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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

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AMHERST

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1897-

1905

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(Organized March 21, 1895.)

REPORT I ,. ^., ^,,

U "ven TY Of

OF THE

MaSSACHUSETI

THIRD ANNUAL MEE|'ir^j.;^^|^ftS

HELD IN

.Horticultural Hall. Worcester^

■4^-C<--l'-C'-^>dy^t^'f^'/cd-

TBHorccstcr, flftass.:
Press of F. S. BLANCHARD & CO.
_ 1897.

N

^

THIRD ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

HELD AT

WORCESTER, MARCH lo and ii, 1897.

OPENING SESSION.
Wednesday Morning, 3Iarch 10th.

The meeting was called to order at 10.30 by the president of
the association, James Draper of Worcester.

Mr. Draper addressed the members brief ly, reviewing the field
meetings held the past season — one at Fitchburg, which was
most satisfactorily planned and carried out under the direction
of Mr. George Cruikshanks, and the other at Concord, under
the management of Vice-President Hartwell, assisted by Mr.
Charles Prescott of Concord. At each of these meetings there
were nearly one hundred members in attendance.

At Fitchburg the vineyards and orchards of Dr. Jabez
Pisher and Mrs. George B. Andrews were visited, and the ten-
acre strawberry plantation of Mr. A. A. Marshall. Here din-
ner was served and brief after-dinner talks were indulged in.
The successful introduction' of an irrigating plant to the cul-
ture of strawberries was the objective point of interest at this
place. At Mr. T. J. Sanderson's we found a most remarkable
show of plums on a very limited area of land and giving prom-
ise of a prodigious crop of fruit.

At Concord the fruit farms of Messrs. Frank Wheeler and
George Wright were inspected, and the effect of girdling the
vine to produce an earlier crop of grapes was shown the party.
At Mr. Charles Prescott's dinner was served, and his fruit, gar-
den and vegetable plots were visited.

At Mr. Wm. H. Hunt's we were also entertained, and a trip
to the points of historical interest around Concord added great-
ly to the pleasure of the visitors. At the home of Vice-Presi-
dent Hartwell, in Lincoln, we found a most remarkable show
of the Gravenstein apple, both in extent of the orchard and the
excellence of the product. His extensive fruit grounds were
inspected with much interest till the time for the home trip
was announced. It may well be said that these two field days
were red-letter ones in the history of our organization.

President Draper announced with regret the inability of the
president of the Worcester Horticultural Society, Mr. O. B.
Hadwen, to be present to extend the welcome and hospitality
of the society to the Fruit Growers' Association. He trusted
that he might be able to attend the meeting before an adjourn-
ment was made.

In perfecting the arrangements for this session the officers
have planned for the discussion of three topics and the re-
mainder of the time to be given to the question-box problems.

The annual report of the secretary was next in order, and
Prof. S. T. Maynard, secretary of the association, was called.

Professor Maynard — The report of the secretary will be very
brief and will be confined to the matter of membership. The
report of the last annual meeting has appeared in full in the
crop report for May, published by the State Board of Agricul-
ture and distributed to all the members of the association,
while the report of the field meetings at Fitchburg and Con-
cord have been compiled for the annual report of the State
Board and will soon be published.

The membership for the year 1895 was 68. In the year 1896
additions to the roll to the number of 72 were made, making
the full membership 140. Of these additions 47 were made at
our last annual meeting, 21 at the Fitchburg meeting and 4 at
the Concord meeting.

In addition to the keeping of the records and the list of

I

members, the secretary is called upon to collect the annual
dues from the members. Quite a number are in arrears for
the past year. It is hoped that all dues will be met promptly
at this meeting, that we may be enabled to meet promptly all
bills incurred in connection with it — such as the employment
of stenographers and the compilation and publication of the
full proceedings of this annual meeting.

The President — Our treasurer, Mr. E. W. Wood, will now
present his report for the past year.

Treasurer Wood :

There remained in the hands of the treas-
urer at the last annual meeting, March
12, 1806, 130 59

Received for membership fees and an-
nual dues, 132 00

Interest on deposit to Jan. 1, 1897, 3 88

1166 47

The expenditures have been as follows:
March 13, 1896. Paid C. H. Perkins, ad-
dress and ex})enses, $25 00
March, 1897. Paid printing programs,

notices, etc., 16 95

Paid postage for year, 11 25

Paid expenses of secretary, office tele-
grams, etc., 4 15

57 35

Leaving a balance on hand March 10, 1897, of |109 12

The reports of the secretary and treasurer were accepted
and ordered placed on file.

The President — The chair would suggest that, as the annual
election of officers occurs on the afternoon of to-morrow, it
might be a saving of valuable time if a committee was ap-
pointed to present a list of officers in advance of that hour.

Mr. (leorge Cruikshanks of Fitchburg — I move that a com-

mittee of five be appointed by the chair to select a list of offi-
cers to be presented to the meeting Thursday afternoon. Car-
ried.

The chair — As I would like to make up this nominating com-
mittee from different sections of the state, that all parts may
have a fair representation on the board, I will ask the privilege
of announcing the same later in the session. You will pardon
a further suggestion from the chair at this time. We are here
for earnest work and we must make the most of our time, and
I would suggest that we proceed at once to the discussion of
the morning topic, and, in order to give all the time possible,
continue this session until 12.30 before an adjournment is
made for dinner. On the morrow, to accommodate many who
will be obliged to leave on trains between 3.30 and 4 o'clock,
we might plan to adjourn the morning session at 12.15 and
commence promptly at 1.30 in the afternoon. Hearing no ob-
jection, we will act accordingly.

The topic for this morning is: "Does the Successful Culti-
vation of the Peach in This State Depend Upon the Control
of Peach Yellows by Legislation?" I take pleasure in introduc-
ing as the speaker on this question a gentleman who has given
the matter much attention^Mr. Arthur M. Clement of Boston.

Mr. Clement, Mr. President, Members of the Fruit Groivers^ Association:

It is certainly with a great deal of pleasure that I tell you what I
have learned in regard to the subject of yellows. I will say I am
very glad to meet the farmers of Massachusetts, because
I believe there is no one class of people on the face of the
earth to whom we can appeal for good common sense
better than the farmers. If a man makes an assertion he wants some
proof of it. I should consider that I had fallen short of my duty to-
day if, in regard to peach yellows, I did not tell you everything so far
as it has come under my observation. Thirty years of my life were
spent on a peach farm in Massachusetts. I can't remember the time
when we did not have peaches growing on my father's farm. We had
very little trouble with the disease called yellows. Most of our trees
were planted from trees raised in the nursery. I believe we got good
stock in that way. My father was a fruit grower as well as a nursery
man. In all details of nursery work I believe I had a thorough educa-
tion. Just after the close of the Civil war, agents began to come out
to our section to sell New Jersey trees. It was from these New Jersey

trees that we first began to have our trouble. They were sold at a very-
much less price than we could sell our trees. We kept our own trees
several years, but could not sell them at New Jersey prices. "We had
a price on our trees and one on New Jersey trees. We could not com-
pete with them as nurserymen. The great difficulty in the nursery
with peach stock is the winter -killing of dormant buds, which trouble
they do not meet with in New Jersey, but in Massachusetts it is the
great drawback. Nurserymen could buy trees in New Jersey for
less money than it cost them to raise the trees here. We bought trees
of Wm. Reed, New Jersey, for a time, then bought of a Connecticut
firm as long as we continued in the business. I tell you the nursery
men are not as much to blame for selling as the farmers are for buy-
ing this kind of stock. In the matter of the bill which is before the
Legislature at present, its aim is to drive out from our markets inferior
fruits. I do not want the farmers who are selling diseased fruit to
think I am persecuting them, for in the year 1895, 376,000 baskets of
peaches were brought to Boston largely from the yellow section of New
Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. These were distributed by the
wholesale houses throughout New England. A great many people
have been eating diseased fruit so much that they do not know the
taste of a good peach. The quality of a poor peach is much inferior to
that of a good one. It is thought that the people know but little about
it. You can deceive small buyers, but you can't deceive the whole-
sale dealers in fruit. Now for the very fact that a large amount of
diseased fruit is brought into our markets, thence going all over New
England, being distributed through the wholesale houses and from
them to the consumers, it is a question that the farmers in this vicin-
ity can well consider for their own interests. If this law is put into ef-
fect you will be the gainer 10 to 1. In the first place this diseased fruit by
the new law will be shutout, the same as in Connecticut, New York
and Pennsylvania. We have 60 out of 62 receivers and wholesale deal-
ers in Boston who signed that petition in favor of a bill for keeping out
that stuff from our markets. They all stated that it was a curse to the
other fruit. I have an orchard myself of 4500 trees in Plymouth county
that I am in hopes to make some money from. I think this bill is for
the benefit of the farmers and fruit growers of Massachusetts. They
will be financially benefited by it. There is only one class of farmers
who will appear to be injured,— it is those who have some trees that
are diseased, and if this law goes into effect these trees will all have to
come down. It is from this class that the opposition mainly
comes.

I want to say a little more in regard to this matter of fruit in our
market. We had all the large dealers of fruit in Boston except two on
our petition, and I secured them myself. I went to the various firms
in the interests of the orchardists, and told them I wanted their names
on this petition, and that we wanted the bill passed by the Legisla-
ture of Massachusetts to control the disease known as the yellows,

8

whether it appears in the trees or the fruit in the market. They said
in nine cases out of ten, we know well enough that this diseased fruit
is a curse to the market; it comes to us and knocks the price of the
good fruit flat. We know that there are lots of peaches that are
not good for anything, but we do not know how to get rid of them.
The testimony in Boston was that this bill would enable them to sell
more good fruit instead of selling something that is very inferior.
With this disease the first year, the peach is not so bad, but the second
year it is bitter, insipid, tasteless. If I should try to give you my
theory, I believe I should do you a great injustice, but I believe I can
do better than that. In 1887 the Department of JAgriculture in Wash-
ington, knowing the great trouble with peach growing, appointed a
special agent. Prof. Erwin F. Smith, with unlimited power, to go
wherever he chose, take whatever necessary to accomplish purpose
required, use as much money as he pleased and find out so far as pos-
sible about this disease. Now this has been going on for ten years,
with the exception of the last three or four, and during this time prog-
ress has been pretty generally stopped. Investigation was thorough
so far as it went, but the bottom has not been reached yet, for the rea-
son that the best men in the country can not give us the cause of it.
Nobody knows the cause of the disease, but they can tell a great deal
about it. In the first place, Prof. Smith tells us, "It is a specific disease?
clearly defined and readily determined in tree or fruit by certain un-
mistakable symptoms or signs," which is all we need to know about
the diagnosis of the disease.

Now we have some people in Massachusetts who say it is a condition,
not a disease, brought about in a certain way. Now if you are
stricken down with a fever, you call a doctor and he will determine
the disease by the visible symptoms. If a peach tree is sick we must
call in a peach doctor and he will determine the disease by the visible
symptoms. If your tree shows certain symptoms which invariably ac-
company peach yellows, it is just as much a disease as the fever. The
next thing is, is it a contagious disease? I say candidly that the best
authorities are in the large majority who call it a contagious disease.
Now I am not going to read these long documents to you (I brought
them here for reference), but every man present should secure Farmer's
Bulletin No. 17, which can be obtained gratis on applying to secretary
of agriculture, Washington. I believe all the information that any
man needs to know about peach yellows he can read in this Bulletin.
When I went into this investigation in 1894, I said I want to find the
truth and I am going to find it. I did not know what Prof. Maynard
had done or taught until I studied the reports of the Agricultural Col-
lege. The law in Michigan, which is wanted here, has tended to in-
crease the orchards and almost entirely check the spread of this dis-
ease. I believe thoroughly that it is contagious, and in dealing with it
as with a contagious disease. I believe there has been less progress

made on this subject the last twenty years in Massachusetts than any
other matter pertaining to horticulture.

In Bulletin No. 8, Prof. Maynard says that peach trees con-
tinue in health only from eight to twelve years in Massachusetts, that
you rarely find orchards older than that in healthy state. Now I
make this statement and believe it is true, and I say it in the light of
the Michigan successes, that our peach orchards ought to be thirty
years old before they show any signs of decay. I know of a tree that is
twenty-five years old and doing well. A peach should ripen on the tree.
We cannot bring it over from Michigan and have the best flavor. We are
doing ourselves a great injustice in so treating our orchards that sup-
plies must come from other sections when Massachusetts can furnish
the best fruit from home market. Our diseased trees must come down,
and I believe there are men who signed petition in opposition to this
bill who will never get another crop of healthy fruit from their or-
chards. If they are not taken down by order of an inspector, the disease
itself will take them down very soon. Peach yellows is a contagious
disease, so Prof. Taftof Michigan declares. Prof. Bailey of Cornell
University thinks it is a curse to the land and recommends legislation to
check its progress. From information that I have been able to gather from
reliable sources, I believe the disease is contagious; it maybe conveyed
from seemingly healthy buds, when taken from diseased trees. Take
the bud and insert it in a healthy tree and it will produce yellows with-
in sixteen months, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. This is the
proof in hundreds of cases that the disease is communicable by con-
tact.

