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Plums are not growu to auy great extent in I^ew Jersey, owing to the 

 attacks of the Curculio, and few scales m ere distributed oti such stock 

 in our State. It is ou pears principally rhat the distribution has beeu 

 made, and on a few varieties chiefly. The Idaho has been the most 

 dangerous because it came infested whenever imported direct, and after 

 it came in close order Madame von Siebold, Garber, Lawson, Seckel, 

 Lawrence, and Bartlett. Other varieties are also infested, but less 

 frequently, and the scales do not do so well. Kieffers alone are abso- 

 lutely exempt, and closely following comes the Leconte, which is rarely 

 infested in the nursery, and never in the orchard, in my experience. 

 One tree grafted with Lawson and Kiefi'er had the Lawson branch and 

 fruit covered with scales, while the Kieffer branch was entirely free. 

 In not a single case have I found scales in a Kieffer orchard, though 

 in the nursery a larva will occasionally get upon a fruit and fix, only 

 to be forced out before it is half grown. As the Kieffer is the favorite 

 variety in southern New Jersey and hundreds of it are set out to one 

 of any other, the danger of serious or very rapid spread is much less- 

 ened. Currants, black and red, became rapidly infested, and the 

 scales were certainly distributed on these plants, moslly outside of 

 New Jersey, however. The Japanese quince is extremely susceptible 

 to scale attack, and the fruit particularly becomes entirely covered. 

 Within a few days I have received a branch of an elm badly infested. 



It was for a time a matter of surprise to me that so comparatively 

 few orchards were infested by the scale; but I soon found that this was 

 due in great part to the care given the orchards by the majority of 

 growers. In one case I found Idaho trees that had certainly been 

 infested and yet showed the marks where numerous scales had been. 

 Inquiry showed that the owner treated all his trees to a winter washing 

 of crude potash dissolved in water sufficient to take it all up, and in 

 Spring gave them all a dose of poisoned whitewash. He believes in 

 clean trees and tries to keep them so. As a result he cleaned out the 

 scale, and others I am quite sure have been similarly successful. 



Whitewashing alone, over the scales, will not kill them ; but repeated 

 washings during the season hits a vast proportion of larva' before 

 they are fixed and materially checks spread. In one orchard infested 

 apple trees were introduced in 1800 and they were reported clean by 

 the owner. I had the opportunity to call on him and found the trunk 

 and larger branches all clean ; but on some of the fruit and at the tips 

 of the branches were a very few scales; they were barely maintaining 

 themselves, and certainly had not increased in number in four years. 

 The owner sprays regularly with both insecticides and fungicides, and 

 always makes a i^ractice of covering trunk and branches completely 

 with the combination of Bordeaux mixture and Paris green every time 

 he sprays. Thus he hits the larvte when uncovered, or when just fixed, 

 and the result has been practically clean trees. 



Very little has been done in the way of experimenting with insecti- 



