Colorado Experiment Station 
3~ 5 
arsenic then I had at last found an instance of apple trees with cor¬ 
roded crowns and all the other conditions which I had been attributing 
to the irritant action of arsenic which were not due to this cause. 
I took samples of the corroded, roots of two trees and found arsenic 
without any trouble. I knew that my friends had not tried to de¬ 
ceive me and was certain that an explanation was to be hack I sug¬ 
gested to them that potatoes might have been grown between these 
trees and had been sprayed with Paris green or possibly lead arsenate. 
This proved to be the case, and while the trees had not been sprayed as 
apple trees, they had been sprayed with the potatoes. At this time 
it is impossible to learn whether these trees had ever had the poison ap¬ 
plied directly to the body of the tree or not. A few points, however, 
are established: that the crowns of these trees were girdled, the roots 
were corroded, arsenic was present in the woody tissues of the trees, 
the trees have since died. They were never directly sprayed as apple 
trees but potatoes were grown between these trees and were sprayed 
with Paris green in the earlier years of the orchard and later with dis- 
parine, a trade name for arsenate of lead. I will here mention another 
case, a little different it is true, but somewhat to the point suggested by 
the preceding instance. Two young trees were set in the places of two 
dead trees and stood three years and died. Prof. Whipple was asked 
to examine the trees, and suspected that they had been killed by arse¬ 
nic, but these trees had never been sprayed. I visited Grand Junction 
soon after that and he asked that I go) and see these trees, for if 
the facts were wholly as stated to him I might have to make some ex¬ 
ceptions to my general statements. I went and found that the owner 
had pulled them up and buried them. We dug them up, washed them 
off and examined them. I, too, felt certain that they had been killed 
bv arsenic. The owner at first insisted that they had never been 
sprayed, which in one sense was true, but he admitted that the boys 
had turned the spray on them as they drove past them while spraying 
the orchard. I asked him for the history of the trees and found that 
he had a young orchard three years old and these two trees were from 
the same nursery lot which he had planted in the young orchard. I 
asked him how many trees had died and he said none but the two trets 
that he had set in the places of two old sprayed trees and which 
they had just sprinkled as they drove by with the spray tank. The 
crowns and roots were corroded and arsenic was present in the woody 
tissues of the one that I examined. I give the cases of these four trees as 
suggesting, but nothing more than suggesting, the answer to a question 
which has frequently been asked: Is it safe to plant young trees 
in an old, long sprayed orchard? I have uniformly confessed my in¬ 
ability to give an answer to this question. These cases certainly sug¬ 
gest the possibility of danger, especially if the soil filled in around the 
crown should chance to be rich in arsenic. 
This and other serious questions are by no means new to many of 
our orchardists. One of them rather anxiously asked me in the early 
spring of 1909. “What are our old orchard lands worth?” This, too, is 
