BULLETIN NUMBER 23, DECEMBER, 1893. 73 



"Please allow me to ackuowledge my very great obligation to you for bringing to my 

 attention, through your official publications, the use of arsenical poisons for destroying 

 Codling Moth and other noxious insects. 



"I have a fine young apple orchard of fifty acres, all Newtown Pippins, immediately 

 adjoining which on the north is an older and much neglected orchard belonging to a 

 neighbor. 



"The old orchard has been badly infested with worms for many years, and until the 

 present season the north lialf of my orchard has been practically worthless, the trees 

 shedding most of their fruit iu May and early part of June, the little which remained 

 being so wormy as to be largely unfit for market, while the south half has borne fair 

 crops, comparatively free from worms. 



"Soil, drainage and other conditions being similar throughout, I am constrained to 

 the belief that the near proximity of the old and worm-infested trees to the north side of 

 my orchard is the cause of the difference above noted. 



"Acting upon information obtained from one of your pamphlets, I bought last spring 

 a full spraying outfit, using the Climax preparation of London purple sold by the Nixon 

 Company. 



"Soon after the blossoms fell I began spraying on the side nearest the old orchard,the 

 machine working perfectly, the Climax nozzle breaking up the solution into a fine mist 

 which completely enveloped the trees. 



"After working a day and a half and applying the poison to about one-third of the 

 trees, I suspended operations on account of the weather becoming so windy as to make 

 the woi-k exceedingly disagreeable, one of the men having been made sick by having 

 the poison blown into his face. 



"Influenced to some extent by the skepticism of ray neighbors, most of whom regai'd- 

 ed the experiment as highly dangerous, and confessing to no small lack of faith myself, 

 I regret to say that I allowed other work on the farm to interfere, and never finished the 

 work of spraying. 



"With the mental reservation that should the heretofore barren north side where the 

 poison had been applied do as well as the south half, I would spray more thoroughly 

 next year, I waited the outcome with an iodifference born of unbelief. Please note 

 the result. From the sprayed trees, not quite one-third the whole number, I gathered 

 1,000 barrels of A 1 merchantable fruit so entirely free from worms that sorting was 

 almost unnecessary, while tlie remaining two-thirds of the orchard yielded 883 barrels of 

 good fruit, quite one-fifth of the apples on the unsprayed trees being wormy and unfit 

 for sale. The market price of apples in this section the past season was from 60 to 75 cents 

 per barrel, one or two choice lots of Ben Davis and York Imperial bringing $1 per barrel, 

 while my fruit sold in the orchard nearly a month before picking at $3.55 per barrel. 



"I estimate the cost of failure to spray the whole orchard at $3,500, but consider the 

 lesson cheap at the price, as I shall never have it to learn again, and feel confident that 

 with ordinary care no harmful results will follow spraying." 



THE USE OF ARSENICAL SPRAYS. 



Substances to he used. — Two arsenical poisons are commonly used in 

 spraying orchard trees for the Codling Moth, namely, Paris green and 

 London purple. Of the two, Paris green still holds the vantage ground 

 by virtue of the fact that it is insoluble in cold water and contains a 

 more constant proportion of arsenic. London purple, on the other hand, 

 is somewhat cheaper, and the slightly purplish hue which it imparts to 

 the treated foliage possesses some value as indicating more clearly the 

 efficacy of the spraying, for it permits us to see whether or not the appli- 

 cation'^has been uniformly made and has taken a firm and uniform place 

 upon the leaves, which the Paris green does not show to the same extent. 

 The slight solubility of the purple in cold water renders it more apt to 



