DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 139 



loss can be greatly reduced if all stocks and buds are fumigated and 

 care is taken to use new land, or rather land upon which apples have 

 never been grown, or at least not within five or six years. 



SAN JOSE SCALE IN ORCHARDS. 



Many of the old and neglected orchards in the southern half of the 

 state are showing the work of the San Jose scale, but as most of the 

 trees are practically worthless and as, under the conditions, it will be 

 well-nigh impossible to sav^e them by spraying, the law has not been in- 

 voked, except in cases where they are in the vicinity of nurseries or 

 of orchards which the owners wish to save. 



Many of the trees are growing in locations where at best they can- 

 not be made profitable, and comparatively few of the older trees are 

 of varieties that are desirable for commercial pui'poses. They are so 

 full of water sprouts and dead branches that they cannot be effectualh' 

 sprayed and a great majority of the attempts would result in failure. 

 In many cases where men have been ordered to spray their treas, the 

 results have shown that it was done in a perfunctory manner. To en- 

 sure the proper spraying of all of the infested trees would require an 

 army of men and then in a majority of cases it would hardly be worth 

 the efi'ort, as satisfactory results would not be obtained unless the trees 

 were thoroughly pruned and the spraying kept up during the season. 

 The average farmer does not care enough for his orchard, or have snffi 

 cient faith in the virtue of spraying to do the work properly, even 

 though he had the time and could secure a suitable outfit. 



COMMERCIAL SPRAYING. 



One of the greatest helps in fighting the ?5an Jose scale and improving 

 the condition of Michigan orchards would be to have one or more men 

 in each neigliborhood who would purchase power spraying outfits and 

 spray the orchards of their neighbors. Many farmers have sufficient 

 faith in spraying to be willing to pay a fair price to get their trees 

 s[>i'ayed. but they do not have the time and do not wish to go to th«i 

 expense of purchasing an outfit, and the parties who take up the work 

 would find it very remunerative for from three to five months in the 

 year. 



DISTRIBUTION OP THE SCALE. 



While the S^an Jose scale is being gradually distributed in the more 

 southera counties it does not work northward very fast. There is 

 very little north of a line drawn from Ithaca to Ludington. In former 

 years it was found upou single trees near Frankfort and Ben- 

 zonia, and this season a number of trees in Mason and Manistee counties 

 have been found to be infested but the fact that it is spreading north- 

 ward so slowly would imply that although it may appear it is not likely 

 to be as troublesome as in the more southern counties. 



THE RESULTS ARE ENCOURAGING. 



Many farmers whose orchards have been infested have found the San 

 Jose scale to be a blessing in disguise, as they have had little difficulty 



