FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 129 



A Member — Does that kill the nits and eggs? 



Mr. Chatfield — The eggs are deposited in the little buds, and they are 

 smothered nnderneath there — that is the theory. The pear psylla has not 

 made any advance in onr districts since beginning to spray with lime- 

 sulphur. 



Mr. Rose— We have had a little trouble, but we are on sandy soil. 

 I sprayed just at the time they were hatching. I am something like the 

 man bom lilind and did not get his eyes open until he was fifty years of 

 age. Perhaps if we had done that earlier, it would have killed them. 

 We have a pear orchard eighteen years old, Avith 2,000 trees in it, and 

 it has been a good yielder, and it is on sandy soil. 



A Member — What subsoil do you have? 



Mr. Rose — We have some clay — we found it when driving our well, 

 75 feet below the surface. (Laughter.) 



Prof. Green — We have had considerable experience with pear or- 

 chards, and we think the time to spray for the scab that gets on the 

 tree is just as soon as the petals drop. 



A Member — The Kieffer and Bartlett has been named, why is not the 

 Seckel pear named. 



Mr. Rose — It is the standard of excellence, but not the standard in 

 regard to returns in my experience. The Seckel will bear abundantly, 

 but it takes too many of them to make a bushel. However, I have 500 

 Seckel pears, and I get as many per acre as of anything else, and they 

 are on sandy soil. 



A Member — What do you use, Mr. Rose, on that sand to fertilize your 

 pears ? 



Mr. Farrand — That subsoil 75 feet down. (Laughter.) 



Mr. Rose — As a rule we have given the jiear orchard no stable manure 

 of any kind, but we have during the last two or three years given it a 

 1,000 pounds of high grade commercial fertilizer. We do it on account 

 of the cherries, not so much on account of the pears. We always put 

 cover crops on every summer, which is turned under. We sow clover in 

 August in part of this pear orchard where the land is thin, with nothing 

 else, and harrow it in with a steel harrow, and then plow it under one 

 year from that time. We had a great deal of trouble in plowing it 

 under. We did not want to plow our orchards. We did not believe in 

 a ploAved orchard. That orchard was never plowed before in fifteen 

 years. Generally we sowed Canada field peas, buckwheat, sometimes 

 oats. The green aphis was quite a menace to our pea crop. 



Mr. Farrand — On this proposition of profit, Mr. Chatfield has simply 

 given you the varieties that brought the most profit to him; Mr. Rose 

 has given what was profitable to him. In planting an orchard that is 

 the proposition that is up to each of us — we must plant the variety or 

 varieties that will bring us the most profit. 



Mr. Munson — I had an order for Seckel pears, for canning purposes, 

 and I shipped them, and immediately I got a letter back complaining 

 of them, saying that they were so small that with them their size was 

 against them. 



Mr. Rose — Of course there is a difl'erence as to where you market your 

 pears. If you had sent them to Pittsburg or some other point in the 

 east where they are known and appreciated, it would have been different. 

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