THE STUDY OF HORTICULTURE. 



BY J. C. BLAIK, 



Professor of Pomology and Chief in Horticulture, University of Illinois. 



ISSUED MONTHLY. 25 CENTS A YEAR. 



T^ne cent a copy in quantities of ten or more. Send all orders to 

 C. M. Parker. Taylor^411e, 111. 



/of CONGRESS 



Copies Series, No. 10. Whole No. 34. 



3 6 I3D4_ 



Taylorville, Illinois, June, 1903. 



PLANT MEDICINES, 

 f a farmer's cow or his horse becomes ill, someone 

 as made a study of the diseases of animals and the 

 cures for the same is called in to prescribe or the farmer 

 himself gives to it some tried mixture of drugs which he 

 knows from experience will fit the case. Now if farmers 

 and fruit growers would be as careful to study the dis- 

 eases of their horticultural plants, there would be fewer 

 complaints of ''bad luck and no crop" when fruit gather- 

 ing time comes. To many people, who think it perfectly 

 natural to doctor diseased animals, the idea of buying 

 medicine for sick plants never seems to occur. Yet just 

 as certain medicines have been discovered which cure or 

 render less severe our own diseases and those of domestic 

 animals, so earnest horticultural investigators have found 

 combinations of chemicals which applied to plants rid 

 them of both disease and insects. Unfortunately there 

 are too many skeptical people, who cannot be made to 

 believe that it is worth while to do more than feel dis- 

 couraged and blame providence for a lost fruit harvest. 

 It is more often to the lack of a spray pump and plant 

 medicines than to the unkindness of providence that such 

 failures must be laid. It is true that with the increase in 

 the number of cultivated plants there has seemed also to 

 be a like increase in the number of bugs and diseases to 

 attack them, so that horticulturists of to-day really have 

 a harder fight with these pests than did their ancestors. 



