132 



be familiar to any of those present, recently admitted that 

 his trees are growing in sod land, without fertilizing, prun- 

 ing excej)t at long intervals, spraying or care of any kind; 

 that the fruit is shaken from the trees, roughly assorted, 

 packed in the cheapest barrels obtainable, and marketed 

 whenever it is most convenient. Yet he acknowledged that 

 nearly all of his fair income came from this fruit. The 

 San Jose scale had recently appeared in his orchard, and he 

 had about decided to cut down his trees and go into some 

 other occupation, rather than make the source from which 

 he received most of his income his real business. If this 

 be a fair sample of the way in which fruit growing is con- 

 ducted in Massachusetts, it is no wonder that the larger part 

 of the best export and New England trade is supplied from 

 the west. 



At the present time fruit growing has unusually attractive, 

 prospects in Massachusetts. The general distribution of the 

 San Jose scale over the State absolutely requires regular and 

 persistent treatment. N"ow, fruit trees are grown by three 

 classes of people: those who make it their business; those 

 who, though in other lines of agriculture, raise a little fruit ; 

 and those in commercial or professional occupations, who 

 have fruit trees in their yards to supply their own needs. 

 The first class will fight this insect foe, and get their 

 fruit; but the farmer on other lines, after spraying once or 

 twice, will usually give up treating his trees, as requiring 

 too much time and trouble ; while most of the third class, 

 having no spraying apparatus to use and no knowledge how 

 to use it, will probably try to hire the spraying done, and 

 will generally find no one available to do it. In consequence, 

 the trees thus left unprotected from this pest will die after 

 a time, and the fruit raising in the State will be concen- 

 trated in the hands of the professional growers, and theirs 

 will be the task of supplying the fruit now raised by the 

 other two classes. 



As the number of fruit trees around the houses of workers 

 and grown by farmers as a side line only is now more than 

 five times that of all those in the orchards of regular fruit 

 growers, it is evident that the time is coming when fruit in 



