114 FRUIT-GROWING 



laid. The mark produced seldom ever is out- 

 grown and often so many eggs are laid that the 

 whole fruit is disfigured from growing in the 

 most grotesque form. 



The adult beetle is not a heavy feeder, but in 

 the course of its wandering about it does eat 

 some green tissue and this gives us our chance 

 to slip him, or her to be exact, a dose of poison 

 before the eggs are laid. 



The fungous diseases are a vast tribe, low, 

 cunning and treacherous, and it requires all of 

 our best efforts to elude them. The most prom- 

 inent and widely distributed of the whole gang 

 is the apple scab, a disease that lives over the 

 winter on the last year 's leaves. With the first 

 warm winds in spring these old infected leaves 

 in which the fungous has wintered, give off 

 minute spores and these seed-like bodies fall- 

 ing upon the fresh green tissues at once set up 

 a new generation of trouble. The fruit, leaves 

 and leaf stems are all attacked and very serious 

 trouble results. Old unsprayed orchards that 

 bloom every year and seldom set any fruit are 

 almost invariably badly infested with this dis- 

 ease. It has, in them, reached one hundred per 

 cent, efficiency and its prompt attack on the 

 stems of the fruit causes the "failure to set" 

 that is too often complained of. 



Since the spores are developed so early in 

 the spring it is essential that the spraying for 