Prof. Maynard said he found that most of the fruit growers were op-
posed to the bill. I believe that he is entirely misinformed, as their peti-
tion in opposition had but ten names. We had our petition circulated in
over forty towns and had the names of more than 200 growers. In some
towns every man that signed the petition was a peach grower of large
extent. We did not try to get everyone, but we did get a petition of
good size. I do say in this matter we have got to give the public the
best information that we have access to, and then let them act as they
will. I do not want to present anything to you that is not exactly the
truth. I will try and give to you the diagnosis determined by symp-
toms, which are always an accompaniment of the disease, by which you
will know that the tree has got the yellows, nothing but the yellows.
Wherever you find small red spots on the skin with mottled flesh on
premature peaches having high color, it is invariably the yellows, and
nothing else. Prof. Smith, Taftand Bailey all agree that it is the infal-
lible mark of the disease in the fruit. You can tell the difference be-
tween red and yellow just as easily as you can tell the difference be-
tween good and poor fruit. They also declare the Michigan method of
treatment a grand success, hence its introduction here is desired. My
time is now up. I thank you for your attention.

10

The president — I will now announce the Committee on Nom-
ination of Officers:

Mr. George Cruikshanks, Fitchburg.

Mr. Jonathan Eames, Sherborn,

Mr. S. S. Stetson, Lakeville.

Mr. Ethan Brooks, Springfield.

Mr. John G. Aver}', Spencer.

The president — I will call upon Professor Maynard of tl
Massachusetts Agricultural College.

Professor Maynard — I will just say a few words about the
report which has been mentioned (bulletin No. 17 of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture) on peach yellows. With all the money
spent, no person has yet been able to detect a germ, and until
that is done there can be no proof that the disease can be com-
municated. Yellows may be a disease, but what it is is not
known. Of the nine hundred trees examined at the Agricul-
tural College a few years ago only sixty were found to have
the yellows, and in these the trunks were injured either by
frost or insects. 1 do not believe in making a law to destroy
trees when we cannot diagnose the disease. Professor Smith
says in his report: ^'\Te do not know what it is, only that the
trees will die under the very best conditions within ten or
fifteen years. '

Mr. Draper — I should like to hear from Mr. Hinds of Town-
send.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend — I have been engaged in grow-
ing peaches for the last twenty-four years, so I have had a
little experience. At present 1 have two thousand trees, and
they all came from New Jersey. I do not find many with the
yellows. I have healthy trees. I have not taken pains to study
up, but I have come to the conclusion that the yellows is
caused by too much fertilizer, or frost or wet.

You know the statement has been made that a man who
does not believe peach yellows is a disease shows his ignor-
ance. I do not want to get up here and show mine.

Mr. J. M. Hubbard, Peach Commissioner of the State of Con-
necticut— I feel, Mr. President, just as Mr. Hinds does, that this
is a matter which concerns the fruit growers of Massachusetts.
They ought to settle it, but if I can bring anything from my

11

experience in Connecticut I shall be glad to do so. Our ex-
perience is hardl}' conclusive. We have been working under
a law such as is proposed by the Massachusetts Legislature
for four years. So we can hardly give you conclusive results.
As to its being contagious, we know that it spreads from
town to town and from state to state. It has been for many
years in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. It goes wherever
peach culture is carried on. We know that in Michigan the
trees die by sections, and finally whole orchards die.

While not absolutely experimental, we know that it is now
more in check and does not interfere with fruit culture in
Michigan. You must not wait until every one is convinced
that it is a disease. Some will maintain that there is no proof
that peach yellows is contagious. In this state you will find
people who have a few trees in their door-yard who do not
interest themselves in the reason of this. There are farmers
who do not believe it is a disease, yet they feel disturbed about
it. We do not think the yellows is the only disease with
peach trees. I am not going to recommend this law to the
fruit growers of Massachusetts, but I certainly believe that
some measure of this kind is of great importance to every
peach grower who is ever to be successful in Massachusetts.
No peaches brought into Boston equal those grown in New
England. We all want to supply the Boston market. Bui
about this subject of peach yellows I think there ought to be
some forward steps taken.

Mr. F. J. Kinney, Worcester — Now, I am interested in grow-
ing peaches to make money. 1 want to know if these yellow
peaches are unhealthy to eat.

Answer — No, I do not think so.

Afternoon Session, Wednesday/, March 10, 2 o^ clock.

President Draper in the chair.

The chair — Those of you who have watched the methods of
conducting institute work in this state will bear in mind that
a great deal of stress has been brought to bear on the matter
of increasing the products of the soil.

In arranging for this meeting to-day we feel that the com-
mercial side of the problem should be treated, and we are very

12

fortunate in having with us Mr. W. H. Blodj?et of this city,
who has hirge experience in this direction, and I now take
pleasure in introducing Mr. Blodget to the members of the
Fruit Growers' Association.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers'
Association: The subject I am to call your attention to is, namely:
" The Commercial Side of the Fruit Growing Industry of this Country,"
and in my opinion it is a very important one. It is being discussed by
dealers and horticulturists all over the country, and will be continu-
ally discussed until improvements are made. The fruit business in our
country has been done too long already in a slip -shod sort of a way.
Certain sections have already done much to make improvements, and
I must say that California has set an example which can well be fol-
lowed by other sections. She has been working in the right direction,
putting her fruit up in neat and attractive packages, getting them to
her distant markets in good shape and placing them on the market at
once by the most advanced methods.

Now, what we want to do here in the East is to do what we have
done and do it better; then do more. Some of our old ways are all
right if improved upon. Then by doing more, I mean keep watch for
improvements. Keep your eyes open when in your markets and if
you see a package of fruit put up neatly and attractively, notice it and
see if you cannot put one up equally as good. I have gained more
good ideas in my business by being on large markets with my eyes
open than in any other way. We are never too old to learn. I shall
confine my talk mostly to the apple industry, as we in this section are
more interested in that kind of fruit than any other, after which I shall
also take up the other kinds as we come to them. Now, with your
permission, I wish to go back a little from the subject given me,
namely, "Packing and Handling of Fruit," and say a few words in
reference to raising fruit. Of course you all know well that the first
necessary point is to cultivate and raise good fruit. Get good
varieties, those that are adapted and do best in our climate. Then
raise them well, and by this I mean cultivate and fertilize your trees
so as to get good size and color to your fruit, and in a season like the
past one, thin out your fruit, and get one apple where you did three
this last year, and that one large apple will bring more than the three
small ones. The time has passed when small fruit will do. Now, the
demand of our markets is for nice, large fruit, and for such the
people are willing to pay a good, fair market price, while the small
fruit goes to the peddler or huckster trade at low prices. Good fruit
sells itself, and poor fruit sells the man that buys it. Therefore, strive
to raise nice, large fruit. But it is not all in raising good fruit, for you
can spoil good fruit in handling and packing, and right here I am
reminded of a story I read a few days ago. Two boys, Jim and John,
gathered a few hickory nuts, put them up in a bag, and one nice

13

morning started off to sell them. When they arrived there, John
stayed with the nuts to sell them and Jim went off on other business.
In about three hours Jim returned and saw John standing beside the
bag of hickory nuts, and said to him: " John, how are you getting
along? " John said: " I have stood here a long while and lots of people
have passed by and no one has even asked me what I had in the bag."
Jim said: "Let me try." He went to a near-by grocery store and got
a few small paper bags, came back and filled about a dozen of them,
rolled down the top of the large bag so as to show the contents nicely,
and called to people that were passing by, " Hickory nuts, five cents
a bag"; and within a short time he had disposed of one-half of the
nuts, when out came a near-by confectioner and scooped up the whole
lot. Moral: It is not all that is necessary to have good wares, but it is
also necessary to make them attractive and put them on the market
in proper shape.

Now we will suppose and take it for granted that you all know how
and will grow good fruit from now on. Now, how to gather our apples
and do it right. The very best advice I can give you on the start is
the advice my father used to give me when I was a boy and working
on the farm, and that was, " Handle your apples as though they were
eggs." Don't allow your apples to be thrown into the baskets, but lay
them in carefully. Recollect all the time, you are handling eggs, and
if you throw them they will break. Do not allow an apple that
has fallen on the ground, no matter how good it looks, to go in with
your number one picked fruit.

Don't let your fruit get too ripe, for the ripening process is the first
stages of the decaying process. When the apple can be readily severed
from its union to the branch, that is the time to pick it. One great
trouble with our apples last season was they matured early and were too
ripe when picked. The decaying process had already set in, and for that
reason our apples arrived in foreign markets in bad condition, no
matter how much pains were taken in the packing. Now, I have told
you how and when to pick your fruit, and the next thing is when and
how to assort and pack it. After picking, empty your fruit carefully
on the ground. Don't stand up and spill them out of the basket. Let
them out carefully; all the time recollect you are handling eggs and
you won't let them drop a great ways. Don't see how large a pile you
can make, but put them not over a foot or a foot and one-half deep,
and they should not be allowed to lie in the pile over one or two days.
Then assort them carefully, making three assortments: number one,
number two, and cider apples, and in your number one pile put none
but perfect apples and none smaller than 2] inches in diameter, which
is according to the rules adopted by the National Apple Shippers'
Association.

Have baskets with swing handles and of a size that will slip down in
the barrel and turn over inside the barrel. Never empty a basket
from the top of the barrel, and before emptying any in the barrel, see

14

that they are clean, and by the way I think a great mistake is made
in using old barrels.

My man, whom I had in Liverpool for three months this fall, tells
me that apples put up in new, flat-hooped barrels of flour barrel size,
will sell from one to two shillings more per barrel than fruit in old
barrels. Put paper in the end of the barrels, then double face stem
end down, then put in one or two baskets of fruit and shake down
carefully. Then one or two more baskets and shake carefully, and
so on until the barrel is full, and by full I mean about three inches
above the chime of the barrel, then put on your head and press them
down.

Don't be afraid of jamming a few apples; let them jam. Better jam
them than to have them shake around in the barrel and jam them-
selves. And be sure the head is put in strong and tight, with a little
piece of hoop as a facer. Turn your barrel over and mark plainly the
variety, and whether it is number one or two fruit. Xow, we have got
the fruit ready for market, and know where and how to market it, and
right here let me say I have studied the wants of our local markets, of
southern and western markets, and had a man in Europe several
months to find the wants of that market, and we find they all want
good fruit, well packed, and I can tell you that our own little city of
Worcester is as particular and as willing to pay for a good thing as
any market you can find. If you wish to ship to markets in this
country, look sharp and send to some good, reliable commission
house, and be sure they are reliable, as there are continually
springing up snide houses which will give you big quotations in order
to secure your shipments, but the check you receive will be small or
none at all. Therefore look sharp to whom you send. If you wish to
ship to any foreign market, work through some one that represents a
good foreign house, and they ^ill take good care of your shipment and
will give you a check next day after sale is made. I have given you
advice as to shipping to all of the markets, for if you have followed
my instructions in putting up your fruit, it will stand shipment to any
point you wish.

Now, a few words in reference to other kinds of fruit. First, the
pear. Put them in barrels if you wish. Follow the same instructions
in handling and packing as I have given in reference to apples. A
good way is to have some bushel boxes made with the bottom nailed
on the top. Then put in a nice, clean paper, then face the bottom
with a layer of nice, large pears, fill the boxes, nail on the cover and
turn the box over and brand what was the bottom, but will now be
the top, with kind of pears, etc. A few years ago I packed a few nice
pears in boxes made same size as California pear boxes, which hold a
little less than a bushel, papered each as they do, and sent them to a
New York auction house, and they sold for -82.50 per box. I paid -SI. 25
per bushel. So you see I got good pay for the extra work. Now a
word on peaches. I know of no better way for you people in this

15

section to put up your peaches than in our common Delaware size
peach basket, but be particular in sorting and make up your number
one fruit good from top to bottom. Now, a word on strawberries and
other small fruit. Have them picked clean, put up in clean baskets,
and don't be particular in getting back your basket. Let the baskets
go with the fruit and use new ones each time. It will pay you to do
so. In New York and Boston they have even gone so far as to let the'
crates go also, but I hardly think it necessary here, but the baskets
should go and new ones be used each time. Now, a few words in
reference to marketing your small fruits. I think the growers in this
section, and by this I mean those who live near and market their fruit
in Worcester, make a great mistake in trying to handle their fruit
themselves. I can tell you, gentlemen, any man who is handling fruit
the year roundjand has customers whom they supply from one year's
end to another, can do better by your fruit than you can yourself, who
only have the experience of a fruit dealer for a few days each season.
You can well afford to pay the small commission which a commission
merchant would charge. Concentrate your fruit in one place, then
you concentrate the buyei's, and the competition is with the buyers
and not with the sellers, as it is under your present system. You will
probably say, " Now he is talking for his own interests," but it is not
so, for I am telling you what I think and know. You can place your
fruit with us or any other good commission house in the city, and
when the season is over you will have more money in your
pockets.

