New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. AE 
very great, but especially where the soil was shallow, or the tree 
was not a deep rooting one, or was young and had not become 
well established. Naturally the soil in many orchards became 
so hard that the usual and much needed spring cultivations had 
to be delayed, greatly to the detriment of the trees. 
_ Following a dry September there was an excessive amount of 
rain during October, the precipitation being 2.78 inches more 
than normal—which tended to prolong the growth and prevent 
the wood from ripening properly before the end of the season. 
The prolonged dry weather of the spring furnished favorable 
conditions for insect development; and several injurious species 
became so abundant as to cause serious epidemics, and became 
an important factor in maintaining even ordinary health of the 
trees. Upon pear trees the ravages of the psylla, Psylla pyricola, 
were extremely severe. In many orchards it was a difficult mat- 
ter to save enough of the foliage to ripen the fruit; and cases 
were frequent where the fight against them had to be given up 
in despair. 
The foliage of apple orchards and nursery stock was damaged 
by an attack of ereen aphis that was no less severe. During 
the early part of the season large amounts of foliage were 
destroyed or injured, the result of which could not be other than 
to impair greatly the vigor of the trees. 
The climatic conditions and insect epidemics were further com- 
plicated and their severity increased by outbreaks of fungus dis- 
eases. Pear leaf spot, Septoria piricola Desm., was serious. in 
the Hudson Valley, where unfortunately, the psylla was most 
severe. During the period of drought there was an exceedingly 
virulent outbreak in many places of the peach leaf curl, 
Haoascus deformans (Berk.) Feckl. Where spraying had not 
been done or had been neglected until too late to be effective, 
many trees lost all of their foliage, thus further taxing the vital- 
ity of the tree. 
At the end of the winter it was evident that the trees most in- 
injured by the cold were those most seriously affected by the 
unusual climatic-conditions and the insect and fungus epi- 
demics. There can be little doubt but that it was a combina- 
tion of the effects of the cold and unusual detrimental factors 
of the previous season that caused the death or injury of many 

