270 State Horticultural Society. 



crippled as a result. Sorue trees have had their lingers and toes frosted, 

 others their limbs frozen, others their faces injured and still others 

 have been unable to walk since, while a few have been frozen to death. 



iin uncommon series of disastrous years surely we have had to 

 encounter, have we not { This wave of depression and discouragement 

 we feel sure has reached its lowest limit and the wave will surelv rise to 



a. L-' 



the crest once more like the general business and affairs of the country 

 have done. 



The prospects for an apple crop, so bright in June, were blasted 

 before the summer was past. The drouth of 1897, the extreme wet of 

 1898, the Arctic freeze of February, 1899, the superabundance of the 

 insect crop and the fungus diseases, all conspired to destroy the apple 

 crop, and succeeded beyond our most hmnble expectations. 



Many of our orchards are in a precarious condition as a result of all 

 these distressing circumstances and unless they have extraordinary care 

 or extreme good fortune, I fear we shall see theon dying for the next few 

 years. In the southern part of the state the three great foes of the 

 apple grower are the woolly aphis, the root rot and the root knot, at the 

 roots of the trees ; and the three foes to- the fruit are black rot, apple 

 scab, and codling moth; while the worst enemies to the tree and 

 branches are the leaf roller, the skeletonizer, and the twig blight — nine 

 big enemies to fight and fight continually or failure will be our portion. 



The injury by the winter freeze has been the worst for thirty years. 

 Many thousands of trees were killed, other thousands so badly injured 

 that they will never recover or at best linger for a few years. Peach 

 and pear trees that were not too badly injured and were properly pruned 

 back have made a fine growth. The instructions given last spring to 

 prune back severely, perhaps were misconstrued by many in the use of 

 the term "dehorn." This dehorning as understood, by all who have 

 practiced it during the last ten or fifteen years, means to cut back all 

 of one or two, or at most three years' growth, and good results will 

 always follow. 



Many have made the fatal blunder of cutting trees to the ground, 

 ^lany others have made the next, almost as fatal, mistake by cutting back 

 into five or six or ten year wood, leaving practically stump of tree with 

 branches only one or two feet long. While this severe pruniiig Avill 



