118 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



your calling and not continue to rear up numberless foes to destroy the 

 fruits from your orchards, vineyards, and farms. I have taken this some- 

 what advanced position because I know that more than one horticulturist 

 and nurseryman has had his face turned in the same direction, recog- 

 nizing that the questions that I have brought before you are the coming 

 important ones of his profession. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Morrill: This most excellent paper treats of an enemy that is very 

 insidious; an enemy that gets possession of our trees almost before we 

 know it, and they are the most puzzling things we have to contend with, 

 except, perhaps, the fungi, which are of somewhat similar character, so 

 far as our business is concerned. Now, I hope, as long as war has been 

 declared on these insects and we are all looking for some means of fight- 

 ing them, that you will take up Prof. Webster's papers and discuss them 

 thoron«:h]y. 



Prof. Taft: I would like to have the Professor tell us something about 

 the San Jose scale. 



Prof. Webster: Therearesome things I know about it and some things 

 I don't. I don't know where it came from. We have it in six orchards in 

 Ohio. How many more, I don't know. I know how it is being managed 

 in those orchards and that it will never go any further, because I drop 

 down upon those orchards every few months and go through them before 

 I go to the houses. It is without doubt one of the worst pests that can 

 get into an orchard, and the most difficult to get rid of without destroy- 

 ing the trees. 



The worst infested orchard we have, when I first learned of it, had 

 probably about one hundred affected trees out of, I think, six hundred. 

 That was last December, not quite a year ago. Before spring the owner 

 had cut out seventy-five, I think, and burned them, and the others 

 he had treated with kerosene — clear commercial kerosene, but he didn't 

 do that with my recommendation. I told him probably he had killed the 

 scale, but that I did not kp jw about the trees; but it didn't kill the trees, 

 it does not seem to have done any injury to them whatever. 



Mr. Momll: Pure commercial kerosene oil? 



Prof. Webster: Yes sir. 



Mr. Millard: How did he apply it? 



Prof. Webster: Went over the trees with a paint brush. 



Mr, Morrill: What kind of orchard was it? 



Prof. Webster: Apple — J find them principally on the apple. I can 

 explain that if necessary, and why it has occurred in that way. The 

 owner treated with kerosene, with the idea of grafting into the stump. 

 That is, he would by this means save about 18 inches of the old trunk 

 with root, and he thought he would get a top without delaying bearing 

 more than a yeai or two. ?ome of his trees were so far gone that they 

 died, and others he grafted, as explained. It worked all right, so far as 

 we could see; that is, the grafts grew all right, but there was one ele- 

 ment he didn't take into consideration. That was, the grafts had so 

 much root backing them that they sent up a growth that was very rank 

 and brittle, and the winds would twist them off, almost invariably, so 

 that we decided to adopt another plan. Instead of cutting them off two 



