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the burning and claim that if that is corrected, the material 

 is safe to use even upon peaches. That was the announce- 

 ment made at Washington in November. With us, a mix- 

 ture of flowers of sulfur and lime will control peach scab 

 but will not control brown rot as well as the self-boiled. 



DR. F. E. GILSON. I have had some success in hand- 

 ling borers by digging them out and putting wood ashes on 

 them, and my neighbors who have made a success of raising 

 apples have done the same thing, and I have had no trouble. 



PROFESSOR BX^AKE. Do your put the wood ashes 

 in the hole around the trunk and leave them there? 



DR. GILSON. Well, it varies. Some of the borers are 

 from the surface down. I put it above and below, perhaps 

 three or four inches, a shovelful both sides of the tree. 



PROFESSOR BLAKE. Several of our growers who 

 have tried that method have had trouble with the bark 

 where the ashes went np against it. Of course, some wood 

 ashes would be more caustic than others, but we are afraid 

 to use it, 



DR. GILSON. I use it very frequently with my apple 

 trees. I don't know how far I would dare go on small 

 trees, but on large trees I have had no trouble with it. 



MR. KELSEY of CONNECTICUT. What would you 

 give as the reason for what you term "collar rot"? 



PROFESSOR BLAKE. The trunk of the tree where 

 the bark of the root joins the bark of the top is usually 

 termed a collar of a tree, and in the case of injury where 

 the bark dies at the base of the apple or peach tree, the 

 term "collar rot" has often been applied to that injury. I 

 think everyone agrees now that the decaying of the bark 

 largely follows winter injury, whether on apples or peach- 

 es. We know, in New Jersey at least, that this trouble 

 practically never occurs unless the bark is first winter- 

 injured. It become rather yellow and spongy, and decays. 



MR. KELSEY. Nearly always on the south, southeast 

 or southwest side? 



PROFESSOR BLAKE. No, I wouldn't say it was 

 confined to any one particular side. Sometimes the tree is 

 completely girdled by winter-injury. We do have some 

 bark splitting occasionally on old trees in cold weather, but 



