370 STATE HdRTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



INCREASE OF INSECT ENEMIES. 



It needs little argument to prove that the enemies of cultivated 

 plants are steadily increasing, and I think it can be easily shown that 

 they will contiaue to increase so long as the conditions, for which we 

 are in large part responsible, remain as they are at present. I do not 

 by any means regard this as a calamity. On the contrary, I look upon 

 the fact that our insect and fungous foes are increasing as direct proof 

 that we are progressing, for, as Professor Bailey has said: " Our ene- 

 mies increase because cultivation induces change of habits in wild 

 organisms; because it presents an ever-increasing variety of food, or 

 host plants; because the food supply is large and in more or less con- 

 tinuous area ; and finally, because the natural equilibrium, or tension, 

 is destroyed." It follows, therefore, that the more we put forth our 

 energies to improve our native plants or to change their habits; the 

 more we endeavor to increase the variety and number of our culti- 

 vated vines, trees and shrubs; the more we extend our orchards, our 

 vineyards and our fields, just so much more do we disturb the equilib- 

 rium in nature, and just so much more must we expect to burden our- 

 selves with the work of maintaining this unstable condition by more 

 or less artificial means. Where an insect or fungus had one chance a 

 hundred years ago to wax strong and spread, it has now a thousand 

 chances, for unbroken orchards and vineyards and millions of nursery 

 trees cover the country where then only wild plants grew. It is but 

 natural, then, that man, seeing the onward march of his enemies, 

 should look about him and wonder how it will all end, and how he, as 

 an individual, is to obtain relief. In many cases he has found a way of 

 doing this by adopting certain more or less empirical methods. Again, 

 with a fuller appreciation of the fundamental principles underlying 

 plant growth, he has learned, partly by intuition, to keep his plants in 

 health, and when he has reached this stage he stands far in advance of 

 his neighbor who waits until his plants are diseased and then begins to 

 look about for a spraying apparatus. — B. T. Galloway in Farmers' Re- 

 view. 



THE SAN JOSE SCALE AND ITS PARASITE. 



The so-called San Jose scale f Asipidiotus perniciosusj which is 

 now carrying terror to the fruit-growers of the East, owes its introduc- 

 tion in this country to a pioneer of California and a former resident of 



