354 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
more than it does upon the accident of immunity 
from insects and fungi. There are four fundamental 
operations upon which all permanent success in most 
kinds of orchard culture depend, and their importance 
lies in something like the following order,— tillage, 
fertilizing, pruning, spraying. Spraying is the last to 
be understood, but this fact should not obscure the 
importance of the other three. 
2. Spraying ts an tusuranice.—There are always 
elements of risk in the growing of fruit. The chief 
of these is frost, a difficulty which can never be 
completely under our control. The second great ele- 
ment of risk is the injury wrought ly insects and 
fungi, and the greater part of this injury can be 
averted by the sprays. Now, it ix impossible to 
foretell by any considerable length of time, if any or 
all of the difficulties which are liable to harass the 
fruit-raiser will actually appear. One does not know 
if his buildings will burn, yet he insures them. We 
know that in four years out of five, some serious 
injury of insects or fungi may be confidently ex- 
pected, and it is the part of wisdom to insure against 
it. The year 1894 was a season of remarkable in- 
vasion of apple-scab fungus in New York, and those 
‘persons who sprayed their orchards thoroughly had 
phenomenal results. These expericnees, aided by 
many publications upon the subject, so advertised 
the value of the sprays that much more spraying 
was done in the state the next year than ever before. 
But it so happened, probably because of the dry 
spring, that comparatively few invasions of enemies 
