SUMMER MEETING. 83 



iu fruit. It has been settled for some time that the bee is undoubtedly 

 a friend to the bee-grower instead of an eoemy. 



Mr. Howard — I would like to ask Mr. Miller how long the Con- 

 cord will keep if you have it sacked ? 



I have never tried it ; I have seen so few of them ; they always 

 get consumed before I can try them. I can keep the Defiance and 

 Jefferson until after heavy frost and take them in sound and plump in 

 sacks. While we are speaking of sacking, I have tried something 

 simpler than the sacks ; it is to take a piece of paper, according to the 

 size of your grapes, and cut a slit in one side to the middle and then 

 fold this around the grapes ; the paper is to be circular in shape, and 

 by pinning it there will form a kind of canopy. I hope some of you 

 will try it. 



PROFITABLE PEACH GROWING. 



In looking over the program of this meeting sent me some time 

 ago by our Secretary, I was somewhat surprised to find my name con- 

 nected with it, the subject given me being "Profitable Peach Grow- 

 ing." Now, in the outset, I will say my experience in profitable peach 

 growing is very limited and I will be compelled, therefore, to confine 

 my remarks to other phases of this branch of horticultural work. Yet 

 while it is true that the very important requisite, that of profit, has not 

 been experienced to any degree by myself thus far, still I am by no 

 means without hope, for there is a facination about this work which for 

 me is very strong and which spurs me on to increased effort whenever 

 anything of the nature of a drawback appears. 



Anyone with a love for horticultural work, having cultivated the 

 trees and harvested a crop of beautiful Elberta peaches in Missouri, is 

 not easily discouraged. The borers that infest the roots of his trees 

 will be dug out cheerfully. Log and bush heaps will be made in his 

 orchards to be burned, when by careful and frequent nightly examina- 

 tions of his thermometer he finds that his prospects are endangered 

 by frost. More than these he will use every effort to overcome the 

 various fungus enemies, which in their subtle and insidious attacks, 

 threaten to destroy his trees. In one of these, ihe leaf curl, he will, 

 in my opinion, find his greatest trouble. This disease is doing much 

 damage in our orchards at Neosho. In one block containing 900 trees 

 200 have either died or been ruined by it in the last 15 months. 



Trees, to all appearances, in a perfectly healthy condition last fall 

 lire now almost destitute of leaves and dying rapidly; while others 

 are effected on one side or in spots, other portions remain healthy, 



