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pass away, and I can only advocate a persistent perseverance in using the 

 best appliances which we now have, and await the result. 



Mr. Block: I agree with the gentleman who preceded me as to the 

 importance of earnest industry and perseverance to destroy these insects. 

 Now, a gentleman referred to freezing the bug; now, there is such a thing as 

 smothering it, for the bug's breathing apparatus is the life of the bug, and 

 you close that with oil or rosin, or some such substance, and you can destroy 

 it. Now, let me give you a little of my experience with what you call the 

 San Jose scale. That insect, when young, is very easily destroyed; you 

 can do so very cheaply with rosin washes, and many other washes; you 

 can destroy it, I venture to say, with a wash that won't cost you more than 

 three quarters of a cent per gallon, and which will not injure your fruit. 

 These rosin washes are good. When the insect is young, just hatched, you 

 can penetrate and smother it, either with oil or a rosin wash. As it becomes 

 older, if you neglect and put off the washing from time to time — I venture 

 to say that this time is a good time to wash your trees — it is true that the 

 foliage may prevent you sometimes from reaching the insect, but just as 

 soon as you can wash it I am satisfied that you can use a great deal less 

 strength and destroy them, than as the season advances. I believe that 

 the coating that the insect gets, with one spraying it is harder to destroy; 

 it sheds, I believe, about five times before the spring, and it makes a cov- 

 ering after it sheds each coat, and remains with the covering over it, and 

 so on until you have got to penetrate five coverings before you can reach the 

 body, but if you did so at once you could destroy it much easier. I depend 

 a great deal on summer washes for destroying any insect, and I have been 

 very successful with them; but I do not claim that I can extirpate them 

 in the summer, from the fact that the foliage prevents me from reaching 

 every part of the tree; the foliage prevents me from destroying it, but you 

 can save your fruit; you can keep the tree clean, figuratively speaking, not 

 entirely free of insects, and if you follow it up I am satisfied you can 

 destroy it; but if you wait until the five coats have accumulated, in the 

 spring — by that time the buds have begun to push out— you require much 

 stronger liquor to penetrate it, and I venture to say that you are not quite 

 as successful in reaching it, and the solution you use is strong enough to 

 injure your buds in many cases, not all. but many cases, some varieties of 

 fruit buds that are more easily affected than others. If we make experi- 

 ments in that way and compare them, get information of others — I have 

 reference to the San Jose scale — I am satisfied I can extirpate it, and I am 

 satisfied that the other, with persistent effort, can be exterminated; at any 

 rate, this can be kept in check, and will not do much harm. 



Mr. B. M. Lelong: I think the best way for a person to find out what 

 remedy to use, or the one that kills the insects, the best is to examine the 

 fruit during the summer when it is in market and find out whose fruit 

 it is, from whence it came, and the remedy used. I went around this 

 year since early in the spring, and examined the fruit from the different 

 localities all over the State. Some of the fruit was all marked and stained 

 and others were burnt with caustics. I inquired at one time of Dalton 

 Brothers as to some fruit which was very clean in boxes and they told me 

 it brought 35 cents a crate more than any others, and why? Because the 

 tree had been washed by a certain remedy; they were from Mr. Runyon, 

 of Courtland; that he had been using a rosin wash during the summer and 

 his pears were very clean, not spotted. I saw others badly burnt; also 

 peaches damaged in the same way. I saw peaches that could not be given 

 away, and the commission man told me he had to pay men to cart them 

 off. So it is all over the State; one man would send in a carload that 



