SPRAYING 13 



the various recommendations are based, should 

 consult the reports in which the experiments have 

 been described : meanwhile, it is well that they should 

 look with some distrust on such remedies as are 

 recommended only on the strength of casual or 

 isolated trials, for any one making such trials is not 

 unnaturally apt to be misled into attributing real 

 merit to some form of treatment which owed its 

 success merely to chance or exceptional circumstances. 

 Still more should growers hesitate to spend their 

 money on proprietary articles of unknown compo- 

 sition, until the virtue of such articles has been 

 thoroughly established by general experience : and 

 it is well to remember that exaggerated praise in 

 advertisements is not required, when the article 

 advertised possesses real merit of its own. 



Although the remedies recommended for each pest 

 have been limited to the lowest possible number, all 

 the ordinary remedies in use have been included in 

 the list of spraying materials, together with the in- 

 structions for making them. Spraying, being a 

 necessary part of the routine of fruit-growing, and 

 being, moreover, an expensive part of it, all large 

 growers should make it their business, if only for 

 economy's sake, to acquire sufficient knowledge and 

 skill to make their own insecticides. With smaller 

 growers and gardeners it is otherwise, and the difference 

 in the cost of buying or of making the insecticides, 

 would hardly be counterbalanced by the probable 

 superiority of these substances when made by the 

 skilled chemical manufacturer. 



In many cases a certain latitude may be allowed in. 



