160 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



orchard, then the entomologist takes the ne.\t train for that place. If 

 the man will not pay the expenses of the entomologist, we pay his trav- 

 eling expenses ourselves, for the San Jose scale is not a thing to be 

 trifled with by anyone. California would give millions of dollars to 

 free their State from this pest, but the slow spread of this pest in Mis- 

 souri is due to the fact that the Experiment Station at Columbia has 

 fought it at every point where it can gain information of its appear- 

 ance. 



I could go on and tell you of a great many other things. An im- 

 portant one is an experiment of raising asparagus in the open air in the 

 dead of winter which has proven to be very profitable to market gar- 

 deners in the neighborhood of St. Louis. We estimated that an acre 

 planted in asparagus, according to our method of plantihg and treating 

 it, would have yielded in that winter, in which we made the experiment, 

 nineteen hundred dollars an acre ; that depends on the time of the year, 

 the price of asparagus and how many fools will spend money for aspar- 

 agus in the dead of winter, but there are fools enough in the city to do it 

 and the market gardeners in St. Louis are making fortunes on account 

 of these fools and it is a good thing for these gardeners that these fools 

 will spend their money this way. 



Let me go on a little from Horticulture to Animal Husbandry. 

 You know very well that Texas fever infects cattle below a certain belt 

 of temperature all over the world. Why they call it Texas fever I do 

 not know, probably because Texas is a very large State and there are 

 a great many cattle in Texas ; but it attacks herds in Georgia, in the Car- 

 olinas, Florida, in Porto Rico, in Cuba, in Australia and in India just 

 as well at it does in Texas. The theory was advanced, a mere theory 

 which nobody had been able to prove, that this fever was caused by a 

 tick which was produced in southern latitudes. The cattle born south 

 of this line and accustomed from birth to this tick became immune to the 

 fever; it did not affect them, but whenever northern cattle were shipped 

 in, they fell victims to it in about ninety cases out of a hundred and when 

 scuthern cattle were shipped north in the suminer time they spread the 

 fo-called Texas fever. Our Station took hold of this trouble in co- 

 operation with the Experiment Station of Texas and in co-operation 

 with the State Board of Agriculture of Missouri, so that the State 

 Booard of Agriculture of Missouri, of which Mr. Ellis is Secretary, the 

 Experiment Station of the University at Columbia and the Experiment 

 Station of Texas co-operated in a series of experiments on Texas fever. 

 We did the scientific work and the Texas Station furnished a good 

 portion of the money, for it was a very expensive experiment and the 

 State Board of Agriculture helped us at every point, but our Veter- 



