June, '09] JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY .241 



I took this and much more into consideration before I wrote Bulle- 

 tin 131, but the conclusions at which I had arrived seemed to me to 

 be far-reaching- enough to justify their publication, whatever the im- 

 mediate results might be. I was fully aware that many orchardists 

 might offer opposition to further spraying, especially if they have been 

 slow in recognizing the benefits of the practice. For such reasons I 

 was more than ordinarily careful about my facts and was not hasty 

 in my conclusions, nor did I permit myself to draw conclusions which 

 are broader in their scope than the facts on which they are based jus- 

 tify, as is intimated throughout Doctor Ball's articles. The only state- 

 ments which I can find in his articles that in any way tend to invali- 

 date any statement made by me are those pertaining to my incompe- 

 tency to determine the facts. 



Doctor Ball does not attempt to show that the trees that I described 

 were not killed by arsenic, but alleges that alkaline ground waters 

 are killing trees in Utah, and concludes that the trees described by me 

 were also drowned or killed by alkali. That trees may l)e drowned 

 is a generally known fact. What the action of our alkali may be on 

 ten or fourteen-year-old trees is an open Cjuestion not so easily dis- 

 posed of as one might imagine from Doctor Ball's statements. This 

 question, so far as the statements of Bulletin 131 are concerned, is 

 easily disposed of, for at least five of the orchards from which trees 

 were taken are on mesas, where seepage is impossible, and none of the 

 trees were taken from seeped lands. 



Doctor Ball's comparison of the conditions in Utah and in the lower 

 and heavier lands between Fruita and Palisade is not just because it 

 leads the reader to conclude that the trees described came from such 

 lands, which is not true. Indeed, some of the orchards referred to in 

 Bulletin 131 have never had what may be called an abundant supply 

 of water. One of the pear orchards described is above the highest 

 ditch in that section, a wheel being used to raise the water for irrigat- 

 ing the orchard. Doctor Ball is acquainted with some of these or- 

 chards, which for obvious reasons I cannot specify, but he does not 

 seem to have considered the conditions obtaining in them. Again, 

 while it is true that there is some seeped ground between Fruita and 

 Palisade and that some trees have been drowned, which fact I ob- 

 served at least fourteen years ago, I described no tree in Bulletin 131 

 which I knew or believed to have been drowned. Besides, this coun- 

 try is in no such bad condition as the doctor's statements would lead 

 one to infer. I have seen trees in this section which were dying, the 

 main lateral roots were dead, the crown was girdled beneath the 

 the ground and the roots showed the presence of much arsenic. The 



