580 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



of the people in the back forties, who are not here. I am tallying 

 to men wlio don't need lliis talk. I am S'^ing to start by saying 

 that nine-tenllis of llie failures Ave find in spraying operations are 

 due, first of all, to a lack of knowledge of what Ave are trying to do; 

 Avhat are the foes Ave are combating? A prominent man in my 

 county, who had been a fruit groAver more yeais than I am old, took 

 up this matter of spraying, and talked it over with me, and Avith his 

 friends and neighbors, and Ave in a general way tried to advise him. 

 He bought a good outfit, and went after those particular pests that 

 he had trouble with. He Avas trying to raise sAveet cherries. He 

 came to me Avilh blood in his eye,. for he Avas a quick-tempered man, 

 and condemned the whole proposition, saying it was all tommy-rot, 

 all foolishness. I asked him what the matter was. Shoving a 

 branch under my nose, he said, ''Well, look at that." I looked at it 

 and recognized it as a case of cherry aphis — a little aphis, which 

 you knoAv attacks the foliage and causes it to curl up, and in that 

 cluster of leaves the aphis does its work. He was condemning spray- 

 ing because he applied the remedy which he said in this case was 

 Bordeaux mixture and poison. As a matter of fact, Bordeaux mix- 

 ture is a wonderful thing to destroy fungi, but is absolutely harm- 

 less as an application on such insect life; and even the poison 

 Avouldn't affect the aphis. We don't poison San Jose scale because 

 the louse doesn't chew and swalloAv. We have to spray that with 

 a spray that kills by contact, because, it is a different sort of creature. 

 It is an insect which sucks, so we have to remember, among insects 

 we have two classes of remedies, because AA^e have two classes of 

 insects. I am talking in the 'presence of men who are entomologists. 

 The point I Avant to make is, that Ave must have a knowledge of the 

 foes W9 are combating. That is the first knowledge we must have. 

 This man tried with Bordeaux mixture to destroy a sucking insect 

 — it wasn't the proper application. 



The proper application at the proper time and in the proper 

 manner. The propsr time, my friends, is a stumbliug block. It is 

 easy enough to tell men Avhen to spray to destroy San Jose scale. 

 We can make almost a cast iron rule for that. We spray in the 

 dormant period, and as far as the application, I don't think Pennsyl- 

 vania and Michigan will disagree, because I think you have been 

 brought up to use lime and sulphur, and while I don't wish to say 

 oils and other remedies may not be equally as good, I still say from 

 the experience we have had in Michigan, that lime and sulphur is a 

 good friend, and a friend that should not be cast aside at present. 



Now, further, from that, the proper time, there are certain things 

 we spray for, when it is most difficult to tell the proper time, and 

 especially in apple growing, in our section, is the exact time for 

 spraying to catch the first brood of the codling moth. We have 

 had in our section the advantage of having the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture man doing that laboratory work there for 

 several years. Prof. Waite did his work there on the little peach, 

 and Scott. Quaintance, Hammer and Hawkins, those men haA^e all 

 done grand Avork in our locality, and they have been of an immense 

 amount of good to us. For instance, let me touch upon this ques- 

 tion of spraying for the first brood of the codling moth. We know 

 we want to spray the apple before the blossoms open, then after the 

 calyx drops, but the exact time depends on samething else, that is. 



