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would be perfectly clean whilst his neighbors right alongside of him would 

 send a carload that was badly affected with codlin moth, and by the time 

 it reached San Francisco the pears and apples were full of worms. I took 

 note of all this, and on page 379 of the third biennial report will be found 

 the remedies used by these gentlemen. The name of the party is attached 

 to each remedy, and if any one will do as these gentlemen have done, they 

 certainly can make a success of it. 



Mr. I. H. Thomas, of Visalia: Three years ago last August the author- 

 ities notified us to spray trees. I did not have very much faith in spray- 

 ing, and dug up my orange and some walnut trees; there is perhaps a 

 hundred large walnut trees left. There is no scale on those trees and has 

 not been. I will refer to Mr. L. H. Titus, who has a place near Alhambra, 

 and last summer I think he had about forty acres of orange orchard, one 

 hundred and twelve acres altogether, he sold for $21,200. The scale had 

 taken possession of that orange orchard and the speculators bought it and 

 were going to cut it up and make money out of it. I saw Mr. Titus per- 

 haps three weeks before I went home, and he said " I have got some good 

 news; I was looking at my old orchard and found that every scale in that 

 place is dead;" and said he, " What is the cause of it?" I couldn't tell; 

 I do not know, but I know it is a fact that they are all dead, but whether 

 they will come again, I have nothing to say. But it shows a little encour- 

 agement to find that in that large orchard, where the trees were covered by 

 scale, that they should be dead. 



Mr. Johnston, of Richland: Perhaps there is something beyond a remedy 

 that we ought to inquire into. There is an old adage, we have often heard 

 repeated, " An ounce of preventive is worth a pound of cure." Isn't there 

 something beyond these cures that we should inquire into — the reason why 

 we have them ? Is there not something in the laws applicable to the animal 

 kingdom that is also applicable to the vegetable kingdom? I remember 

 of hearing my father, an old Pennsylvania farmer, when his neighbor in- 

 quired of him how to cure the hollow horn in his cow, tell him the best 

 cure he knew for a hollow horn was a full manger. He said to a neighbor, 

 whose colt was infested with insects, when he inquired how to get rid of 

 them, to make a hole large enough in the corn crib for the colt to get his 

 head into. Is there not something of this kind applicable to the tree? 

 Can we not find something that will prevent these insects — something that 

 will enrich the tree, or enrich the soil to such an extent that the tree will 

 be so fat that the scale insect cannot live upon it? These are questions 

 that I would like to hear discussed. The questions as to remedies are well 

 enough in their place; but if we can go back of that, and find the cause, 

 and remove the cause, we will need no remedies, for I take it for granted 

 that a scale is the result of some disease in the tree. We find that the 

 cholera never visits a cleanly city. The yellow fever never visits a city 

 that is properly taken care of. If it does, its ravages are limited. It seems 

 to me we can find something of that kind that will be a great deal cheaper — 

 something that will fertilize our soil, or our trees, to such an extent that 

 the scale would be of no effect. It has been remarked here that we suffer 

 more from a few persons to have a few trees in their yard, and neglect 

 them; that they were worse infested with the scale than orchards that are 

 well taken care of. That seems to be an argument in favor of care and 

 culture, or of nourishment. These neglected trees are sickly, and are cer- 

 tainly more liable to be infected with scales, or any insect, than the healthy 

 tree that is properly cultivated and properly nourished in the orchard; 

 and, from my experience, those that are the best taken care of, best ferti- 



