ECONOMIC VALUE- OF FUMIGATION 227 



fold. The importance of freeing orange and lemon 

 orchards of the red, purple, and black scale at this 

 particular season when the insects commence to breed 

 must be obvious to every grower. It means when the 

 shipping season opens healthier trees, larger crop, and 

 gilt-edge fruit, and an increase of receipts. 



' ' These are f acts and considerations that no com- 

 mercial grower can ignore, and are of such vital im- 

 portance that unless conscientiously practiced the 

 chances are five to one that failure to realize a profit 

 from his trees can be traced directly to neglect in this 

 direction. We also know that the time has come 

 when every nurseryman in this country will find fumi- 

 gation a necessity in order to keep clean his nursery 

 stock, not alone for his own protection, but for his 

 customers as well." 



In a paper read recently by J. W. Jeffrey, Horti- 

 cultural Commissioner, L,os Angeles County, at the 

 Fruit Growers' Convention, he said : {< Fumigation was 

 more universal last fall than at any other time. It has 

 been reduced to a science, and while the practice is not 

 always successful, poor work is no longer tolerated 

 without penalty upon the fumigator. There is little 

 complaint of impure cyanide, but much of its improper 

 applications. Daylight applications, or, more prop- 

 erly, warm weather fumigation, is under ban, but a 

 few otherwise practical growers have not discovered it. 

 Two or three of the leading citrus counties do this 

 work at the treasury's expense, afterward collecting 

 from the lands treated. Los Angeles still requires the 

 orchardists to do their own fumigation. No new 

 scale pests have developed since your last reports were 



