208 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



one-third to nearly one-half of the crop was ruined by this 

 insect. It does its work early in the season, and does not 

 keep it up as late as the cabbage maggot. The dryer portions 

 of the field seem to suffer worse than the moist part. It 

 seems to stop work along in June or early in July, and not much 

 injury results after that. Some growers say that they can 

 combat it, some with kerosene, and some with various other 

 remedies of that kind. Our experiments show that those 

 things are almost useless in fighting the maggot. 



The pear scylla has also been abundant on many trees. I 

 think, however, I can say it was much less abundant on trees 

 sprayed with the mixture which kills the San Jose scale. At 

 least my observation leads me to make this statement. This 

 may not be generally true, and yet it is quite probable that 

 spraying, especially late in the season, would kill this insect, 

 because the eggs left on the twigs through the winter hatch 

 very early. They hatch usually before the leaves come out, 

 and so spraying with the lime and sulphur mixture just before 

 the leaves appear would undoubtedly kill many of these in- 

 sects. Of course we did considerable spraying work to kill 

 the San Jose scale. Over four thousand trees were subjected 

 to treatment in our experiments in different localities in the 

 state. The lime and sulphur mixtures were used chiefly, that 

 being prepared for fifteen different farmers. The boiled Hme 

 and sulphur mixture, containing from fourteen to twenty pounds 

 of lime, fourteen of sulphur, and forty gallons of water, has 

 given as good results as anything we have tried, although 

 some of the experiments, which were made up without boil- 

 ing, were almost as good. A mixture which has been made, 

 containing lime, sulphur, and caustic soda, gave fair results. 

 A mixture which we made up ourselves, containing lime and 

 sulphide of sulphur or soda, also gave excellent results. These 

 were both prepared without boiling, simply weighing the ma- 

 terial to see that the proportions were correct. After the ma- 

 terial is put in it should be stirred vigorously and kept warm. 



