558 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



and get better and more healthful trees, so the scale is a benefit to 

 us after all, and if we don't profit by it, I hope we will get some- 

 thing — shall I say worse? — no, better than the San Jos^ Scale to 

 stimulate us to do our full duty by our trees. Of course, we have 

 the codling moth and the other moths and growths, but in fighting 

 the scale, you fight them, too, and to see their effects, you have to 

 go to market and see the fruit offered there. We go to market, and 

 see some remarkable fi-uit offered there and then we go home, and look 

 over our own fruit to see whether it is as good as it ought to 

 be. The unnamable apple that w^e spoke of this afternoon sells 

 because it looks well, and shows up beautifully. The people of this 

 country' are becoming more and more inclined to buy beautiful 

 things. They are beginning to go to market with a few dollars to 

 buy their supplies and to set aside ten cents or a quarter of that 

 for something wherewith to decorate their tables, and feed their 

 sense of beauty, and they are finding that they get the same benefit 

 from |1.75 worth of food, and 25 cents worth of beautiful fruits and 

 flowers as they w^ould get from |2 worth of ^'grub." Now, beauti- 

 ful fruits on the table are just as attractive as beautiful flowers, 

 and if our fruit growers will just realize that if they grow beau- 

 tiful as well as good fruits they will not only send actual food into 

 the homes of the consumers, but something that will appeal to their 

 sense of the beautiful as well. 



Then we have the trouble of winter and spring freezing follow- 

 ing warm weather; you can overcome that in a measure by select- 

 ing your hillside and hill tops for j^our orchards, where the tem- 

 perature is from five to eight degrees higher than it is in the low- 

 lands in times of greatest drop in temperature. This question of 

 extreme frost is one of the most serious things we are up against. 

 These frosts come upon us from. year to year, often at the time the 

 buds are pretty well swollen, and often do serious damage. Those 

 of you who have a hillside orchard are more fortunateh' situated 

 with regard to frost than those whose orchards are down in the 

 valley. For the man in the valley, the best thing he can do is to 

 see that his tree is in a good, healthy condition, protected by a 

 good, healthy cover crop; it will stand more freezing than where 

 ground is not covered. The cover crop will help to keep back the 

 buds, and in this way be some slight protection against freezing. 

 The question of spring frosts at blooming time is to my mind one of 

 the most serious general propositions we are up against in the Cen- 

 tral States in latitude of Pennsylvania and a little south, and the 

 worst of it is, we have it regularly. Like the widower who was 

 about to be married the fourth time to a widow and sent word to his 

 friends to come to the wedding, it was not going to be an amateur 

 performance, this spring frost matter is not an amateur performance, 

 but a regular thing; it comes with distressing regularity, and the only 

 thing we can do to guard against it is to select our location very 

 carefully, propagate good, healthy wood, spray, cultivate and use 

 cover crop. A singular thing about it is, that it may freeze all the 

 trees in your orchard, while half a mile up or down the road your 

 neighbors' orchard remains unscathed. I have known this to hap- 

 pen in ,my own immediate neighborhood, 50 feet extra elevation 

 often saving the crop. 



