104 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Wright: The dewberry, as I have seen it, is sour like some of the 

 blackberries, if picked before being rij^e. They are grown in our location 

 to some extent, and when ripe, as the}^ should be, they are very sweet, 

 but there is not a strong blackberry flavor to them. 



Mr. Reid : Mr. Henry Hawley of Ganges has a row or two of them for 

 family use. He sets stakes and stretches two wires to each row, leaving 

 a space between of about a foot, and the bushes are sheared off at a 

 height of about two feet. He said he got a large crop from them, and 

 there was evidence of that from the old calyxes still clinging to the 

 bushes. He did not pay much attention to them, having planted them for 

 his own use, and I think they were in sod, but he said he got large crops. 

 They come early and sell well. 



Mr. Rork: After they are sweet, can you ship them? 



A. I don't know. All I know anything about are sold in the home 

 market, and are easily disposed of. They are rather delicate in texture. 



Mr. Rork: With us, when they are ripe enough to be good, we can 

 not ship them far. 



What is Mr. Gurnerfs method of destroying curculio? 



Mr. Gurnej-: I hardly dare open that subject. Of course there are 

 many growers who think there is nothing like spraying to kill curculio. 

 I don't think it does any good. I have 600 or 700 trees. I have a sheet 

 put on a frame, like a wooden quilting frame, and that is on very light 

 wooden wheels. We take a row^ of twenty' trees at a time, and as soon as 

 the plums get to be as large as wheat kernels we jar the trees. We tap 

 each limb, it does not hurt the tree, and when we get to the end of the 

 row we kill the curculio. My method is to commence early and go at 

 it every day, until we don't get any more. We wait four or five days 

 and go at it again. There are may other methods, but the only way I have 

 ever succeeded is to kill them, and I have had from 700 to 1,000 bushels 

 of fruit, and not a stung plum among them, every year. Going at it in a 

 systematic manner, five or six cents per tree, it is said, will cover the 

 cost of killing every curculio. With the vigilant fruitgrower, the cur- 

 culio is an advantage; because, if we did not have the curculio, there 

 would be so many plums raised they would not be worth five cents per 

 bushel. Another thing that I have discovered, and I have practiced it 

 every Saturdaj- we pick up every plum that falls from the trees, and 

 every one that we discover is stung, and burn them. By doing that we 

 kill the worm that otherwise would go into the ground, and every year 

 the curculio grow less. 



Mr. Monroe: My understanding is that in western New York they 

 decided to resort to jarring. 



Mr. Morrill : Weren't you in the hotel that evening, at Rochester, that 

 we had a division of the house? I don't want to open up a profitless 

 discussion. I had asked a question at the convention down there, and 

 Mr. Willard took it up very sharply. I asked the question, "Do you people 

 in western New York control the curculio by spraying?" and Mr. Wil- 

 lard took it up very quickly, and intimated that he thought that I was too 

 intelligent a man to ask such a quesion, that any man who understood 

 the habits of the curculio, would know that it was absolutely impos- 

 sible. That was pretty good, as far as it went, but I reminded him of 

 a fact which he knew, that the people of Oceana county disagreed on 



