REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FRUITS FOR THE 



YEAR 1907. 



BY WILFRID WHEELER, CHAIRMAN. 



An estimate of the fruit grown in a state cannot be taken by the 

 resuks of one year's experience but by an average of several years, 

 when it will be found that, despite climatic conditions and insect 

 pests, the crop produced is more or less uniform. This is an en- 

 couraging thought now for we have gone through a very trying 

 year in Massachusetts as well as the whole of New England and 

 it is remarkable that we have come out as well as we have. The 

 past winter was an unusually cold one, next to the coldest in the 

 history of the weather bureau, with an average temperature of 

 24.4, or 2^ degrees below normal,^ and was followed by a wet and 

 very late spring, with many frosts during May, a season that seemed 

 very favorable to the ravages of the codling moth. 



Added to all this was a long dry summer when for eight weeks 

 less than one inch of rain fell. Yet in Massachusetts, although 

 the fruit crop in general was a disappointment, there probably was 

 never a better apple crop; not in quantity so much as in quality. 

 This result has come indirectly through the gypsy and brown-tail 

 moth, for now that people have become thoroughly aroused to 

 the danger from these pests more apple, pear, and other trees have 

 been sprayed, thus doing away with, not only the insects feared, 

 but also many others which have been so detrimental to the fruit 

 crop. 



It has certainly been thoroughly proved this year that spraying 

 helps in a marked degree to produce good sound well-developed 

 fruit, and in the course of time we shall reap a real benefit from the 

 numerous insects, scales, and fungi; for those orchards which are 

 not cared for will be entirely destroyed, thus doing away with a 

 large quantity of poor fruit; while the orchards which are watched 



^February, 8 degrees below normah 



193 