I certainly hope the dawn of better days is upon us and the dis-
couraging season of the past year will not soon return. Prices have
been lower than ever before, and it has been hard work to sell the
goods.

Then, again, the quality of our fruit, as a general thing, has been
very poor, and all things considered has made a very discouraging
year for both raisers and dealers. Another great trouble with the
fruit industry of this country is that there are too many men in the
business that are like a cold, drizzling rain that puts a damper on
everything, and too few men in the business that are like a good,
sharp shower of (Hale), such as they have in South Glastonbury, Ct.
But, gentlemen, you can all be Hale if you try. Perhaps not quite as
large and quite as hard, but you can all Hale at it, and if you do, after
a few years you can have your families (Drapered) in fine apparel,
and you will be hailing the passers-by to find out which is the safest
bank to deposit your money in.

If you will do your part better in raising and putting up better fruit,
we dealers can and will do our part better, and before another year
comes round you will be obliged to buy larger pocketbooks to hold
your money which has come to you by a better and more pains-
taking system of raising, grading, handling and marketing your
fruit.

16

The chair — I know that Mr. Blodget will be pleased to an-
swer any questions.

Mr. W. H. Johnson of Northboro — I understand that we have
commission dealers who are sending agents into other states
to gather inferior qualities of fruit that have been rejected in
other markets.

Mr. Blodget — Possibly. But I think you are talking of some-
thing of which you are not well informed. Fruit brought here
and sold at auction is the best fruit we can purchase from
Delaware, Maryland and Michigan. Of course, we have to
take what comes and sell it for as good price as possible. Com-
mission dealers prefer good to poor fruit, and there is a sur-
plus of the latter.

Mr. Samuel Hartwell of Lincoln — I have been informed that
it has been done by their agents. I do not include gentlemen
here, however.

Mr. Blodget — Persons selling fruit are obliged to sell what
comes to them for just as much as they can.

Mr. Hartwell — I think Mr. Blodget has not stated whether
apples after they are picked should be stored at once or left
out until the frost settles upon them.

Mr. Blodget — I should prefer to have my apples put in very
soon after they are picked. The great trouble with apples is
that they get too ripe to pick. Apples, if they are to be put
into a chemical refrigerator, may be left out a longer time. Do
not let your apples get too ripe.

Mr. Hartwell — Another thing. You cannot pick the whole
of them at once. If you have a large quantity you must com-
mence early. This year has been an exception to previous
years. The market has been so full that a man could not get
a good price for them.

Mr. Blodget — Not only fruit raising, but fruit shipping has
been rather discouraging this year.

Mr. Hartwell — I shipped one carload of 160 barrels to Bosr
ton and I got back a check for $20.96.

Mr. Blodget — You did better than one man I know of in
New Hampshire, who sent 600 barrels and got back |6.

Mr. T. J. Sanderson of Fitchburg — In what way would you
put up plums?

17

Mr. Blodget — In baskets, put in crates.

Mr. Sanderson — In small baskets?

Mr. Blodget — No. Put in grape baskets that will hold, say,
eight or ten pounds. I think plums are the most discouraging
of any kind of fruit, except pineapjjles. They arrive here in
the middle of the day and we have to keep them over until
the next day, and very often they will decay in one night. Is
the commission merchant to blame for the poor sale? If you
take pains to put them up perfectly dry they will be in much
better shape for the morning sale.

The chair — Pardon the chair a moment. The annual dues
are due at this meeting, and Messrs. Wood and Hartshorn will
collect them as they have the opportunity.

Mr. H. O. Meade of Lunenburg — As a commission merchant
can you sell early picked apples as well as you can sell high-
colored ones? Have you got to pick your apples before they
are ripe, or let them stay on the tree until they are just ready?

Mr. Blodget — Do not let your apples get too ripe before you
pick them.

Mr. M. W. Longley of Shirley — I would like to know what
time you would advise thinning apples.

Mr. W. H. Blodget — Get them off early — the sooner the
better.

Mr. M. H. Vincent of Conway — In regard to the thinning of
plums and apples, the sooner you can thin the fruit the better
it is. For instance, in the plum — and we have some fifteen
hundred trees — we always wait for the time of the curculio.
We wait until their season is passed; the sooner then the bet-
ter. In regard to the packing of plums, I believe that in small
packages they sell more readily. I have packages from one
to four quarts. I put these boxes into crates — my four-quart
ones I mean ; my pint boxes I use for raspberries. I have never
had one word of fault found in shipping raspberries, and I be-
lieve in shipping fruit in small packages. Plums I put in
larger packages, and put in a paper lining and cover them.

Mr. Sanderson of Fitchburg — I wish to ask when does the
curculio appear.

Mr. Vincent of Conway — I don't know any particular date,
but you can tell when the skin shows signs of it. Most of my
2

18

plums are of the Japanese varietY, and I do not think that the
curculio works badly upon them.

Mr. J. G. Avery of Spencer — Those of the Fruit Growers'
x\ssociation who had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Sanderson's
l)lum orchard last fall will be interested to hear an account
of the last season.

Mr, Sanderson of Fitchburg — In the plum business we must
do everything that we possibly can to keep off the black-knot.
If you want to destroy a plum orchard the best wa.y to do it is
to plow it. A man has no business with a plow in the plum
orchard, for the ground is so thoroughly filled with little plum
roots that if you disturb the ground you will sever the roots.
I cover the ground' so completely with muck that nothing but
plums — no weeds — can grow. 1 put leaves on eighteen inches
deep, and these hold the moisture. No man can raise plums
or peaches unless his orchard is thoroughly watered. When
yo'i cover the ground thoroughly the sun cannot penetrate
and dry it up. If you keep your peach and plum orchards
moist you will not have to cry peach yellows or black-knot. I
rely on this most wholly. I cover my ground four inches deep
with horse manure, and I do not believe that you can over-fer-
tilize a plum orchard. The one great secret in raising plums —
keep this strongly in mind — is to see that they are always sup-
plied with water and fertilized highly.

The chair — What was the revenue last fall from your plum
orchard ?

Mr. T. J. Sanderson of Fitchburg — My patch is very small,
as you know. Last year I sold 142 pecks for |142, and
when I got through I had more orders for plums than I had
sold. I believe that there is more money in plum culture than
there is in peach culture. If you undertake to raise plums
without food and water, you undertake what the Lord did not
do in the Garden of Eden.

Mr. S. F. Record of Worcester — I would like to ask of the
last speaker if his hens scratch and disturb his plum orchard
very much.

Mr. Sanderson of Fitchburg — Hens can't scratch as much
as the plow. Hens will scratch the ground thoroughly, and if
you keep the hens there, keep the mud so deep that the hens

19

can't scratch it up. A hen can't hurt an orchard very much.
They kill the insects, but the ground will dry up three times as
quickly as though you did not keep them there. We have a
large cemetery in Fitchburg, and there are lots of dead grass
and leaves. I go over there and get them and put them in
my plum orchard, and I do not want any of my good Fitchburg
friends to take them away from me,

"What do you think causes black-knot?" asked a man from
Boston of me the other day.

'^Oh," said I, "it is an insect."

Another man said that it was a fungous growth. So different
people have different ideas what black-knot is. Every tree
has a language. If you overwork a peach tree, the tree will
be contrary and turn yellow. When you go to work on a plum
tree, if you do not do everything just right the tree will tell
you in its language, "Black-knot." This is the language of
the plum to tell you that you are not doing just right: "Mr.
Farmer, I do not want all of my roots broken up with the
plow." When you do everything just right, you won't be
troubled with black-knot above what you are able to bear —
just as when you see a little smut on your corn you are not
discouraged.

Mr. Ethan Brooks of Springfield — 1 want to inquire of our
speaker if one can't do better than pouring apples into a basket.
I always have a man lay mine in carefully.

Mr. Blodget — That is a good plan if you can trust one man
to do it and have the time.

Mr. Brooks — I do not consider it a tedious job to sort ap-
ples and put them into a barrel.

Mr. Sanderson — If I had an acre instead of a garden patch,
I should have got |1,250 out of it. I picked fourteen pecks
from one tree and sold them for |14. Now, you can get 290
trees to the acre if you have that kind. So, you see, what a
profitable thing it is to raise plums.

Mr. Edwin Hoyt of New Canaan, Conn. — What is the name
of this plum?

Mr. Sanderson — Lombard. If I had all Lombards I should
more than double my money. It is the best kind for money
making.

20

Mr. E. S. Young of Orange — Gentlemen. I think I have been
successful in having black-knot. However, I have been fight-
ing it for twenty years. I was led into the culture of the
jilum the same way I was led into the hen business, and I have
come to the conclusion that wiiat I don't know about black-
knot and its remedies is not worth knowing. I have tried all
the remedies and have been very careful to trim the trees and
look after the "fungary and spores," but still black-knot is
there. I have used turpentine, but to no effect. I have hens
and hogs in the orchard, and the black-knot is there and a
mighty few trees.

Mr. Sanderson — Have you mulched your ground lately?

Mr. Young — No, I never did mulch m.y ground; but the mud
was eighteen inches deep. I think I made a great mistake, but
I do not agree with you in some respects. I notice that there
were plum trees long before Columbus ever discovered Amer-
ica. I do not believe the soil has ever been disturbed, and the
trees are literally covered with black-knot. The wild cherry
trees are similarly effected. I had a neighbor who had a
couple of cherry trees, and for years and years they produced
nothing but black-knot. I gave him |5 to cut them down. I
had another neighbor who had an old-fashioned cherry tree,
and he had a plum tree that was covered with black-knot also.
Gentlemen, I tell you that it is a disease. In my mind, gentle-
men, there is no doubt there is a disease among peach trees
called yellows, and there is no question that this fungus is a
mystery. The more remedies you apply the better it seems to
thrive. 1 am discouraged in trying to raise plums, and I am
going to try peach raising. Yet I believe that I shall still be
troubled with black-knot.

Mr. A. B. Holden of Westminster — I live a neighbor to Mr.
Sanderson, and v/hat he says is undoubtedly true, but I differ
with him in some statements he made about the gr*. and.
Twenty years ago I raised plums until black-knot struck them.
We have an agricultural college to show us that it can be done
away with, and wiiatever I say I must give the credit to
I'rofessor Maynard. I followed his rules. I used one pound
of sulphate of copper to twenty-five gallons of water. I have
about one hundred and forty trees growing, and I pride myself

on their looks. I have ordt^red thirty trees during the past
two weeks. This shows my faith. Now, I do not think the
l)low has any place in the orchard. I use a sprinj?-tooth har-
row. Fifty hens keej) the soil tolerably mellow. I think that
if you faithfully follow spraying the trees in the sirring you
will make a success.

Mr. O. Stockwell of Fitchburg — I want to ask if it hurts ap-
ples to let them lie on the ground.

Mr. Klodget of Worcester — Yes, I think it is injurious. Do
not allow them to remain there over forty-eight hours.

Mr. Stockwell — But allowing them to remain one night they
will gather dampness.

Mr. Holden — I have some four hundred trees, and, as a man
says here on my left, 1 have been troubled with black-knot.
One of my neighbors was troubled with black-knot, and he fol
lowed Professor Maynard's method of spraying the trees. I
think it checked the disease. 1 have some fourteen varieties,
which bear two crops, and I get more from the Coe's Golden
Drop than any otlier. I also have the Lombard.

Mr. Charles E. Parker of Holden — I would like to ask what
varieties of Japan<'se plums are worthy of cultivation.

Mr. Vincent of Conway — 1 have about one hundred and fif-
teen of the Abundance, and a few Satsuma have borne very
finely. I should like to know how many varieties of Japanese
plums are worthy of cultivation. So far as my experience
goes, I think the Abundance is the best variety. The Burbank
is a very handsome plum, but is only good for canning. "S\'e
calculate to pick them as soon as they are turned. We have
got |4 a bushel for every bushel raised.

Mj'. Mead — I have fruited the Burbank for ten years. In the
spring they grow from five to eight feet, but I think that was a
little too much. The temperature at ten below zero will kili
them. The Japanese should be put on high lands. They blos-
som very early. The first year they don't bear so well, but
the second year they bear heavily. What I have sold brought
a very fancy price. The Satsuma i)lum makes a very fine
sauce.

Mr. Munroe Morse of Medway— I wish to ask for information

22

rej^arding the Greeley plum. I like this plum very much. It
ripens early, it is large and its quality is first class.

Mr. Edwin Hoyt — Garish, a Maine nurseryman, first intro-
duced the Greeley plum about four or five years ago. His idea
was that it w^as got from the Wild Goose plum. It is very
black and ripens quite early.

