80 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



and have no time to learn them now, but I wish my children 

 might learn them and tell me all about them." 



It is high time we faced these problems. Since the occupa- 

 tion of the country we have been practically spreading horticul- 

 tural feasts before our worst enemies, insects and plant diseases. 

 Our leading entomologists already estimate that the insects 

 divide the crops about equally with the farmer. It certainly is 

 time that we have as a matter of common knowledge the fact 

 that if a man keeps a neglected orchard, he may be causing his 

 neighbors hundreds of dollars worth of damage each year. In 

 a short time, with proper encouragement, we might have our 

 school children possessed of sufficient knowledge to clear the 

 city of these pests, and when the community is able to act as 

 one man in the matter, it will not be so difficult. 



On the side of fungous plant diseases take for a single example 

 the black knot. Worcester is full of it. How many people 

 know anything about it? It is really pitiful to see where home- 

 makers have bought their lot and set out their plum and cherry 

 trees ; and then as they come into bearing these ugly knots form 

 and kill the trees. Worst of all, the people lose heart and come 

 to the conclusion that the world is becoming too rotten to try 

 to raise fruit in it any more. The black knot forms as a tumor in 

 the healthy tissues of the tree. This finally sends great num- 

 bers of filaments to the surface and these discharge clouds of 

 minute spores into the air. The spores from a single knot, fall- 

 ing on healthy trees, may thus infect a whole neighborhood. 

 The only thing to do is to cut out and burn every trace of the fun- 

 gus as soon as it appears and before spores are set free. Why 

 not teach such things as these in our schools ? The material is 

 all about us. It would cost nothing for specimens. And in a 

 year we might have boys of twelve or fifteen able to clean up 

 the black knots in their fathers' orchards, and be much the better 

 both for the knowledge and the work. The same applies to a 

 great many of our blights and rusts and mildews, but time for- 

 bids mentioning them in detail. 



The subject, horticultural interests in relation to public edu- 

 cation, has proved far too large to discuss in a single hour. I 



