DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 99 



Annual about 1,100. Daily forecasts are displayed in about 900 post- 

 offices and 2,000 other public places; by rural mail carriers we are 

 reaching about 8,000 farmers and by rural telephone about 5,000. 



Very respectfully, 



C. F. SCHNEIDER, 



Section Director. 

 Grand Rapids, Mich. 

 June 30, 1904. 



REPORT OF STATE INSPECTOR OF NURSERIES AND 



ORCHARDS. 



Hon. C. J. Monroe, President State Board of Agriculture: 



Sir — During the past year in addition to the routine work of inspect- 

 ing the nurseries of the State and attending to the office correspondence, 

 it has been thought advisable to spend considerable time inspecting the 

 orchards in sections where the San Jose scale has appeared and where 

 serious losses have occurred from the attack of "little peach." 



As required by law, all the nurseries in the State and those in other 

 states which were known to have agents in Michigan, were during the 

 early part of July informed of the imjjortance of paying their license 

 fee and filing the usual nursery bond for the year ending July 31, 1904, 

 on or before August 1, 1903. An unusually large number responded 

 promptly, and by the first of August, a majority had complied with the 

 requirements of the law so far as securing a bond was concerned. The 

 work of inspecting the nurseries was then taken up and was practically 

 completed before the first of October, most of those remaining unin- 

 spected at that date, being of small size or consisting of small fruit 

 plants only. 



As it was known that the San Jose scale had appeared in many new 

 sections in the State, it was feared that it might be discovered in a 

 number of the nurseries, but it was found in no new places and, in one 

 of those found to be infested in 1902, no scale was discovered when the 

 nursery was inspected in the fall of 1903. The infested block was dug 

 the previous fall and as there was no other stock near it, it was not a 

 difficult task to eradicate the scale in this nursery. As in previous 

 years, all nursery trees found to be infested were ordered destroyed and 

 the trees remaining in the nurseries were fumigated with hydrocyanic 

 acid gas. In a few cases where the San Jose scale was known to be 

 present within a half mile of the nursery, the owners of the nurseries 

 were requir-ed to fumigate their stock when dug for sale. 



The nursery stock inspected was comparatively free from dangerous 

 insects and more injurious fungous diseases. The crown-gall was quite 

 troublesome in two nurseries and, as is usually the case, was occasion- 

 ally found upon the trees in nearly all of them. As in previous years, 

 the nursery men were required to destroy all trees upon which the gall 

 was found. 