Mr. C. B. Knight of Worcester — I find that I have the great-
est trouble in buying fruit to get what I like. I have bought
sjpples running from sixty cents to one dollar. Before I buy
a barrel of apples I pick them all over. Once I purchased a
barrel of apples and about half a bushel on top were good,
while the rest were poor. People know what they are getting
when they buy Dr. Fisher's apples. I believe it is a help to
every man who puts up what he calls number one apples to
ser them for number one. I think a man can make more
money by being honest. I will give so much more for every
apple that I can buy of Dr. Fisher. A Catholic once told me:
''We put into our copy-books, Honesty is the best policy." Mark
your goods what they are — if they are number one, mark them
number one.

Mr. C. E. Parker — Is it necessary to put a few of the best
on top?

Mr. Blodget — Yes; but make them good all the way through.
Mr. O. Stockweli — Always have them appear w^ell on top.
Mr. Blodget — First appearance goes a great ways. The first
appearance is a great help to selling. It is a good plan to face
your berries; then they have a very fine appearance. I would
like to ask Mr. Cruikshanks what he knows about the London
red raspberry.

Mr. Cruikshanks of Fitchburg — I went through Mr. Mar-
shall's plantation with him last fall. He has three hundred
|)lants. I did not find a single plant that had not grown well.
Dr. Fisher has had it two years and he speaks very highly of
it. It is a finer, better and hardier berry. It is a good market
berry. I refer to Professor Maynard.

Professor Maynard of Amherst — The London makes a fine
growth. It is a good, clear quality, and it is a very promising
plant.

Mr. W. H. Johnson — In regard to putting up apples for com-

23

mission trade, is it necessary to put the best apples on top?
Yen will not get as high price for your apples until you do it.
My plan is to select enough apples of the 2i-inch size and put
them around the head, and then fill the remainder of the head
■with large-sized apples. The purchaser sees the quality and
size of the apple. When you are packing for the commission
merchant you must put them up in different shape.

Mr. A. G. Sharp — We have growers who live four or five
miles out of Boston, and they are in the habit of picking their
berries between four and eight o'clock in the evening, and in
the morning from four until nine. These berries are put into
baskets and taken into the Boston markets with the dew on
their leaves. A man told me that berries put in the cellar were
not as good. They could get five cents more for those picked
in the morning than for those picked in the afternoon. In
Dighton they pick berries through the day. These are sent to
Boston during the night and it is necessary for them to be in
the market next morning before ten o'clock. What chance
do they stand compared with those picked that morning be-
tween four and nine? These growers near Boston, who have
sold their berries during the last five years for twenty-five and
twenty-eight cents a basket, pick their berries early in the
morning. Take the poor class of berries: In the matter of
packing, they employ fifty children from ten to fifteen years
of age. The berries are jammed and bleeding when they are put
into the baskets. One of the most important points is that
they should be laid into the baskets as carefully as possible.
It makes a difference whether they are sold for eight, ten or
twenty-five cents. I was surprised to have a man tell me that
it was no unusual thing to have berries sent back that were
picked in the morning. He noticed that the berries were poor
and many of them mouldy. I knew a man that wanted to sell
his berries. The storekeeper asked him how many he wished
to furnish. He told him he would like to furnish four crates a
day.

"I can't dispose of half a crate on an average,"' said the store-
keeper.

"Let me bring you down a crate of fresh-picked berries, and

24

let me ask you just one favor — let the people know that the
berries are fresh picked."

Within a week he took four crates a day, and that can be
done throughout our land if the commission and provision
dealers will sell their fruit right.

Mr. George F. Wheeler — 1 wish to inquire what size crate
you would suggest for strawberries.

jMr. Blodget — Thirty-two-quart crates.

Mr. Wheeler — I see that sixty-quart crates are used the more.

Mr. Blodget — They are very good for shipping. Sixty-quart
crates are apt to be handled more carefully. Baltimore ber-
ries are shipped in refrigerator cars, arrive in better shape, and
stand up better.

Mr. Stock well — What do you think of flat crates?

Mr. Blodget — I have never seen any; but I think they will do
very well for shipping ])urposes.

Professor Maynard of Amherst — ^Miat are the best packing
crates for grapes?

Mr. Blodget — It largely depends upon the quantity' of grapes.
Large bunches should be kept by themselves.

Mr. Hinds — I would like to inquire if you return crates.

Mr. Blodget — We tell them we want the crates, but not the
baskets.

Mr. Hinds — It seems to me that some are as good for second
use as for first. T do not believe in using old boxes, however,

Mr. r»lodget — If you will use them twice and then throw
them away, very well.

Mr. Vincent — It costs me two cents for every quart box of
raspberries, and I can't afford to give the boxes away. We
use boxes five and a half inches square and one inch deep and
put seventy in a crate. This shows up everj^thing.

Mr. Blodget — It has not been customary to give the small
boxes away. yXe expect the pints to be returned; not the
quarts.

Mr. A'incent — I will state for the benefit of the fruit growers
that the bo:^es I use are made in Montague. I like these boxes
very much.

INIr. Stockwell — Where do you obtain these boxes?

Mr. Vincent — T. F. Harrington's, Montague, Mass.

25

Professor Majiiard — I would like to ask if these boxes for
raspberries could uot be made of chip at a much less cost.

Mr. Vincent — Perhaps to make them of chips they would
come a little less, but T can get them in flats for |10 a. thou-
sand.

Mr. Hartwell of Lincoln — Will fertilizing the orchard put
color on the apples?

Mr. Blodget — It will increase the growth, but I cannot say
in regard to the color.

Mr. Hartwell — This year I was troubled with my apples
being light colored. Those at the top of the tree were of a
brighter color than those on the lower limbs.

At this point President Draper invited Mr. E. W. Wood to
the chair.

A member — I should like to tell my experience in getting
color by the use of potash. We use nitrogenous manure, and
the color is better. I am thoroughly convinced it gives better
quality. We have been using high-grade sulphate and ground
bone. "With too inuch nitrogenous manure they are liable to
winter kill. I heard Mr. Hale on this point, and since then I
liave used potash.

Mr. W. D. Hinds — I have had a little experience in the col-
oring of apples which may be a benefit to some of you. In pas-
turing colts in my orchard, all the trees except the outside row
give a high color. The outside row of trees has been fertilized
l)y the droppings of the colts. On. this row the a])ples are
larger in size, but lighter in color. There is too much nitro-
gen. So I think we can improve by leaving out nitrogen and
putting in potash.

Mr. W. H. Johnson — I wish to refer to the discussion of this
morning to give and receive a little information. The Com-
mittee on Legislation on Peach Yellows has been waiting for
the decision of this meeting, and it seems to me that it is a dis-
courtesy to adjourn without making some statements in re-
gard to it. If we do not oppose it, it will be a law. I have
taken the matter in my hands. If we are to be still per-
plexed with this question, T think that some steps should be
taken in the matter, and I offer the following resolution:

Resolved, That we, the members of the Massachusetts Fruit

26

Growers' Association, in annual session assembled, are op-
posed to the enactment of a peach yellow law in Massachu-
setts.

Chairman E. W. Wood — I would say that we did not ex-
pect to take action on the matter here proposed, but to have a
free and full discussion.

Mr. T. D. Daniels of Sherborn — I have opposed this law,
I have thought that this winter there has been underhanded
work used in bringing this bill before the Legislature. I think
the bill is wholly uncalled for. The Committee on Agriculture
at the State House are waiting for the approval of this
meeting.

Mr. Sanderson — There is just one member of the committee
that is for it and he is a graduate of Harvard College. He
says wait until you hear from the Massachusetts Fruit Grow-
ers' Association. I am satisfied not to pass any resolution.
I know that you have got sense enough not to Avant any man
prowling around your yavd to find your dead trees.

Mr. C. E. Parker — It seems to me that if the gentleman is
waiting to hear from us, why, let him hear from us. I think
that we can get testimony that will satisfy him, and I ask that
the question should be discussed.

Chairman E. W. Wood — It was asked of the committee that
the question might be discussed and the committee thought
that it should be brought before the association. The object
of the association was to discuss advanced methods of fruit
culture, and to get information from one another in regard to
fruit raising and fruit selling, but they did not realize that
there was such a feeling stirring, and I do not think it is neces-
sary to take any action in the matter.

President Draper, resuming the chair — Perhaps I might be
allowed to state that in the placing on the program the ques-
tion. Does the successful cultivation of the peach in this state
depend upon peach yellow legislation? it never entered into the
minds of the committee to try to influence legislation in either
one way or another. It seems to me that we ought to give
every one a chance to be informed upon this matter, and I am
in hopes that the association will avoid taking any position
either for or against it. We have acted in good faith for the

27

best interests of the association when we had this topic
brought forward for discussion.

Mr. Elliott Moore — I would like to offer a resolution that the
secretary be authorized to take a vote of the members by
postal card and that the result of that be sent to the Massa-
chusetts Legislature, as many of our members are not in the
hall.

Mr. Parker — Tt seems to me that it is taking a long time and
a good deal of expense to get at what might be done in a
short time, for there are only two men who have spoken in
favor of this law. It strikes me that it is a much better way
to put the question before the house.

The chair — As I was not in the chair when the question
arose, I want to know what the resoltion was. (Reads.)

R€s-olr(d, That we, the members of the ^Massachusetts Fruit
Growers" Association, in annual meeting assembled, are op-
posed to the enactment of a peach yellow law.

Now the question is before the house for your action.

Mr. Hartwell — I am not in favor of the bill as it now stands.

The chair — T would like to ask if the bill has been presented
before this meeting to-day.

Audience^No, sir.

The chair — It seems to me we are not taking intelligent
action, not knowing wliat the provisions of the bill are. But
I will put the question before the house. All those in favor of
the resolution as it now stands will please manifest it by
rising. Those opposed, in the same manner. 1 declare the
vote carried.

Adjourned until Thursday morning.

SECOND DAY

Horticultural Hall, Thursday, March 11, 1897.

^Morning Session. — 10 o'clock.

President Draper in the chair — Before starting on the ad-
dress of the morning, I will announce to the members of the
association that have not yet paid their annual dues, that the
secretary and ]Mr'. Hartshorn will be in the back of the hall to

28

receive them. Information in regard to the condition of the
peach buds in different sections of the Commonwealth has
been called for, and we shall be verv glad to get the report
later in the session. I take great pleasure in introducing as
the speaker of the morning Mr. A. G. Sharp of Richmond,
Mass., a man who has made a great success in raising small
fruits.

Mr. A. G. Sharp — (Reads.)

Mr. President, etc.:

I was a little surprised to be called here by your president to give
you a talk, or read a paper on " Small Fruit Culture," as I doubt not
there are those here who have had more experience than I in this line,
though probably not under the same conditions of soil, etc. I can al-
ways learn something from any man who has long been a cultivator of
any small fruit. My soil is a heavy clay loam, that heaves badly with the
frost fall and spring, so much so that I have seen clover roots of more
than a foot in length thrown entirely out of the ground. Therefore I
have to pursue a different system from one on a sandy or light soil. I
am not going to give you any theories, but what I have learned or ob-
served in actual practice during my seventeen years' work among
the berries. If we were all growing fruits under the same conditions
of soil and markets, less would be gained in attending these meet-
ings. It is because of our varied experience that it becomes so prof-
itable to meet and compare notes; in fact this is now a necessity,
and the question is not, can we afford to attend them, but can we af-
ford to miss them? The days of guesswork have gone by for the successful
farmer or fruit grower. The best dairymen have their scientific tests,
by which they weed out the unprofitable cows, study the food analysis
and learn which are the most economical and most profitable feeds to
use for both milk and butter; also manurial value of different grains
used; hold their winter meetings, and discuss their problems, striving
to get nearer the consumer or lessen the expense along the line, and
at the other end knowing one cent per quart saved sometimes means
the difference between a profit and a loss in the business. Prices of
the small fruits have been on the decline for years. Many thousand
quarts have been sold the past year for less than the cost of picking
and marketing, and there is no certain prospect of a return to much
higher prices in near future. Fruits may not have fallen more than
other farm produce, but nine -tenths of the drop in price falls on the
grower, for labor, picking, express or freight rates, etc., have not
fallen in proportion; and the commission merchant still lives under
the old dispensation, taking his one-tenth as a rightful share. There-
fore it behooves us to make a desperate effort to reduce cost of pro-
duction and marketing. Anyone who now begins the culture of small

