HISTORY OF TREATMENT. 65 



In 1805 Mr. Sharpo reports that the peach trees at Agassiz were 

 sprayed with Bordeaux mixture before leafing- out, and again Avhen 

 the leaves were nearly full grown. He states that the sprayixl trees 

 had very little curl, and juade a very strong- and healthy growth, while 

 on a few unsprayed trees of several varieties the leaves were nearly 

 all destroyed by curl, and the trees themselves made a very feeble 

 growth.* 



This treatment, so far as known, is the first successful experiment 

 for the control of curl by the Canadian Government. Leaving con- 

 trol trees for comparison added greatly to the value of the work, 

 which was also strengthened by the results at Agassiz the following 

 year, 1896.^ The writer regrets to add, however, that unfavorable 

 results attended the spray work at Agassiz in 1898.'* The reasons 

 for this failure are not apparent. 



In Ontario the early r(\sults were not so satisfactory as at Agassiz, 

 owing to the nondevclopment of the disease in Ontario. Mr. John 

 Craig, horticulturist of the Central Experimental Farm, at Ottawa, 

 planned the Ontario work. He states that the work on peaches in 

 189-1 was planned to prevent the rotting of fruit and injury from 

 insects, and that the first spraying was not given until May 1.* Mr. 

 Craig's work on leaf curl began in 1895, l)y the application of winter 

 sprays,^ but owing to the absence of the disease that 3^ear no con- 

 clusive results were obtained. Later work, I am informed by Mr. 

 Craig, has given more conclusive and satisfactory results.® The vari- 

 able results reported in Bulletin No. 1, second series, leads the writer 

 to wonder, however, if the early spray work was done with suflicient 

 thoroughness. Mr. W. M. Orr, of Fruitland, Ontario, met with very 

 convincing and satisfactory^ results from winter spraying- in 1898.' 

 The same is true for the experiments of Mr. A. H. Pettit, of Grimsb}^, 

 Ontario, who carried on work in 1898 and 1899, the results of the latter 

 year, when one row of trees was left untreated for comparison, being 

 very striking. 



The work of this Department in extending the use of sprays for 

 the control of curl on the Pacific coast began in the spring of 1893. 

 In the fall of that year a circular letter on the subject was addressed to 

 many Pacific coast growers, and this was closely followed by requests 

 that growers . undertake preventive spray work in the winter of 



^ Kept. Exp. Farms, 1895, p. 396. 

 2 Kept. Exp. Farms, 1896, p. 449. 

 ^'Rept. Exp. Farms, 1898, p. 403. 

 *Rept. Exp. Farms, 1894, pp. 110, 111. 



^ Peach Culture in Canada, Bull. No. 1, second series, pp. 35-37; Central Exp. 

 Farm, Dept. of Agr., Ottawa, Canada, Sept., 1898. 

 6 Letter dated Ottawa, Oct. 7, 1897. 

 'Canadian Horticulturist, Jan., 1899, pp. 18-20. 

 19093— No. 20 5 



