114 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



intervals, spraying or care of any kind ; that the fruit is shaken 

 from the trees, roughly assorted, packed in the cheapest bar- 

 rels 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 busi- 

 ness. If this be a fair sample of the way in which fruit growing 

 is conducted 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. Now, 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 new 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 unpro- 

 tected from this pest will die after a time, and the fruit raising 

 in the State will be concentrated in the hands of the profes- 

 sional 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 large quan- 

 tities will be in demand to replace that which will be lost, and 

 the man who prepares now to meet this demand will reap the 

 benefit. 



From what has been stated, however, it does not follow that 