2'J

fruits without a careful study of these problems will be pretty sure to
graduate in the primary grade; a two or three years' course will con-
vince him that something besides muscle and fertilizer is required for
success. I cannot tell you just how to clear $1,000 per acre on straw-
berries, or any other big stories; it is not necessary, for there are
plenty now in print; when I began I saw several that I remembered;
few small stories or failures reach the printer. But I do not condemn all
the catalogues, as some contain a great deal of good instruction; if they
do strongly recommend potash, it is not all lie they contain. Fruit
growers are the most unselfish men you can find, as a rule, the most
willing to give instruction, and the least afraid of honest competition.
Perhaps the best I can do is to state how I raised my last crop of
strawberries. Three years ago I purchased three acres of land, having
been ten years in grass. It was pretty well run out, except spots that
had well run into quack grass; it had received the manure of one cow,
applied in little garden spots each year, till quack grass got so thick,
another piece was u?ed, etc. I bought ten cords of manure, delivered
on the lot for $40. This was evenly spread over the three acres, and
the piece planted to corn, potatoes and roots; mostly potatoes where
strawberries were to be, using potato fertilizer in the drills. One-
fourth acre so matted with quack roots, did not dare plant it, but cul-
tivated once a week till August 1st, and sowed to flat turnips. I dug
300 bushels of potatoes from 1] acres; the crop no doubt doubled by
the quack grass, as I had to cultivate and hoe them twice before the
potatoes showed above ground, and cultivate once a week till they were
a foot high. I dug them in the middle of August and sowed the piece
to barley, to give the quack a little more punishment after death and
keep the soil covered during the winter; and barley roots decaying
kept it in good mechanical condition to receive the strawberry plants
in the spring. I never allow ground to lie bare during winter; but shall
use rye instead of barley in the future; sow thick and plow under at
eighteen inches growth (as 1 have since found it better to hold moist-
ure). I plowed the ground early, as it would crumble nicely, har-
rowed it fine, and set m acres May 10 to 17, using my own plants,
grown near by. Placing boxes on a stone-boat, dug the plants in
clumps, leaving dirt on, drew them to the piece, and set them without
any water. Ninety-nine plants of every one hundred grew, and
scarcely a plant wilted second day. Rows 3} feet; plants about fifteen
inches apart; 105 rows of twelve rods length; nine varieties, but prin-
cipally Lovett, Bubach and Parker Earle:

30 Lovett, 10 Greenville, 4 Timbrell,

21 Bubach, 8 Haverland, 4 Van Deman,

20 Parker Earle, 5 Mammoth Beauty, 3 Eureka.

Not any farm manure used; set by line, and raked .in twenty-five
pounds of Stockbridge fruit manure on each row as set. May 22nd
and 24th raked the entire piece with common garden rake, and again

30

ten days later; then cultivated with horse every ten days till Septem-
ber, narrowing cultivator, growing wide matted rows. June 8 sowed
800 pounds of cotton-seed meal on the rows; June 26th sowed 2,000
pounds of fine ground bone on the rows; November 1 sowed 100
bushels of ashes on the rows (ashes were 20 to 25 per cent, lime
mixed in, and many soft wood ashes); November 30 spread six to
seven tons bog hay evenly over the entire surface; and during the
winter spread a few loads of coarse manure on the rows, enough to
hold hay down during March winds; April 22 uncovered the rows,
leaving hay in paths; May 2nd sowed 100 bushels of ashes (20 per cent,
lime) on the rows; picked first crate of fruit June 19th, last quart July
30th. Yield, 320 bushels. I sprayed the plants as soon as the leaves
began to grow, and again as first blossoms opened, using eight pounds
of sulphate copper, eight pounds of lime, and one-fourth pound of
paris green to fifty gallons of water. Mulch when ground freezes
enough to bear a load of hay, and thick enough to hide every leaf;
later put on heavier. No amount of mulch will smother or weaken
plants if taken off as soon as frost comes out. Use hay or coarse
manure; put on any time during winter. I am not afraid of too much
foliage if there is enough potash and phosphoric acid in the soil to
balance, or back up the fruit started with the nitrogen. I never had a
good crop of potatoes without a good show of tops. And in winter is
the only time it pays to buy stable manure, if at all. I would not take
any as a gift if I had to draw it three miles, after spring opens, or pay
over $2 or $3 per cord for the best in winter, and there is much differ-
ence in manure as there is in fruit in value.

If a bed is to be kept over I mow tops and rake them into paths,
then using a six-tine fork to turn the mulching, tops, etc., bottom
up, narrowing the rows to a foot wide, clean out weeds in row, sow on
some flrst-class commercial fertilizer, and cultivate paths fine. Many
new plants will fill in or widen the rows, and some varieties give just
as good crops the second year.

RED RASPBERRIES.

For raspberries, plow deep and fine, and fertilize as for a good crop
of corn or potatoes. I prefer to set the plants the last of October, in
hills, at least 5x5 feet, and strong growers 5x6 feet, two plants in each
hill, and put a large shovelful of manure on top after treading soil
firmly about plants, and it is best to use scoop shovel. Corn or pota-
toes may be grown one way between the rows first year, or a row of
roots or cabbage. If no winter protection is to be given them pinch
back new growth when two feet high, to grow stalky canes, and leave
four or five in a hill, but if to be laid down let them grow high and
slender, and allow eight or ten canes to remain in each hill; lay them
down soon after November 1st, and cover with earth; this protects
canes from being broken by snow-drifts and from the drying winds,

31

and canes come out in spring fresh and plump, not faded and shriv-
eled as when exposed to the winds and changes of temperature.
Using the soil between the rows for covering, forms a trench to carry
surplus water away from hills; also leaves ground in shape to be
worked much earlier in spring. Cultivate ground as early as i^ossible,
making surface mellow and fine, to check evaporation and preserve
the moistui-e stored in the soil. A good dust blanket is a pretty good
irrigation; cultivate as often as necessary to keep dust on the sur-
face; cut stakes six feet long and tie canes evenly about them, not all
on one side; if chestnut stakes are used, by resharpening they will last
as long as raspberries are profitable. Take up the canes as early as
frost will permit, and cut them back to about five feet high. A dress-
ing of fine ground bone and wood ashes or muriate of potash o"ce in
two years is suflBcient; just how much to use, the growth of plant and
color of foliage will best tell you; this will give you the best quality pf
fruit in firmness ^eolor, size a.\\^ flavor. If more nitrogen is needed apply
200 to 300 pounds nitrate soda per acre when the foliage is perfectly dry,
and be careful not to hit leaves. If you can get cheap mulching spread
enough between the rows to shade ground about the middle of June.
You may save enough clean fruit from the lower branches to pay for
the mulch; it is broken up by pickers tramping, and worked into the
goil in the fall when covering the canes, making some humas to take
the place of farm manure, if any is needed. When a piece has nearly
run out apply a good dressing of the best fertilizer you can buy, as early
in the spring as possible, and treat all new growth as weeds that sea-
son; in this way I have grown a good farewell crop. The black rasp-
berries will not winter with me without protection, so I have given
them up. I tried Doolittle, Gregg, Ada, Carman, Ohio, Earhart, etc.
Have had of reds, Turner, ShafEer, Marlboro, Hansell, and others, but
found none equal to the Cuthbert, both red and yellow; berries are
large, firm, and good flavor. I have picked them Saturday morning,
kept them over until Monday, and shipped them 160 miles, and they
arrived in condition to sell for sixteen cents per quart wholesale, past
season. But this could not be done if raised in hedge rows, and on
farm manure or with irrigation. Yellow or white fruit can be sold
in small quantities only, and requires great care in picking and hand-
ling, about one to five, or six of the reds. There is no fruit [that will
pay better for neat and honest packing than strawberries and rasp-
berries. And it is for our interest that every grower ship his fruit to
market in the best possible shape. When the market is full of soft,
dirty fruit, the very best sell slow at low prices.

The business man is asked why he didn't send home some berries for
tea. He replies, "Berries were poor and soft to-day." "But were there
no nice ones?" and he replies," Well, yes; but I saw so much trash it took
away my appetite for the best," etc. Fruit should run uniformly through
the basket, and through the season. A gentleman from a neighboring
city, while purchasing some strawberries of a dealer in Pittsfield, said

32

to the dealer, " Those are fine berries. I can occasionally get as nice at
home, but am not always sure of them." The dealer replied that he
had not received a crate of soft or dirty fruit from that grower for ten
years, and he could guarantee just such the season through. There-
upon the gentleman ordered six boxes sent him by express three
times a week for the whole season.

Passing through the Boston markets I noticed some neatly put up
fruit at one of the best stands in the New Faneuil Hall Market. I said
to the dealer, " There must be money in that fruit for you." He smiled,
and replied, "Well,' it is fine fruit and nicely put up." I always give it
the preference, for / caji depend on it." If the grower telegraphs a
shipment made, I sometimes sell it all before it reaches me. " There
is not so very much money in it for me, but I like to see it in front of
my store." I consider it an honor to any man in Boston to handle
those goods.

Another grower, seven miles out of Boston, having to drive four
miles over the pavements, a JVIr. Worth of Melrose, fitted a spring bed
in the bottom of his wagon, delivered his strawberries to another
dealer, fresh daily, boxes full, and received eighteen cents per quart
for his entire crop, a few thousand quarts.

Manj' berries leaving the field in good condition are nearly ruined in
transportation by being throxon into a car door at an angle of forty-five
degrees, and get a drop of a foot or less every time the crate is moved
afterwards. Cool fruit well before shipping; keep soft berries at home
to sell near by, or make them into jams, or syrups for the soda foun-
tains, or fruit vinegars.

Blackberries will thrive on light soil and with much less fertilizer
than the raspberries require. And yet to do their best they require just as
good cultivation^ and more moistvu-e to carry out the crop. Some sea-
sons they have been the most profitable for me of any small fruit,
while at other times they have come into competition with southern
peaches and the wild berries from the mountains cutting the price.
We cannot compete with New Jersey to get good prices early. But
many Jersey growers lost money the past season. One of them told
me that he sold from one-half acre just 1,200 quarts of nice Wilsons,
receiving from dealer after freight and commission were ipaid $18.60,
which was only sixty cents more than the cost of picking them. Some
growers there have forty and fifty acres each. Several car-loads are
shipped daily from some railroad stations. Same grower received
only five cents a quart for raspberries. He gave up the business, and
has hired as foreman for a Connecticut grower. I set them in the fall,
or as soon as frost is out in spring, and give them same room as strong
growing raspberries, at least 6x5 feet, and cultivate both ways; tie
canes to stakes in fall after cutting out the old wood that bore fruit.
1 do a\\ VfOT^ possible in the fall, when there is more time |to do it;
allow five or six canes in the hill; when tied close about a stake the
fruit is all on the outside of the hills, and no reaching in among the

33

thorns for it, nor scratching your hide off when cultivating. I have
tested Kittatiuny, Snyder, Erie, Stone's Hardy, Wachusett, Agawam,
etc., and have torn out all but the Agawam. It is as hardy as any,
good size, jet black, and excellent flavor, productive, and a good ship-
per, and with me has sold for three cents per quart more than any
other variety. I have found that while customers would tire of other
varieties in a couple of weeks, they call for Agawam as long as I can
supply them. I have tried mulching, and think it pays to practice it,
though thorough surface cultivation if begun as early as possible is
usually sufficient to carry a crop through on my soil. Thus we save
nauch of the moisture stored during winter, which is needed to work
on the fertilizers used, and make soup for the plants to take up in
their growth. Working the soil aerates it and raises the temperature;
this also aids decomposition or hastens it, making plant food avail-
able. Near-by or home markets are usually best, as our Saturday
fruit and that sometimes picked too damp to carry well, can be dis-
posed of to a better advantage. This helps the average, and we are
able to do better than those on cheap lands with the cheap Italian
labor in New Jersey and Delaware.

We are told that there are 1,000 known fruit insects; some of these
attack the blackberry; also cane rust, leaf blight, and nut-gall on the
roots, etc. Agawam is not so subject to cane rust as the Snyder and
some others. May 1st I sprayed the canes with Bordeaux, made the
same as for strawberries, and again as they began to blossom. I think it
was a benefit, as I saw no cane rust that season, and the foliage was
much better than years previous. We must have good foliage on
blackberries, to obtain juicy and good flavored fruit of largest size.

There is a growing demand for gooseberries, but they grow very
slowly; the fruit is mostly sold green. I treat them same as currants,
and get about the same price per quart wholesale. I prefer Red-
jacket to any variety I have tried, as it is a large, showy fruit, and
productive, a more stocky grower than Smith's Improved, or Down-
ing, here, and does not mildew.

