390 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fruit trees in sufficient quantities to fully supply the needs of their fam- 

 ilies. 



I will say to these men, if you want information as to varieties of 

 apples, attend the meetings of the Warsaw Horticultural Society, and 

 ask questions and listen to the discussions, and you will get as reliable 

 advice and information as anywhere in the State. If you can't do this, 

 write to some of the members, or visit some of your successful neigh- 

 bors, and they will render you valuable assistance. Don't neglect the 

 pears because so many trees have been lost by blight. Its attacks are 

 much less fatal than ten years ago, and we understand the conditions 

 of success better than ever before. Don't forget the peach trees. We 

 have had a long list of failures, but it is more than probable that during 

 the next score of years we may gather twelve or fifteen crops of fruit. 



Plums and cherries ha^e been so universally destroyed by curculio 

 for many years that they have been abandoned by all but the specialist. 

 But it has now been demonstrated that the curculio, the meanest of all 

 insect pests, can be destroyed by spraying with arsenites. You may 

 therefore now plant these delicious fruits with the confident expecta- 

 tion of gathering an abundant harvest. 



The time has come when every farmer who has one or two hundred 

 fruit trees needs a spraying outfit, just as much as he needs a corn- 

 planter or horse-rake. The cost is comparatively small — from $6 to 

 $15. After the force-pump is procured, the expense of saving the fruit 

 will scarcely reach five cents a tree, an investment that will pay a hun- 

 dred per cent a year. 



In behalf of this society I desire to sound a note of warning in the 

 ear of the unsophisticated granger. The tree-peddler with his winnings 

 ways, his glib tongue and wonderful picture-book, is abroad in the 

 land. He is willing, as a special favor, to sell you Russian apple trees 

 that will stand fire, floods and drouth, for the modest sum of forty or 

 fifty cents apiece, or trees budded or top-grafted that will endure the 

 climate of Siberia, for the same reasonable price. After he has supplied 

 you with apple trees, he will sell you a bill of blight-proof pears and 

 curculio-proof plums for a like modest sum. Now let me whisper in 

 the ear of my brother granger (this I know from experience), that some 

 of these fellows go to the nurseries and buy their refuse stock, at two 

 or three dollars a hundred, with which they fill their orders. 



There are honest tree agents that represent honest, reliable firms, 

 that are worthy of confidence and patronage ; but give no orders unless 

 you know the agent and the firm he represents are reliable. Under no 

 circumstances invest in high-priced varieties, except as an experiment, 

 as all of the new and much-lauded fruits are being tested at the Experi 



