HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. 107 



practicable to run milk into the machine and take from it butter, 

 thus avoiding the handling of the cream at all. 



The cream separator enables the dairyman to dispense with 

 numerous utensils ordinarily used in setting milk, and in hot 

 climates is invaluable, as it saves much of the great expense of 

 ice. Centrifugal cream is unexcelled. In a comparatively few 

 years these valuable dairy utensils will be commonly found in use 

 on the dairy farms of the country. 



Never before in the history of man have agricultural plants 

 apparently suffered so greatly from parasitic vegetable growths 

 and injurious insects. The conditions of growth have been made 

 so much more intense for many plants that they have in conse- 

 quence, in certain directions, thus made themselves more vulner- 

 able to the attacks of parasites and insects. Some insects have 

 been deprived of their normal food in a large degree, and have 

 sought sustenance in agricultural crops. The destruction of these 

 ravagers meant the saving of valuable crops ; consequently much 

 important experimental work has been accomplished with fungi- 

 cides and insecticides. 



For two score of years the grape rot has caused immense 

 damage in the vineyards of the Eastern United States. A small 

 plant, so minute as to require a high-power microscope to bring 

 it to view, feeds upon the juices of the tender leaves and ber- 

 ries of the grape, blasting and ruining the fruit. The parasite 

 matures and ripens its spores or seeds in vast quantities, and 

 these are blown over adjacent vines and the disease more widely 

 scattered. 



Within a few years the botanists of both Europe and America 

 began to devise means to prevent this malady. After long ex- 

 perimental work with fungicides and spraying machines, a mix- 

 ture of sulphate of copper (six pounds), unslaked lime (four 

 pounds), and water (forty-five gallons), termed Bordeaux mixture, 

 was adopted,* which, when sprayed on the vines several times 

 during the growing season before the grapes became ripe, com- 

 pletely prevented the ravages of the rot. Applications are made 

 after the buds have started, and four or five times later on. Ex- 

 periments, generally conducted by scientists with the Bordeaux 

 mixture, have shown it to be most excellent for preventing nu- 

 merous diseases of plants caused by parasitic growth. The method 

 is cheap, and small hand machines, or large pump tanks with 

 spraying attachments and drawn by teams, are made, by which 

 one can rapidly and effectively spray large areas at comparatively 

 slight expense. So extensive is the use of Bordeaux mixture be- 

 coming that all along the Hudson and in other grape regions, in 



* American Gardening, April, 1892, p. 260. 



