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378 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
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head to make a slight show of dust on the leaves, say, for twenty-eight 
heads of cabbage, 1 ounce of mixture, the worms willall be killed in the 
course of two or three days, while the average amount of poison on each 
head will be about one-seventh of a grain. Fully one-half of the powder 
will fall on the outside leaves and on the ground, and thus an individual 
will have to eat about twenty-eight heads of cabbage in order to consume 
a poisonous dose of arsenic, even if the balance of the poison remained 
after cooking. 
(2) In case of spraying apple orchards for the codling-moth there is 
scarcely a possibility of injury to the consumer of thefruit. A mathema- 
tical computation will quickly show that where the poison is used in the 
proportion of 1 pound to 200 gallons of water (the customary proportion) 
the arsenic will be so distributed through the water that it will be im- 
possible for a sufficient quantity to collect upon any given apple to have 
the slightest injurious effect upon the consumer. In fact, such a compu- 
putation will indicate beyond all peradventure that it will be necessary 
for an individual to consume several barrels of apples at a single meal in 
order to absorb a fatal dose,even should this enormous meal be eaten soon 
after the spraying and should the consumer eat the entire fruit. 
(3) As a matter of fact careful microscopic examinations have been 
made of the fruit and foliage of sprayed trees at various intervals after 
spraying, which indicate that after the water has evaporated the poison 
soon entirely disappears either through being blown off by the wind or 
washed off by rains, so that after fifteen days hardly the minutest trace 
can be discovered. 
(4) Inthe line of actual experiment as indicating the very finely di- 
vided state of the poison and the extremely small quantity which is used 
to each tree, Prof. A. J. Cook, of the Michigan Agricultural College, has 
conducted some striking experiments. A thick paper was placed under 
an apple tree which was thoroughly sprayed on a windy day so that the 
dripping was rather excessive. After the dripping had ceased, the paper 
(covering a square of 72 square feet) was analyzed, and four-tenths of a 
grain of arsenic was found. Another tree was thoroughly sprayed, and 
subsequently the grass and clover beneath it were carefully cut and fed to 
a horse without the slightest sign of injury. 
The whole matter was well summed up by Professor Riley in a recent 
lecture before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, in the following words: j 
The latest sensational report of this kind was the rumor, emanating ~~ 
from London within the last week, that American apples were being 
rejected for fear that their use was unsafe. If we consider for a moment 
how minute is the quantity of arsenic that can, under the most favora- 
ble circumstances, remain in the calyx of an apple, we shall see at once 
how absurd this fear is: for, even if the poison that originally killed the 
worm remained intact, one would have to eat many barrels of apples at a 
meal to get a sufficient quantity to poison a human being. Moreover, 
much of the poison is washed off by rain, and some of it is thrown off by 
natural growth of the apple, so that there is, as a rule, nothing left of 
the poison in the garnered fruit. Add to this the further fact that few 
people eat apples raw without casting away the calyx and stem ends, the 
only parts where any poison could, under the most favorable circumstan- 
ces, remain, and that these parts are always cut away in cooking, and we 
see how utterly groundless are any fears of injury and how useless any 
prohibitive measures against American apples on this score. " 
