PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



59 



tural commissioners should know those things. Mr. Moult on has told 

 those people what has been doing this. The thrips is working on the 

 oranges also, and Mr. Moulton will show you to-morrow the difference 

 between the work of thrips and katydids. 



MR. HICKMAN. Mr. Chairman, you spoke of the thistle in connec- 

 tion with your remarks to Mr. Hecke and speaking of that as some- 

 thing the horticultural commissioner should look after. It probably 

 is hardly second to that of the entomological feature. It was my 

 fortune some twenty-nine years ago to find a single plant in the Salinas 

 Valley. That plant I know has spread down the river into the slough 

 and the afternoon winds blew it up to the mountains. That is making 

 a vast deal of trouble. I know one man in particular that it has cost 

 several thousand dollars. I suggested to him that he pull it up but he 

 paid no attention to it. In three or four years the plant had taken the 

 land. His pasture field is no good. He plowed it up ; the rains came. 

 You know the result. That field now is several fields. That same thing 

 took place within five miles of where we are sitting now this last year. 

 It cost the county thousands of dollars to clear its roads. In that same 

 neighborhood in one particular place it had caused an erosion or wash- 

 ing out of the hillside, that you could drop this whole building in. 

 I noticed one field thirty-six years ago near San Juan where a stream 

 had brought down its detritus. I noticed that field every year was 

 plowed and never raked. When it came to raking it they could not 

 drive a horse through it because of the needles on the thistles, until two 

 years ago that particular piece was cut up and put in the hands of a 

 gardener. That piece had always cost a great deal and returned 

 nothing. This last spring, in passing through a man's orchard, he 

 said. "I can't kill that thing out." I said. "Why ?" He said. "It 

 always grows as fast as I try to get rid of it and I plow before it goes 

 to seed, when it isn't in blossom." I picked up one and showed him 

 that it was already practically in seed and he had been really sowing 

 the seed of that plant every time he cultivated it. 



Now, on the heavy lands of the Pajaro Valley this year, you notice 

 a plant that looks a good deal like lettuce. The plant in itself is per- 

 fectly harmless — that is. as regards any objectionable feature, but the 

 thing produces a seed and the more you undertake to cultivate it at 

 certain times the worse you spread it. and that thing takes the whole 

 field. There is only one way to do and that is to summer-fallow the 

 land or put in summer crop and keep it there a while. 



As regards the thistle, every orchardist and every school child should 

 know that plant. The department at Washington sends out publica- 

 tions that illustrate it so that any one that is used to recognizing things 

 from illustration would know it. I did. In the alfalfa seed I planted 

 I found the plant. I mowed the field, burned it. plowed it up ; every- 

 thing that came up was cut and burned again, and so for three years. 

 That was the only thing that saved that particular case from spread- 

 ing. I might go on for hours with illustrations of this particular work. 

 Another thing. Last Saturday night we had quite a heavy rain and 

 yesterday, in passing a neighbor's place. I saw that that rain had 

 washed off the whole surface of the ground for about twelve feet wide 

 as deep as he had plowed it. He had no business to plow the swale, in 

 the first place ; in the next place he should have protected it. Some- 



