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growing in the vicinity a hawthorn hedge, it will be necessary to 

 attend to the condition of the hedge as well as to that of the fruit being 

 cultivated for profit. Again, suppose a surplus crop of fruit of another 

 sort is found unsaleable, something that not infrequently happens I am 

 sorry to say, and this surplus be allowed to lie where it falls and to go 

 its own road to decay ? A considerable portion of it will become 

 infested with ripe-rot fungi, and this will be a menace to all fruit in 

 the vicinity, some of which may be valuable. In the same category 

 as surplus unsaleable fruit must be placed left-over crops of certain 

 vegetables. Rotting tomatoes may be a menace to ripening fruit on 

 trees near by. So may rotting surplus cucumbers, pumpkins, and 

 other cucurbits. Rotting fruit of any sort is a danger to ripening fruit 

 of almost any other sort. The danger is not always confined to rotting 

 fruits, as it has been shown that the ripe-rot fungi find a congenial 

 breeding ground on the branches and foliage of a number of plants. 

 It is quite probable that these fungi breed in non-living matter of 

 certain kinds, for they may easily be cultivated on artificial media. 



Special pains should be taken to ensure the destruction of all rotting 

 vegetable matter in the vicinity of an orchard, and especially of any 

 rotten fruit or rotting vegetables. 



When applying sprays for the prevention of fungi, it would be well 

 to have an eye to adjacent vegetation, with a view to the possibility 

 that it may be the source of ripe-rot fungi. Often it will cost little 

 more while spraying the orchard to spray these other plants that may 

 be in or near it. If, for instance, there be a hawthorn hedge on the 

 border of the orchard, it may prove a paying investment to spray the 

 hedge also. 



The same principles that apply in the orchard apply also in the storage 

 of fruit. It is useless to expect to keep fruit successfully in cases that 

 have recently held rotten fruit, and the variety of fruit makes little 

 difference. A box or other receptacle that has held ripe-rotten plums 

 is just as unsuitable for the storage of apples or peaches as for plums. 



The means for combating the ripe-rots in stores and shops are, of 

 course, of a different nature from those suitable to the orchard. For 

 disinfecting cases and boxes boiling water is cheap and efficient in 

 many instances. Formalin is an eminently suitable fungicide for use 

 in stores and shops devoted to the fruit industry ; in fact, I am sure 

 that if shopkeepers and merchants realised more fully the efficiency 

 of this substance and the ease with which it can be applied, it would 

 come into wide use for these purposes. 



For disinfecting bins, whitewash is cheap and efficient. Though 

 usually applied with a brush, it may be applied with a spraying 

 machine, with the advantage that the whitewash is driven into cracks 

 that could not be reached readily with a brush. 



The precautions that are to be taken against the ripe-rot fungi are 

 not by any means confined to the period after the fruit is plucked. In 

 the orchard, long before ripening time, there are plenty of influences 

 that open up breaches in the fruit through which the rot fungi may 

 gain an entrance. This is notably the case with early varieties. To a 

 large extent these early varieties owe their earl mess to selection and 



