122 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
apples may be sprayed without much fear of injury. Others must 
be sprayed with great care. Distinguish between varieties in spray- 
ing operations. Many varieties of apples are nearly immune to 
attacks of the scab fungus. These need comparatively light applica- 
tions of bordeaux mixture in the average season. Bordeaux mix- 
ture is the best fungicide known to the apple grower. Its use can- 
not be given up in fighting the apple scab even though it cause some 
injury; apple scab causes a far greater loss than bordeaux injury.” 
In order to test the correctness of an opinion prevalent among 
New York orchardists in the nineties, namely, that apple trees can 
be fed so as to enable them to resist scab, one of the Station 
orchards was for five years devoted to an investigation of the ques- 
tion whether fertilizing the soil liberally with wood ashes may make 
the apples more resistant to scab.17 The results show “that with 
the conditions under which this investigation was made, immunity 
from apple scab is not at all increased by liberal applications of 
hard-wood ashes to the soil.” 
The practice of spraying fruit trees while in bloom having become 
so common in New York as to threaten (supposedly) the interests 
of apiarists by the wholesale poisoning of bees, a law was enacted 
in 1898 prohibiting the practice. Many fruit growers felt this to be 
a hardship, since they believed that superior results were to be 
obtained from spraying in bloom. Accordingly, it was arranged that 
the merits of such spraying should be thoroughly tested in experi- 
ments made by the Station in co-operation with the Cornell Univer- 
sity Experiment Station. These tests were made in 1900.18 Briefly 
stated, the results showed that the claims made for the practice of 
spraying in bloom were unfounded. Spraying apple trees while in 
bloom resulted in injury to the blossoms and a decrease in the yield 
of the fruit. “Even with trees which had a great abundance of 
blossoms spraying in bloom decreased the yield on the average from 
one-third bushel to one and a half bushels per tree. Spraying trees 
at several different times while they were in bloom so as to hit both 
the early and late blossoms with the spray ruined the crop of fruit.” 
Investigations on the New York apple-tree canker were carried on 
during three seasons (1898-1900) and two bulletins on the subject 
were published.14 This disease attacks the limbs and trunks of ap- 
“ Bul. 140 (1897); same in Rpt. 16:316—-341. 
* Bul. 196 (1900); same in Rpt. 19:351—412. 
* Bul. 163 (1899); same in Rpt. 18:331-360; Bul. 185 (1900); same in 
Rpt. 19:342-350. 
