I20 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



There are, then, before the economic entomologist and the fruit-grower 

 at the present time these two questions relating to spraying with the 

 arsenites during the blossoming of fruit trees: First, will the poison kill 

 the bees, destroy the young brood and affect the honey ? Second, will 

 it blight the blossoms ? It would not be a difficult task for an experi- 

 ment station, and it is specially within the province of the stations, to 

 set these questions at rest and no longer leave them subject to crude 

 observations or individual opinions. Until this shall be done, there 

 should be an entire cessation from arsenical spraying of fruit trees while 

 in blossom, without the enactment of laws which now seem premature 

 and may prove to be not needed; and even if seeming to be needed, aire 

 still fraught with evil, from the general disregard with which such laws 



are treated. 



Spraying Indispensible to the Fruit-Grower. 



It is unnecessary to say that there should be no restriction of the kind, 

 either optional or compulsory, unless it is shown to be absolutely 

 required. The arsenical spraying of fruit trees has already come to be 

 regarded as almost indispensable to the successful fruit-grower, and day 

 by day its importance is being more fully and widely realized. No longer 

 limited to the control of Codling Moth injury, it is being rapidly extended 

 to other insect attacks. For each week of early spring, I have no doubt 

 but that a calendar could be made wherein each day would stand for the 

 incipiency of attack by some insect pest or fungus disease, to be com- 

 batted in no better way than by arsenical or copper solutions sprayings. 

 What opportunities may therefore be lost for arresting and defeating 

 attack at the most favorable time, and possibly at its only vulnerable 

 stage, if two or three weeks' armistice is accorded to our enemies, during 

 which time the army is recruited a hundred- fold, the infant becomes a 

 veteran, mines are run, pits are dug, tents are built, covered ways are 

 constructed, insidious mycelium threads are permeating leaf and twig, 

 and in many other of the arts of warfare our wily foes, with their rich 

 inheritance of surprising means for self-protection, have planted themselves 

 in strongholds where an entire park of spraying pumps with their baneful 

 poisons will utterly fail of reaching and destroying them. Far better a 

 cessation of hostihties for any six weeks later in the season than for three 

 in early spring. 



Apple Pests to be Combated during the Blossoming Period. 



It has been stated and reiterated many times that the Codling Moth is 

 the only insect against which we need to employ the arsenites in early 

 spring, but this is far from the truth. It is conceded that we can not 



