46 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



than I can possibly give you, I should not have come. I 

 have a few photographs here of some scenes in my orchard, 

 and some of spraying machinery, that I am going to ask } ou 

 to look at now. I am here to-day I believe under very peculiar 

 circumstances. In the first place I come from a state that has 

 only within the last few years begun to grow apples on a com- 

 mercial scale. Coming here to Connecticut, where you have 

 been growing apples on a commercial scale for a great many 

 years, where you have the origin of a number of varieties to 

 your credit, coming here to a state that has sent out gentlemen 

 to speak on agriculture all over the United States, it seems 

 to me that I am placed in a very peculiar position, especially 

 when I am to talk about spraying. There is always something 

 to talk about, but it is like threshing over old straw ; in fact, 

 I hardly know of a new thing to tell. To go without spraying 

 would be like a man going without an insurance policy on his 

 barn until it was afire. You have got to do the work before- 

 hand. There are seasons undoubtedly when weather conditions 

 are such, such as this winter, when we have had mild weather, 

 and the insects will come out, and in such a stage of growth that 

 the winter kills them ; then, perhaps, we may be without some of 

 our pests that otherwise would trouble us ; we may have a 

 season in which fungus will not develop. When we have such 

 a season, spraying then in small orchards does not pay, but 

 who can tell whether that will be so or not, so that we have 

 to spray. Perhaps one of the greatest blessings that has struck 

 the fruit growing interest in the United States is his majesty, 

 the San Jose scale ; that is a good deal to say. but I believe it 

 to be a fact. Not one man in a hundred was spraying before the 

 San Jose scale came that is spraying to-day, and yet the San 

 Jose scale, with all it has done, has not done a tithe of the 

 injury that leaf blight and scab have done to the apple in- 

 dustry of the United States. It has done but a very small 

 fraction of the injury the coddling moth has done all over the 

 United States and is doing to-day, and yet these difficulties I 

 have mentioned are as easy of control as anything we do in 

 the farm line. 



Will it be too much, will it be taxing you to go back a little, 

 and just consider a moment what we are spraying for. and 



