vines with verdigris, thus giving them 

 the appearance of having been poisoned, to scare away the thieves. 

 This year, in the interests of economy, a mixture of milk of lime and 

 copper sulphate had been used instead of verdigris, and to the wonder 

 of the proprietors, the vines, covered with this preparation, were the 

 only ones maturing fruit. This account, is in brief, the history of the 

 discovery of bordeaux mixture. 



A few years previous to these events in France the spread of the 

 Colorado potato beetle and the subsequent discovery in this country of 

 efficacy of arsenical poisons in the control of this native pest, called the 

 attention of some progressive farmers to the possibility of killing the 

 canker worm by the same means. The oldest authentic record of the 



