New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 353 
“yield on the average from one-third bushel to one and a half 
bushels per tree. . 
Spraying in bloom, while it thinned the fruit, did not always 
decrease the amount of marketable fruit. 
The evidence indicates that spraying in bloom has the effect 
of thinuing the fruit if the treatment is given soon after the 
blossoms open. Should the trees have but little bloom it would 
seem, therefore, that such spraying might cause a decided loss 
in yield of marketable fruit. Further experiments however, are 
needed before this point may be considered as thoroughly estab- 
lished. 
INTRODUCTION. 
S. A. BEAcH. 
The practice of spraying fruit-bearing plants in bloom, espe- 
cially apple trees, started a few years ago. Among some of the 
fruit-growers in this State it soon spread to such an extent that 
the bee-keepers became alarmed at the prospect of serious injury 
to their interests by the wholesale poisoning of the bees which 
might visit the sprayed blossoms. Accordingly they succeeded 
in 1898 in securing the enactment of a law making it a misde- 
meanor to apply any poisonous substance in any way to fruit 
trees in bloom} j 
Some of the fruit-growers who had come to believe that better 
results could be gained by spraying in bloom than by spraying at 
any other time were very much opposed to the law and tried to 
1OHAPTER 325, LAWS OF 1898. 
An act to prevent the application of poison to fruit trees while in 
blossom. 
_ The people of tne State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, 
do enact as follows: 
SEcTION 1. Any person who shall spray with, or apply in any way, 
poison or any poisonous substance to fruit trees while the same are in 
blossom, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not less than 
ten dollars nor more than fifty dollars. 
Section 2. This act shall take effect July first, eighteen hundred and 
ninety-eight. 
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