New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 471 
Insects, vermin, fungi, and other troubles.—Entomologists 
usually hold that insects are more troublesome in sod 
mulched orchards than in those under tillage. Thus, 
Slingerland® states that the canker worm, curculio, borers, 
bark lice and the rosy apple aphis, are more abundant in un- 
cultivated than in cultivated orchards. The insect fauna, so 
far as it relates to orchard pests, has been carefully studied 
in the Auchter orchard during the past five years the results 
of which may be summed up as follows: 
Case-bearers, codling moth and the leaf blister mite were 
equally destructive in the two plats. The green aphis and the 
curculio did more damage on the tilled trees, but whether be- 
cause the more luxuriant foliage was better to the taste of the 
pests or because the tilled plat was bounded on the north with 
woods, can not be told. Scurfy scale, oyster-shell scale and 
woolly aphis were without question far more abundant on the 
sod-mulch plat at the end of the five years. With all of the 
insect pests the effects are less apparent on the tilled trees be- 
cause of the greater vitality of the latter; this is especially 
true of the work of the leaf blister-mite. 
The orchard has been almost wholly free from fungi. The 
trees are old enough to withstand the attacks of mice and rab- 
bits, pests commonly more abundant in sodded than in tilled 
lands. Throughout the State during the dry season of 1908 
a number of. sodded orchards have been destroyed or severely 
injured by fire but the sodded plat in this experiment has 
escaped any such calamity, though the mulch has been dry 
enough to burn had the fire started. 
FINANCIAL STATEMENT. 
One of the chief advantages. claimed for the sod-mulch 
method of caring for an orchard is that of cheapness. Table 
VII gives the expenses and the income of the Auchter orchard 
for the past five years deducting all items that would not occur 
in the care of a commercial orchard. The average cost per 
6 New York State Fruit Growers’ Association Report, 1908:19. 
