TREATMENT FOR OLD ORCHARDS. 69 



condition should yield an average net income of at least six per cent 

 on one hundred dollars yearly. If the variety is inferior, work it 

 over; if the cost of picking is too great, cut back the main trunk 

 branches and make a new top; if the fruit is imperfect, balance the 

 food supply. The lesson is as applicable here as with the dairy cow. 

 The American people accept results but fail signally to recognize 

 how these obtain. Our whole crop condition would today be in a 

 deplorable condition but for the services of the scientist and experi- 

 menter, and those services should be recognized. 



The man who refuses to spray his trees or his fields invites ruin. 

 We have passed out of the experimental stage here and must accept 

 as fundamentally true what these scientists for the last forty to fifty 

 years have been demonstrating. If they have found more light 

 and safer or less injurious agents, it only proves that they are still 

 diligent in seeking the truer way. That Bordeaux mixture injures 

 fruit and trees is no argument against spraying, but indicates that 

 we are yearly meeting new conditions which upset old theories and 

 make necessary further research. It is for you and me to thank- 

 fully accept what they offer and faithfully labor to make the same 

 effective in largest degree. Our trees must be more thoroughly 

 sprayed in 1911 than last year. Not one spraying, but three at 

 least, must be the rule, and let this be thoroughly done, using only 

 such sprayers as are easily controlled and where abundant power 

 can be maintained. 



Spraying benefits the tree and crop, provided solutions are harm- 

 less to leaf and twig. It is profitable from the standpoint of added 

 vigor as well as that of destruction of pests or protection from 

 disease. Given like conditions in all other respects the fruit from 

 a sprayed tree will be larger, choicer, and of better color than from 

 one not sprayed. The steadily increasing army of insect pests and 

 multiplying forms of fungous diseases make absolutely necessary 

 this spraying at regular periods and with varying solutions. In 1908 

 the fruit from a lot of old trees, on which work of reclaiming began 

 that year, was forty per cent wormy. In 1909 twenty-five per cent. 

 Spraying once, the first of June, 1910, for codling moth, using 15 

 lbs. Bug Death to 50 gallons water, the per cent was less than one. 

 Unfortunately the old time practice was to set trees by the roadside 

 and along the line fences, adding materially to the cost of spraying, 

 but this cannot excuse for neglect. 