Some of us can look back over the years and see the row of old cur-
rant bushes as they grew beside the garden wall, and remember the
well-browned turnovers or larger pies, made by our grandmothers from
their half- grown fruit; sometimes miMng them with the home-dried
apples that had been strung around and dried in the kitchen the pre-
vious winter; also how, later in the season, as we came from the hay-
field with scythe on ovir shoulder, dry and hot, we would reach over
the wall or through the fence, and rake off some of the well-ripened
fruit, to quench our thirst and sharpen the appetite for dinner. Those
bushes always bore a good crop of small, rich fruit, of good flavor.
They received no trimming, and scarcely any fertilizer or cultivation,
except that given them by the chickens that gathered under their
shade to scratch and wallow during the heat of the day. This was
before the chipper of the currant worm was so destructive. Few cur-
3

34

rants were then sold in the smaller cities and towns compared to the
present. An old fruit grower laughed at me for setting one-half acre
fifteen years ago, and said I would be sour enough trying to sell so
many. But I think their use will continue to increase as people learn
more ways of putting them up and mixing them with other fruits;
sometimes using them in place of cranberries when the price is lower.
A quart of currants makes a fine sauce, and not expensive at recent
prices ; and the best is made without heating, quite a consideration in
hot weather; heating acid fruits changes greatly the flavor, as seen in
the strawberry. I have a sample to show for testing it if you are not
afraid of germs; just try it. Currants thrive best in a heavy,deep, moist
soil, and in bearing will stand it and pay for it to be well fertilized.
But it will not do to give deep cultivation ; disturbing the roots in
spring causes many of the berries to drop from the stems, thus early
shedding perhaps one-half the fruit. Early in spring as possible plow
directly in the centre between the rows, throwing dirt each side
towards the plants ; then with hoes or very shallow cultivating work
it back to centre gradually, so as to give as level a cultivation as pos-
sible. Either purchase or grow strong two-year plants, and set them
late in October; tread earth solid about the roots, and throw a large
shovelful of manure on the top; use the scoop shovel. This could be
done after the ground is frozen, or during the winter; it prevents
heaving, and the early spring rains will wash enough into the soil to
give them a good start and keep the ground cool and moist. Cut back
one-third to one-half each year's growth from the start, and cut out
most of the sucker growth around the roots; in this w&y trimming is
simple. You keep your bush compact, and it grows stalky with
plenty of foliage to protect the fruit from late spring frosts and sun
scald; thus giving you a longer season to market the fruit in good
order, bright and plump. Currants grown in this way will make good
jelly late in August, and we have picked them for table use in October
from the Victoria. Set them not less than 5x5 feet; strong growers
require nearer 6x6, if to be cultivated both ways, where the soil is
suited to them. Should have a good dressing of bone and potash in
some form once in two years at least. The largest fruit always sells
best, and can be picked at one-half the price of the small varieties.
If possible mulch the entire surface of the ground when the berries are
half grown, or before the fruit weighs the bushes down into the dirt; this
keeps the fruit clean and increases the size. Spray with hellebore when
first worms are found; hellebore kills by contact as well as by eating
it; use large spoonful to three gallons of water, or what is better, mix
dry with four times the weight of some cheap flour, and thoroughly
dust bushes with it when they are damp with dew or a recent shower;
when put on in this way it forms a paste that will last through the
season, and is safer to use than paris green.

The currant twig girdler appears about June 1st, depositing its eggs
about an inch below where girdled, and after hatching they work

35

down the stem a few inches and come out; remedy is to clip the stems
two or three inches below where they are girdled. I tried this a year
ago last June, and last season I could find scarcely any affected on that
piece. This insect is distinct from the stalk borer, so says W. E.
Britton, which works the entire length of the stalk; the latter I con-
sider the worst enemy of the currant; only thing to do is to cut out all
of the affected stalks and burn at once. Fay's Prolific is the most prof-
itable for me, is large and productive, but Victoria is the best for my
family use. We have considered the requirements of some of the
plants, soil, etc. Now what is required in the grower? The first qual-
ification is a love for the work. He must be one who takes pleasure
in watching plant life, must have a good stock of patience, and a great
amount of perseverance and stick. He must not only be able
to grow the best, but know how to sell it when grown.
He must be able to get the most out of hired help, and
have tact to get along with his dealers, not showing a dis-
position to want the big spoon every time, as there should
always be a friendly feeling between grower and dealer, or per-
fect confidence. He must be honest and industrious the year around.
Now, he who has these qualifications will succeed in most any busi-
ness, and make money easier and faster than in raising small fruit, if
that be his only object. But to one who enjoys the business and is
well located, not having too large a farm, who is near markets or a
good shipping point, there is much pleasure, and some seasons good
profits. One can feel more independent, and get more enjoyment out
of life than when working for a salary, or shut up in the city away from
nature and country life. Plenty of fruit and fresh air are worth some-
thing; dollars and cents are not all there is in this life, that we should
bend all our energies in that direction.

President Draper — Let the speaker rest his voice for a few
moments before catechising him. Yesterday morning I an-
nounced to you that the president of our horticultural society
was unable to speak to you, but to-day he is in good condition
and I take pleasure in introducing to you Mr. O. B. Hadwen,
president of the Worcester Horticultural Society.

Mr. O. B. Hadwen — Mr. President and Gentlemen: I am
quite delighted to meet the fruit growers in the Heart of the
Commonwealth, and delighted also that you meet in Horti-
cultural hall, the quarters that appertain to fruit growing in
the Heart of the Commonwealth. I am greatly interested in
the essays. While I am not engaged in fruit growing myself,
I am always interested in it, and regard it as a most impor-
tant part of the horticultural and agricultural industry. There

36

is nothing that gives me more pleasure in these later years
of my life than to meet those interested in the cultivation of
fruit. I remember the first strawberry patch I ever planted;
a man gave me two kinds of strawberries, the Bush Alpine
and the Early Virginia. In 1841 I exhibited two or three kinds
at the second exhibition of the horticultural society and took
first premium one 4th of July. 1 bought my first Hovey
Seedling strawberry and sold them at twenty-five cents a
plant, and I made money on my Hovey Seedling at that price.
But the cultivation of the strawberry then was comparatively
in its infancy. We had one thing in our favor, better prices.
I knew a man in Worcester who would give seventy-five cents
a box for strawberries, and take them several times a week.
I brought my strawberries on foot, a basket on each arm, and
I did not forget to call on every gentleman who would buy
strawberries at that price. During the war I enlarged
my bed of strawberries, but during the war I received forty-
five cents at wholesale and fifty-five cents at retail. The prices
in later years have been so completely demoralized that 1
w^ent out of the business. I regard the strawberry as the best
fruit that God has ever given to man. We have many varie-
ties, and suited to every taste, and some have grown to tre-
mendous proportions. I believe that I have cultivated every
variety that has been spoken of by the essayist. " I bid you
most cordial welcome to this city and hope you may continue
to come for many years. 1 thank you for your kind attention.
President Draper — Before starting the discussion I will say
that there are a great many questions placed on the list that
have not yet been reached. But if the present subject should
absorb a good share of the forenoon, possibly we might be
obliged to adjourn a little early, and open the afternoon ses-
sion a little earlier, as a great many of you people are from
different parts of the Commonwealth, and will have to go
away a little after 8 o'clock, and if agreeable to all, we will
arrange to close this session at 12.15 and commence at 1.30
this afternoon. The question has been asked of me if ladies
are eligible to membership in this society. My reply has been
that I know of no law to the dontrary. In horticultural and
agricultural societies alike, ladies are eligible to membership.

37

The fruit growers of Massachusetts need the aid and coopera-
tion of the hidies. Our essayist is now ready to stand the fire
of questions. Please state your names.

Mr. Stone of Sherborn — I would like the formula for using
hellebore.

]\rr. Sharp — Last season I used 85 pounds of hellebore to
350 pounds of flour, proportion 1 to 4,

Mr. Stone — In a gallon of water?

Mr. Sharp — Xo water; the dampness will form a paste.

Mr. Daniels — I would like to ask if you ever raised currants
in the orchards between the trees?

Mr. Sharp — I never tried it myself, but I do not think it
would be out of the way if you use sufficient fertilizer.

Mr, Morse — The essayist spoke of pruning raspberries. My
experience has been that canes fixed in that way almost in-
variably winter-kill. I have tried pinching in.

Mr. Sharp — I liave never tried pinching in in the summer
season ; I have been convinced of my error.

Mr. Stockwell — Did I not understand you that when your
vines grew tall you pinched them in?

Mr. Sharp — I simply leave more canes on the hill.

Mr. Stockwell — Did I understand you that you get all the
old canes out in the fall? Is it not advisable to do this?

Mr. Sharp — It is all right if you are going to leave them
down.

Mr. Vincent of Conway — I can give the gentlemen my ex-
perience in regard to the training of canes in New Jersey.
When first there, twelve years ago, we invariably pinched
them back, but we did it there from the fact that there was
no snow. In Massachusetts we tried to do this, but the snow
would break the branches, so consequently we have adopted
laying them on the ground. I do think, gentleman who
spoke last, they are more liable to winter kill. I was in Penn-
sylvania in 18G5; 1 was up to Philadelphia one day and in-
quired the price of raspberries, and found that they were
75 cents a quart, and I thought that if red raspberries would
bring 7o cents a quart I would take up the business. I bought
a few plants at 20 cents a piece, |60 worth, and set them out
and the plants came up so quickly that I thought I was going

38

to get rich. I got 5,000 plants from these and sold them at 10
cents a piece, $554 from my little patch. I can't do that any
more, gentlemen; wish I could. That was a very inferior berry,
and then the fruit crop was not nearly as large because the
plants were more valuable than the fruit. I sold them for 25
cents a quart, except a few that got wet and I sold them for
23 cents. Now, Mr. Sharp has rich land and makes it rich.
We put on not exceeding 800 pounds of fertilizer; we used
ground bone and potash. When we want any more we use
nitrate of soda. I wish to ask the speaker if he is troubled
with knot in the root.

Mr. Sharp — Yes; seriously.

Mr. Vincent — We do not raise nearly as large a crop as Mr.
Sharp. I do not understand how he does it; on such rich lands
my canes would winter-kill. Would Mr. Sharp give his idea
about it? My experience has been: you grow more hardy canes
with less nitrogen in the soil; I think we should get firmer
fruit and much more of it. I should like to hear from Mr.
Sharp.

Mr. Sharp — I do not know as I have ever raised a large crop
of raspberries, but I did raise one large crop and ruined my
piece by doing it.

Mr. Stockwell — T believe that we would be more successful
with our land. It is easier to cultivate. Last year we had over
two-thirds of a crop. There is one thing about it: if you lose
half a vine you do not lose half a crop, because new vines will
start.

Mr. Sharp — I will state here about the large crop I spoke
of, three-fourths of an acre, 1,150 hills set out 5 by 5, and all
my canes stand on a hill, and the land was rich enough to
stand thirty canes on a hill. One picker picked 105 pints in
one row. We picked that week — of course we did not go every
day — forty-five bushels, but the consequence was that the next
season we had an inferior crop of slim canes. It will ruin
your piece to allow too large a crop to grow.

Mr. Stockwell — I have been preparing for a large crop of
raspberries. I thought I could get it by highly manuring them.
I thought I was in the right course to success; am I to make a
failure?

39

Mr. Sharp — See to your trimming and put enough nitrogen
in the ground.

Mr. Elliott Moore — Did 1 understand the essayist to say that
you sprayed your strawberries?
Mr, Sharp — Yes, sir.

Mr. S. H. Warren ol Weston — I am very glad you brought up
the subject of spi-aying strawberries. I have yet to learn. I
for one would like to hear from Professor Maynard on this
question.

Professor Maynard — While this has been largely to prevent
a rust, we have never succeeded in wholly preventing it; we
have reduced it quite a little. First, because we did not com-
mence early enough.

Mr. Sharp — It was from Professor Maynard I got my inform-
ation.

Mr. Hinds — I would like to have a little more definite inform-
ation in regard to the laying down of raspberries and
straightening them up in the spring.

Mr. Sharp — ^I leave them as late in the fall as I dare to do.
I do not usually begin until the 5tli or 8th of November and
get it done by the 15th. I hire two as good shovellers as I can
find. I hold the canes down myself. It is very easy for one to
lay them down while the others are shovelling on the dirt. In
that way we cover half an acre a day.

Mr. Hinds — Do I understand that you cover the entire
length?

Mr. Sharp — I usually cover them about half way back.
We use all the dirt we can, cover them back within three feet
of the root.

Mr. Warren — Years ago, when we raised the old-fashioned
Dorchester, perhaps three years out of every five they would
winter kill. A friend of mine said that he laid them down.
I adopted the plan of laying them down as he did, and we sold
our berries at 75 cents a quart. As none of the other growers
had any, we always had them. I use a plow like a snow-plow
between the rows. You can do ten times the work; the men go
ahead and bend them over. Then go along with a shovel and
cover them up,

Mr. Sharp — Many use a six-tined fork for covering them up.

40

Mr. Morse of Medwaj^ — To make one suggestion, about
choosing a day for bending tlieni down. If the air is cool they
are apt to break.

Mr. Stetson — What time do you open them in the spring?

Mr. Young — I want to ask if you talce any stock in the new
culture of strawberries?

Mr. Sharp — No.

Mr. Sanderson — Do the speakers know anything about the
Minnewaski blackberry?

Mr. Sharp — They are not hardy. I bought some when they
first came out.

Mr. Wheeler — Do you think in growing strawberries that
it is necessary to narrow the cultivator on each row.

Mr. Sharp — No, sir; we are often troubled with white grub,
which eats out many of our plants.

A member — Do you thin out your strawberries?

Mr. Sharp — They ought not to mat too heavily; let them run
a little at first.

