272 REPORT OF THE HorTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF THE 
treble and four times as much lime as is necessary was used and 
yet there was much bordeaux injury. In the survey of bordeaux 
injury in 1905, 55 out of the 69 men who reported injury used. 
a considerable excess of lime. The experience of horticulturists 
of experiment stations, as recorded in this bulletin,™ indicates 
that all over the United States an excess of lime does not pre- 
vent injury nor retard the toxic action of the copper salts to any 
great degree. 
It is difficult to tinderstand how the value of an excess of lime 
in bordeaux mixture has come to be so greatly overestimated. 
Almost without exception experimenters and writers recommend 
it aS a means of preventing bordeaux injury. Even so recent 
and careful an experimenter as Bain“ has fallen into the error. 
He says: “At the same time, before the sixth day after applica- 
tion, the pure basic copper has already begun to cause injury to 
the apple leaf, not because copper is entering at a more rapid 
rate than into the grape leaf, but because a far smaller dose of 
copper proves fatal to the apple leaf. Here likewise after the 
lapse of a certain time, the leaf tissues die. This injury may be 
retarded or prevented by the use of lime, just as in the grape 
leaf?’ Several similar statements may be found elsewhere in his 
work; in one of these” he makes the following positive assertion 
of the value of lime in preventing injury. “ It is especially to be 
remembered that lime prevents entirely the partial injury occur- 
ring to foliage in a moist atmosphere.” Schander, also an ex- 
perimenter and a recent writer, seems to be of two minds in 
regard to the effects of an excess of lime. He says: “All of 
these injuries have this in common, that they occur with different 
intensity according to the amount of lime in the bordeaux. For 
this reason Bain properly recommends an excess of lime as suit- 
able for counteracting the toxic action of bordeaux.” But in the 
same paragraph continues, “ Mueller, however, who conducted 
experiments along this line with four times the quantity of lime, 
found that, despite it, toxic action occurred on peaches. My 
researches with potted peaches and beans which were sprayed 
on August I, 1902, with differently combined 1 per ct. bordeaux 
mixture (I, equally alkaline reaction; II, one part CuSO, + one 
7 See letters, pp. 128-132. 
* Bain Cap: 07 Js 
*'Baitt (45 ‘p: 54)% 
™ Schander (53, p. 582). 
