THE VALUE OF COOPERATION DEMONSTRATED. 



93 



Mr. Morgan sent." The private secretary 

 also asked me to let him know "when anv 

 more of the seedless apples arrived in Eng- 

 land from Colorado." 



Two of the apples were disposed of by 

 auction by ^lessrs. Garcia, Jacobs & Co., 

 the well known Covent Garden fruit sales- 



men, in aid of a fund being raised for the 

 ■' Starving Poor of West Ham." An im- 

 mense crowd of buyers assembled to watch 

 the proceedings. The two apples were sold 

 for 60 shillings, which is equal to 3,000 shil- 

 lings a bushel, the highest price ever paid 

 for apples in any market in the world. 



COOPERATIVE SPRAYING BY GROWERS 



ALEJX. MCNEILL, CHIEF OF THE FRUIT DIVISION, OTTAWA, ONT. 



IN the spring of 1903 the Fruit Division, 

 Ottawa, determined to test the effi- 

 ciency of power spraying. An outfit with 

 a gasoline engine was purchased from the 

 Spramotor Company, London, and placed 

 in the charge of Fruit Inspector Carey and 

 Mr. J. C. Harris, at Ingersoll. Contracts 

 were taken from the farmers between Inger- 

 soll and Woodstock to the extent of about 

 3,000 trees, and during the season these 

 trees were sprayed four times. 



The results were quite satisfactory ; 

 nevertheless, the demonstration was con- 

 tinued in 1904 for the purpose of confirming 

 the experience of 1903. Again 3,000 trees 

 were contracted for and sprayed four times 

 at a cost of 5c. per tree for each spraying. 

 The object of these demonstrations was not 

 to prove that spraying was a good thing so 

 much as to devise some method whereby 

 farmers would be induced to spray their 

 trees. The result has justified the experi- 

 ment. The outfit will remain in Ingersoll 

 this year, but will be operated by private in- 

 dividuals, a result which was anticipated 

 when the demonstration was undertaken. 



The result of the work in Ingersoll has 

 demonstrated two or three points very con- 

 clusively. First, - that power spraying is 

 not materially cheaper than spraying by 

 hand ; second, that power spraying is more 

 eft'ective than hand spraying; third, that it 

 is so much more convenient that farmers, 

 who could not be induced to spray with 

 hand pumps, will readily pay even more 

 than the commercial rate in order to have 



the work done for them. And once more, 

 it has been demonstrated that spraying is 

 one of the best paying operations in the care 

 of an orchard. 



The season of 1904 developed fungus to 

 a very serious degree in the county of Ox- 

 ford. Unsprayed orchards did not usually 

 yield more than 10 or 15 per cent, of apples 

 that would grade as No. i. This rendered 

 it almost impossible to secure buyers in the 

 Ingersoll markets during the fall months 

 and, as a consequence, many unsprayed or- 

 chards were never picked, and those that 

 were picked yielded only about the price of 

 the picking and packages. The sprayed 

 orchards, however, pelded about 90 per 

 cent, of No. i fruit, and without an excep- 

 tion were all sold, some of them not at a 

 high price but at a price that was deemed 

 satisfactory for the season. 



The results may be put another way. 

 Accepting the average of two barrels p-^r 

 tree, the cost of spraying would be 10 cents 

 per barrel. The difference in the price ob- 

 tained for the sprayed fruit would be at 

 least 75 cents per barrel on the tree, leaving 

 a net profit of 65 cents per barrel for spray- 

 ing. This is putting the financial side of 

 it somewhat moderately. It is a common 

 excuse with farmers for not sprapng that 

 there is too much other work to do. To 

 such farmers I would say that there is no 

 work on the farm that will yield so large a 

 dividend as this of spraying; consequently 

 it will pay much better to neglect other 

 work rather than to neglect the spraying. 