A member — If you have fifty plants from one, should you let
them all grow?

Mr. Sharp — I should until spring.

Question — Weil, what about the muck worm or white grub?

Mr. Sharp — I tried to fight that by cultivating the soil two
or three years before I used it for strawberries. I put a tea-
spoonful of sulphur under each plant and have not been
troubled with white grub since. I think a plant is more apt to
rust if salt is used. Sulphur worked in this case.

Mr. Warren — I never intend to set out where there are any
white grub, but I always see if there are any white grub in the
furrow. If you leave your j)lanting until late in the season
the white grub will get down below the plow. If you do not
have them in October, you may not be afraid of having them.
Take it on moist land and you will not find many white grub.
I wish to give an experience of one man on getting rid of
white grub. One man got rid of them by using bisulphide of
carbon; some use it to kill woodchucks. I tried it around some
strawberries and by punching a little hole I put in a little of
this bisulphide of carbon and the amount would not kill them.
He said about one-fourth a spoonful would kill them, but it

41

did not, but a teaspoonful will. I took a box and buried these
worms in it and put in a little bi-sulpbide of carbon, and in the
morning- I looked and everyone was dead. In putting this in
you could probably get over a half an acre a day.

Mr. Young of Orange — I joined this society to get practical
information; I want to learn and I have got to that stage of
life that I find 1 have got to economize. I have got to get on
a solid basis to make things meet. 1 heard the story of a
Dutchman who sold some flea powder to a woman for a
quarter. The woman found that it had no effect and several
days after, when he came around, she hailed him and told him
so. '^Vli,"' said the Dutchman, *'I will tell .you how to use it.
First you must wait until you catch the flea, then put it in his
mouth; 3'ou see?" Now m^- point is here: if we can't find some
way of planting nmall fruits successfully, Avhy, let's not grow
them. I do not believe in planting in grubby land.

Mr. Warren — If a man has an acre of strawberries set out
he had better use the bi-sulphide of carbon.

Mr. S. E. Fisher of \^'orcester — Do you consider it necessary
to mulch the strawberries in the fall, and with what *?

Mr. Sharp — Ye^, sir; it is necessary, — anything that hides
from the sunlight after the ground is frozen.

The chair — Me are favored to-day with the presence of the
vice-president of the Connecticut Pomoloj^ical Society, Mr.
Edwin Hoyt of New Canaan.

l\[r. Hoyt — When I have anything to say to people I like to
look them in the face. (Stepping in front of the audience.)
Now we come together in this convention for information, and
we also bring our experiences. There is no business under
heavens where there is so much necessity for seeking
knowledge as in fruit growing. A farmer has to go to a great
deal of expense to get any profit. Our soil has become ex-
hausted; we have got to get something to fix it up; how can we
fix our soil that we can get a profit? My advice to farmers is to
take care of your manure ; use it judiciously ; do not let it waste
by heating; but if there is not enough for your use don't buy
stable manure. You go to the city and ask a man what he wants
for his stable manure, and he saysfl or $1.50 a load. The farmer
is robbed and cheated almost on everv hand. I want to see the

42

time when this manure will be got out at someone else's ex-
pense besides the farmer's. There are in our country stored up
vast quantities of fertilizer, nitrate of soda, phosphate rock
and muriate of potash by the millions of tons. When you plant
your crop study out what your crop wants. You know it
wants phosphoric acid, potash and ammonia. When you buy
fertilizer ask your dealer if he knows what it is made of; nine
times out of ten he will tell you he doesn't know. Tell him you
don't want it. Don't take the advice of every fertilizing agent.
The time we want to feed our plants with the proper kind of
food is when they first start. You cannot do it on cotton-seed
meal or other organic nitrogen, but you can with nitrate of soda.
Feed your cotton-seed meal to your stock to work in with your
stable manure. Feed your peach trees in the spring with some
nitrate of soda as well as with potash and you will not be
troubled with as many diseases. If you want nitrogen for your
crops, as most crops do, buy nitrate of soda, which feeds the
jjlants at once or soon after a rain. Buy muriate of potash in
the original sealed packages, 200 pounds to 225 pounds in
the package, as it is many times adulterated. Do not buy
fertilizer that contains only 2 per cent, potash and from 6 to
8 per cent, phosphoric acid and 1 to 2 per cent, of ammonia,
which costs from |22 to |24, but rather bu}^ one guaranteed to
contain G to 7 per cent, nitrogen and 10 per cent, potash and
8 to 10 per cent, phosphoric acid at a cost of $34 a ton. If you
have not enough stock to give you enough fertilizer then buy
the chemicals and mix them yourself. The insects will be less
troublesome on Avell-fed plants than those half starved.

Mr. Hinds — I have three or four questions which I want to
ask. I have been using for several years bone tankage applied
in the fall. Are we wasting our money instead of using nitrate
of soda ?

Mr. Hoyt — Yes, to a large extent. That costs you |20 to |22
a ton and you do not want to put any of those nitrogenous fer-
tilizers on in the fall either. It is best to put on in the spring.

Mr. Sharp — Did you ever use nitrate of soda on strawber-
ries?

Mr. Hoyt — No; we grow trees.

Mr. Hinds — How much nitrate of soda per acre?

43

Mr. Hoyt — Four lumdred pounds.

Mr. Holden — I would like to ask, would you recommend
nitrate of soda for pear and plum orchards?

Mr. Hoyt — Yes, 200 pounds to an acre.

Mr. Holden — What proportion of potash?

Mr. Hoyt — -Five hundred pounds of muriate of potash to an
acre.

Mr. Hinds — I want to ask Mr. Hoyt if this bone tankage is
good to put around trees?

Mr. Hoyt — Yes, but there should be some wood ashes or
muriate of potash with it.

Mr. Dunn — What kind of potash would you use for peach
trees?

Mr. Hoyt — I always use muriate of potash.

Mr. Johnson — I should like to make some inquiries as to the
white grub: is it annual or bi-annual? You must plant your
ground before the insects plant their eggs. Their first instinct
is to seek their mate, then they search for soil, for they don't
want any poor soil. Plow your ground before they deposit
their eggs in the spring. Do not deposit any nitrogenous ma-
terial to attract them by its odor. The third spring those
grubs will come out.

Mr. Kinney — I am sorry to disagree with everybody. I have
been cultivating the same land for forty years. The white
grub follows me everywhere I go; he knows where we are go-
ing to plant our strawberries. He used to lay but one set of
eggs; now he lays two, one in the spring and one in the fall.

Mr. Wheeler — In reference to the white grub, the most
favorite place is in the strawberry bed. We often find them
in places devoted to strawberry culture; we don't plant in
those places the second time; if you do, you are troubled more
with white grub.

Mr. Johnson — I think Mr. Kinney must have a new kind of
white grub or beetle. My experience has been that after it
lays its eggs it dies. I don't see how it can lay eggs in the
fall.

Mr. Kinney — I can't tell.

Mr. Fisher — I would like to ask if it is advisable to put bone
tankage on strawberries.

44

Mr. Sharp — I should not dare to use it on strawberries. I
use ground bone.

Mr. Ho3't — Why not use nitrate of soda?

Mr. Sharp — I should not dare to on account of the leaves.

Mr. Hojt — Afraid of the leaves?

Mr. Sharp — Yes.

Mr. Hoyt — Let the man put his hand under the leaves and
not let it touch them; alwaj's be Cjareful when you use it.

Mr. Morse — I tried it on my strawberries; I selected a quiet
day when there was no breeze, and put it on with a brush and
I had good results.

Question — What is the practical way of wiring raspberries
to keep them up?

Mr. Sharp — Well, I made a mistake last year and set my
plants in a weedy spot cultivated one way after the plants are
planted. When J first began to cultivate raspberries, I culti-
vated in hedge rows five or six feet apart. I tried putting a
fence of wire up, but it was a good deal of trouble to wire
them, but the wind would blow the branches over and break,
so I threw up hedge rows both ways, and cultivated in both
ways. You get better fruit, better flavor than those grown in
hedge rows; they always lean toward the center.

Mr. Kinney — The strawberry flea troubles us; how far can
it fly?

Mr. Sharp — I don't know, but a little paris green put in a
Bordeaux mixture will settle his case.

The chair — The time for adjournment has arrived. The ses-
sion this afternoon will be in charge of Vice-President Hart-
well.

Afternoon Session — 1.30 o'' clock.

Vice-President Samuel Hartwell in the chair.

The chair — You all know the first business of the
afternoon is to elect the officers of the society for the coming
year, and we ask if the committee appointed yesterday are
ready to report.

Mr. J. G. Avery of Spencer — Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,
before making our report, perhaps it would be well to make a
little explanation in regard to choosing the officers of this

45

society. You recollect yesterday morning that our president
said he must ask to be relieved from further service. The com-
mittee interviewed Mr. Draper and urged his continuance in
office another year, but he remained firm in his decision,
and consequently we had to look around and find a good
man for his place. After consulting many prominent fruit
growers we united upon the chairman of this committee for
your presiding officer for the following year. We offer the fol-
lowing as the full list of officers:

President — Mr. George Cruikshanks, Fitchburg.

Vice-President — Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln.

Secretary — Samuel T. Maynard, Amherst.

Treasurer — Elijah W. Wood, West Newton.

Auditor — Calvin L. Hartshorn, Worcester.

Board of Directors— Essey: County, E. A. Emerson, Haverhill.

" " Jas. J. H. Gregory, Marblehead.

Suffolk " W. R. Sessions, Boston.
Norfolk '' Monroe Morse, Medway.
" " A. F. Stevens, Wellesley.

Plymouth " Augustus Pratt, Middleboro.

" " S. S. A. Stetson, Lakeville.

Middlesex " M. P. Palmer, Groton.

" " Jonathan Eames, Sherborn.

" " W. M. Longley, Shirley.

" " W. D. Hinds, Townsend.

Hampden " Ethan Brooks, Springfield.
Hampshire " F. C. Richards, Williamsburg.

" " J. W. Clark, North Hadley.

Franklin " M. H. Vincent, Conway.

" " E. S. Young, Orange.

Berkshire " A. G. Sharp, Richmond.
Worcester " O. B. Hadwen, Worcester.
" " James Draper, Worcester.

" " Elton Green, Spencer.

" " J. L. Ellsworth, Worcester,

The chair — You hear the list of names as proposed by the
committee ; what is your pleasure to do with them ?

Mr. Parker — To save time, I would move that the secretary
be authorized to cast one ballot for the list of officers as pre-
sented.

The chair — I will put it to a vote, that the secretary may
cast one vote for the list of officers as presented. Please sig-

46

nify by yeas and nays. The vote is carried. The require-
ments of the constitution are fulfilled when the secretary casts
a ballot. I will ask Professor Maynard to cast one vote.

The chair — Gentlemen, are your votes all in? If no objection
is made I will declare the board of officers elected for the
coming year.

Mr. George Cruikshanks, president-elect, takes the chair.
(Applause.) — Members of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers'
Association: I wish to thank you for the honor which you have
conferred upon me in electing me to a position which I con-
sider a great honor among the fruit growers of this Common-
wealth. I am not a speech maker, but I promise you my best
interest for this association. I have been somewhat identified
with this work from the first, but I must say that I think that
you have made a mistake in electing me to this office. There
are those connected with this association, in this city, who are
better acquainted than I am with the fruit growers of this
state. I would solicit the hearty cooperation of all the direct-
ors and of all the members of the association, and will leave
this matter with you and hope and trust that you may not
regret that you have placed me here in this position. The first
business seems to be: There has been an invitation given to
those growing peach trees to report the condition of the buds ;
what proportion and varieties, so that you may be able to
arrive at some conclusion for '97.

Mr. Munroe Morse of Medway — Mr. Chairman, I will make
my report. I have an orchard of 500 trees. I will read the re-
sult of my examination made day before yesterday:

100 buds Crosbys, 10 dead, 90 alive.
100 buds Pratt, 8 " 92 "

50 buds Mt. Rose, 4 " 46 "

50 buds Old Mixon, 5 " 45 "

A "good" peach, of which I have 100 trees, I find, upon ex-
amination of 50 buds, 20 were dead.

Mr. Cruikshank — Any further report on peach buds?

Mr. Hartwell — Mr. President, I will say that I have some
peach trees and I cut off some branches and put them in
water; they seemed to be alive. I think i shall have a good
crop this year.

47

Mr. Vincent — ]\Ty orchard is up about 200 feet. I have 600
trees of peaches and I think with us, most of them are dead.
I have Mt. Rose, Early Crawford and Alberta. These are all I
took from. I took twenty-five out of each kind; three out of
twenty-five were alive. I put no mulch on the trees last fall.
I protected some of them with boughs ; I took a cord and drew
the limbs closely together and then set the brush around, and
of about twenty-five buds, Mt. Rose, I did not find any that
were dead.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — I will say a word about pro-
tecting peach buds and give my experience. I thought a few
years ago that I was going to have a crop of peaches. I bought
bags (these coarse ones such as come around woolen rags), and
put them around the trees, and I don't see that it protected a
single bud. I do not see what there is in pine boughs that can
protect them more than the bags, but around those that
ripened the best I tucked some snow.

