24 



lized, and, in a word, are properly taken care of, are less infected with 

 insects than those which are neglected. 



Mr. Wilcox: Mr. Block has the oldest orchard, and I want to tell you that 

 Mr. Block fertilizes his old orchard; it was run down when he took it, and 

 he uses every kind of fertilizer that he can lay his hand on; he keeps a lot 

 of boys going around with carts after ashes and hair from the tannery 

 and the refuse spent hops from the brewery, and all that kind of thing, and 

 I have often thought that Mr. Block's remedy for insects has been found in 

 something deeper than he has made known. I want to say that I exter- 

 minated the black scale on my farm, which I found on two orange trees, 

 one a Japanese and the other a sweet orange, and the way I did was to cut 

 that tree within six inches of the ground, and to burn all the top in my 

 stove, and there never has been a black scale in that farm since. I think 

 we ought to say something as to the marketing of our fruit; it is certainly 

 discouraging for any one to try to exterminate scales when you buy fruit 

 in the market covered with the scales; we can hardly buy a lemon or an 

 orange without we see the evidence of it, and we ought to have some means 

 of preventing the spread of these insects in that manner. The only thing 

 we have any great difficulty with in Santa Clara County is the codlin 

 moth; that has wings and goes from orchard to orchard, and we can see 

 the evidences of its work and that of the San Jose scale (so called) upon 

 our fruit in market. If that fruit should be confiscated by law, sustained 

 by public opinion, that would be the way to give it the most effectual blow. 



CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURAL INTERESTS ABROAD. 



Remarks by Me. D. Lubin, of Sacramento. 



I had intended to give the gist of my experience and observation in 

 European countries, especially in the fruit belt — as I walked and rode 

 over a great deal of that country — in relation to the question of fruit pests. 

 I inquired of members of the Prussian Government as to what they did 

 there. In going to these foreign countries I had letters of introduction 

 from the United States Minister, and took an interpreter with me in Austria 

 and Germany especially, and it would have appeared to me that the solu- 

 tion of this insect pest question could be best settled if we could have the 

 mode in vogue in Germany at the present day. I do not believe in copy- 

 ing as a general thing, and I do not believe in the German mode of 

 copying, especially. I saw there in their agricultural implement shops, 

 the Oliver chilled plows and other instruments we have here. I believe 

 that people should have some originality, but at the same time I do be- 

 lieve that when people have been engaged in an industry from before the 

 time of the Caesars, that there are some things that they know that we 

 should adopt immediately, and if possible improve upon. I am speaking 

 now of this question because I believe the subject is even of more impor- 

 tance than the other one. In Germany they have the most perfect system; 

 the professor, who was a leading scientist, gave me to understand that 

 there was a special society, a head chemist, a botanist, and an entomol- 

 ogist, and what position he held I do not know; he was chief of all of 

 them, and that appertained only to insect pests; they had nothing to do with 

 those branches at large, and then they have a staff of competent officers sta- 



