WINTER MEETING. 167 



wet spring with warm July and August, you are going to have woolly 

 aphis in abundance, whether you have a particle of it in your orchard 

 or not. In a season of this kind, where you have had a limb cut off 

 where they can get in, you will tind a cluster of woolly aphis along up 

 the body, in the forks and even in your trees where web worms have 

 made a net on the limb. So, it is a distinct disease and the idea that 

 it will not occurin new land is preposterous. You may take the virgin 

 soil of Newton county and plant apple trees and in a season like this, 

 90 per cent of them will be worthless. Because, it is here to stay, we 

 have got to fight it, and you must take especial care of your trees. 

 Keep the web off above the ground, and keep clean at the basis of the 

 tree with good cultivation. I think the aphis attacks the roots near 

 the surface. It is at the surface or nearly so that we find the most of 

 them, which proves that the whole thing is the result of the condition 

 of the season, and when we have seasons of this kind we will have it 

 to fight. Never lay it at the feet of the nurseryman when you come to 

 find that you have aphis. There is also a lot in poor land. Your tree 

 is like your body; if you have perfect physical health, you can be ex- 

 posed to disease and it will not affect you, and if your tree has a per- 

 fect flow of sap it is in good condition, and if it is in good soil and has 

 good cultivation it has something upon which to grow and to fortify 

 itself against the ills that apple trees are heir to. 



In Webster county a doctor planted 40 acres of orchard in one- 

 yoar-old trees, and there was no aphis in them. He never cultivated 

 them or cared for his trees and the result was in two years his roots 

 were a solid knot and the trees were all dying, and he said it was the 

 fault of the trees. The land was too poor to support the trees. If 

 they had been planted in land that was strong enough to give them 

 growth, the aphis would not have killed them. Whenever the circle 

 becomes diseased, it is in proper condition for diseased. 



Mr. Murray — Having had experience in nurseries all my life, I 

 would like to make a statement or two in regard to my experience back 

 in Virginia. We had a great deal of trouble with aphis. I used to 

 grow a great many — about 100,000 of apple seedlings for my own use, 

 and also to sell to other nurserygaen. I grew them on old land that 

 had been used for 50 or 75 years for various crops. Just as certain as 

 we got our trees a little too close we would lose them with aphis. We 

 would find thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of them, 

 with perfectly rotten roots, and they were on rich land, too, just as 

 rich land as there was in that country. I know that in New York men 

 in the last few years have almost abandoned growing the apple stock, 

 because the woolly aphis was in their ground, and because they can 