A. J. Hinds — I have an orchard of 2,200 trees; about 1,800
are old enough to bear. They are most all Crosbys; a few of
the early kind, Alexander and Champion, and a few of the
Osgood. I cut some small branches and got 100 buds,
and 75 per cent, were in good condition. The location is pretty
well up.

Mr. F. S. Daniejs of Sherborn— I will say that I have 1,000
trees, of different ages= I intended to examine them day be-
fore yesterday, but did not. I examined them in December,
and found 50 per cent, were killed. The Crosbys stood it the
best of any, next the early Alexander. I think that in an or-
chard four years old, there are fully as many peaches as there
are on the old trees. In regard to what Mr. Hinds says, there
are more good buds on the tops of the trees than on the lower
limbs.

Mr. Longley of Shirley — In the little town I am from, sev-
eral of us made an examination, and 1 per cent, of mine were
found to be alive. One of my neighbors, who has a large vari-
ety, made an examination of his and 90 per cent, were alive.
Another neighbor near him, who has forty-five trees, 90 per
cent, were dead. This orchard is quite near a pond; I presume

48

that made some difference. The varieties are alike, Crawford,
Mt. Rose, Old Mixon and Richmond.

The chair — It seeins very important that we should know
the varieties and hardiest buds.

Mr. Daniels — I have been in business twenty years, and the
best orchard I ever had was on the south side; ir was thor-
ouf?hly protected from the northeast wind.

Mr. Johnson — I would say my orchard is situated at West-
boro, 500 feet above the sea level. Eighty-six per cent, of the
Crosbys were alive, 74 per cent, of the Alberta, and 75 per
cent, of the Crawfords late, and 64 per cent, of the Crawfords
early. There is scarcely any time in the year when there is
not a breeze blowin«j over the hill. We do not understand why
sacking is not as good as pine boughs.

Mr. Elliott Moore — During the noon hour I went out to my
orchard on Pleasant street, and found out of fifty buds, as
high as 90 per cent alive, but my impression is that the Cros-
by is ahead of any other kind. I think that is a wonderful per
cent.

Mr. J. A. Allen of Auburn — I have 400 trees; 200 are two
years old. Nearly all of those I tested were in perfect health.
Crosbys and Albertas are situated on a high hill, overlooking
the northwest.

Question — How do you fasten the pine boughs to the trees?

Mr. Vincent — I take an iron bar and run it around the trees,
and then I put the bough on a slant and they reach nearly to
the top of the tree ; they frequently bend in place ; I then train
them on my house and they set up against it.

Mr. J. G. Avery of Spencer — I wish to move that a vote of
thanks be extended to Ex-President James Draper for the very
efficient manner in which he has presided over our meetings,
and for the work he has accomplished in building up this
organization. He has awakened a wide-spread interest in our
work, and there were 100 that went to Fitchburg and 100 to
Concord largely through his instrumentality.

The chair — All those in favor of the motion please say aye.
It is unanimously voted.

Mr. Avery — I would also move that a vote of thanks be ex-
tended to Messrs. Blodget, Clements and Sharp for their valu-
able papers.

49

The chair — All in favor say aye. It is a vote.

Mr. Averv — I wish to extend a vote of thanks to the Wor-
cester County Horticultural Society for the free use of their
hall for our meeting.

The motion prevailed with much enthusiasm.

The chair — Are you ready for the question on the program?
The first question is: ^A'hat are the five best varieties of
cherries?

Mr. Hartwell — Perhaps I can give the names of some good
ones, but perhaps not the five best: Black Eagle, Tartarian,
H.\de"s Seedling, a nice eating variety; a high colored cherry
is Downer's Late Eed. Black varieties are the best to sell in
the market.

Mr. ^ incent — I would like tO' know whether you consider
quality or all the qualities connected with them. I should put
the Richmond for canning purposes in the market.

The chair — All qualities.

Mr. Stetson — I have one tree of White Ox Ileart that is
twenty-five years old, and I think it is a very good variety;
exceptionally nice.

Mr. Mncent of Conway — Are you acquainted with the
Mercer?

Mr. Hartwell — No.

Mr. A. F. Stevens — I would recommend Governor Wood for
a white cherry.

The chair — I think you have covered the best cherries. Some
people think there is nothing like a black cherry. I like the
Richmond; it is a tart cherry; in my opinion it is one of the
best in the list.

Mr. James J. H. Gregory — I have four or five varieties of
cherries; I have the Governor Wood, but I am never able to
get any because it rots so.

Mr. Record — Montmorency is good for canning, but it is
sour, and the birds will let it alone. I have sold them as high
as 15 cents a quart.

Mr. N. Porter Brown of Westboro — I would suggest that we
take up questions 8, 12 and 14.

The chair — Question 8: The five best varieties of peaches?
Now, gentlemen, please leave yellow^s outside.
4

50

Mr. W. Morse — Mt. Rose, Old Mixon and Stump of the
World.

Mr. C. L. Hartshorn — I have three varieties — Early and Late
Crawford, and Foster. I have very few in bearing-. About
five years ago I had a crop of about 90 baskets, next year had
75, next year 2 peaches, next year 130 baskets, next year none.

Mr. F. S. Daniels — I have Mt. Rose, Crawford (early and
late), Old Mixon, and Stump of the World. Nothing will bring
as much money as the Early Crawfords will. I have white
peaches. I am more in favor of these two: Stump of the World
and Old Mixon.

Mr. Alden Derby of Leominster — I have trees that have
borne very well ; 1 favor the €rosby. In my estimation the old
stand-bys are the Mt. Rose and possibly Old Mixon.

Mr. Hinds — A word about the Crosbys : we consider it ahead
for market varieties. Two years ago I had a crop of 2,500
baskets from 1,0(»0 trees. I sold them from |1 to |1.25 a
basket; they are good peaches. The Foster is an elegant peach
to eat, but we cannot depend upon it; like the Early and Late
Crawfords, is more apt to be killed.

Mr. Alden Derb}' — It seems to me that the Crosby is one of
the tender-wood trees. The wood is liable to kill; it must be
thoroughly trimmed.

Mr. M. W. Longley — The variety we have fruited is the Rich-
mond ; I think it is superior to the Early Crawford. My cus-
tomers are more j^leased with it. My Mt. Rose were about half
clingstones two years ago.

Mr. Elliott Moore — Has Mr. Daniels made money in raising
peaches in New England?

Mr. Daniels — That is rather a personal question. Two years
ago I had something like 500 or 600 trees, and sold |!1,500
worth of peaches. I believe that if you can get a basket that
takes from five to six dozen peaches to fill, you can sell it for
more than a basket that holds 200 peaches. I always believe
in cutting back the trees nearly half their growth. If you cut
a tree off and trim it, it will make a larger growth. You can
raise a larger crop without the limbs breaking; I believe it is
done absolutely by trimming. I think if there is too heavy a
foliage a shower will break down the trees.

51

Mr. Hinds — I always begin in good season ; it takes two men
about two weeks to thin the peach trees. I don't believe in
using pruning shears.
Mr. Stockwell — How much do you thin your peaches?
Mr. Hinds — So they will not touch each other. I think trees
should be thinned so thoroughly that they will not need
X>ropping up.

i2tli Question — AYhat five pears are best for market for
fall and winter?

Mr. Hartshorn — I would suggest the Bartlett, Beurre
D'Anjou, Bosc, Dana's Hovey and Seek el.

Mr. Brown of Westboro — I w^ould name the Seckel and
Dana's Hovey.

Mr. Gregory — Tliere has been a change in Bartlett pears
and Baldwin apples. In matter of the market, I question if
there is the profit there used to be. The Bartlett is one of the
hardest pears to get rid of. Without cold storage, I cannot
recommend it. Pears this year have been about as scarce as
apples ha^e been plenty. Down in Marblehead this year a
good profit was made, because there pears were plenty.

Mr. Hartwell — It is my opinion that the reason we had such
a good crop of apples this year is that during the blossoming
time we did not have any storms to shake the pollen off. The
weather was all that we could ask for.

Mr. Holden, Westminster — The Bartlett pear has been too
plentiful. I set out an orchard of 450 trees of Beurre D'Anjou.
I have heard the Beurre d'Anjou was hardy and better for the
market.

Mr. Draper — Pardon a short interruption. As a matter of
business, I move as an amendment to the by-laws that the num-
ber of directors be increased ; that section two of the by-laws be
amended so as to read, "Officers of the association should be
president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and auditor, and
a board of directors not exceeding twenty-four members. This
seems to be the proper time to take action, notice having been
given at the last annual meeting. I move, consequently, that
such a change take place.

The chair — You have heard the motion. All those in favor
will signify by saying. Yes. Carried.

52

Mr. Aveiy of Spencer — Since I made mv repoil, Mr. E. S.
Young of Franklin countj has joined the society. I move that
he be made one of the directors from that county.

Motion carried.

Mr. Cruikshanks — Take up No. 14. What are the best
Japan plums for market culture ?

Mr. Moore — Of these varieties the Kelsey is a very fair plum,
and has paid me well. The Burbank is a small, red plum, blos-
soms early, bears full, but it is worth nothing after it is ripe.
Abundance needs good sandy soil. It blossoms very early and
is a thrifty tree.

Mr. Brown of Westboro — I set out three kinds — Burbank,
Satsuma and Abundance. Except the Burbank, all were wiu-
ter-killed.

Mr. Vincent — T have been quite successful with the Abund-
ance. I have fifteen hundred trees. The Burbank died, but
the Abundance lived and are now fine. I have one tree ten
years old; the others are six years old. All last year's buds
were killed. Xo black-knot.

Mr. Sanderson — Take up (juestion Xo, 3. I supjjose most
people think apjiles are unprofitable, but I do not agree with
them, Now, we ought not to whine because we cannot get a
good price for apples. The poor are not able to buA- them, even
as cheap as they are now, and I feel convinced that there is not
any too much fruit grown in New England. We have none
too many apples, pears, peaches, grapes or strawberries; none
too many of anything. If I had bushels and bushels more, I
could dispose of them at a good profit. Put an "ad.** in the
papers and you will be surprised what a demand you will have.
Now, if there is a youn^g man in Worcester shutting himself
up in some store, I should advise him not to do so any longer,
but let him get out on the land ana make it blossom. Get a
plum orchard, and do not be scared of black-knot. It is more
on your brain than it is on your fruit.

Mr. Cruikshanks — Not more than twenty-five per cent, of the
apple trees planted live, and scarcely twenty-five per cent, are
taken care of as they ought to be. Such being the case, there is
little danger of too many apple trees being planted.

Mr. Sanderson — I move that ladies interested in fruit culture

53

be admitted to menibership in onr society without paying fees.

The chair puts the motion and it is carried.

Mr. Parker — Questions Nos. 5 and 6 are called for, and I
would like to ask if any of the members can give any informa-
tion in regard to chestnuts.

Mr. Knight — Forty-five years ago I was in the woods, and I
do not think my growth was stunted very much. In my opinion,
a good deal of attention might be given to nut-bearing trees.
If the nuts can be preserved, you can yet a good price for them.
As far as growing chestnuts is concerned, within four or five
miles of Worcester, you would have to wire them to the tree
in order to keep them; but chestnut lumber will always be in
demand. It makes good shingles and railroad sleepers. Wal-
nut and hickory make the best wood. I think that, with the
great demand for chestnut timber, it is very choice. It is useful
in many ways.

Mr. Johnson — In regard to a place that is out of the way of
hoodlums: I have a large chestnut orchard, and sometimes I
get more from it than I do from my apples. You are practically
safe at all times, except Sundays. If you favor church-going,
do not set out chestnut trees. If you have a gun and plenty of
shot, and will give up your Sundays, why, perhaps you can
make a success of chestnut trees.

Mr. Gregor}' — 1 find that there is some good besides the
nuts. Wheelwrights want the butts, and this timber is valu-
able. I planted vjuite a lot last fall.

Mr. Hathawa}' — Chestnut timber is very nice for sleepers
and planks, but I think, if made into shingles, it would warp.

The officers of the association were requested to arrange for
one or more field dajs during the summer season within the
state.

The time for adjournment having arrived, the meeting dis-
solved.

i

CONSTITUTION

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association,

NAME.

Section I, This organization shall be called the Massa-
chusetts Feuit Growers' Association.

OBJECT.

Sec. II. The object of this association shall be to encourage
the cultivation of fruits adapted to this climate.

To collect and disseminate reliable information as to the best
varieties of fruits and practical methods of cultivation ; gather-
ing, packing, storing and preparation of fruit for both home
and foreign markets.

To investigate diseases, insects and other obstacles to success,
and the remedies best calculated to overcome them.

OFFICERS.

Sec. III. The officers of this association shall be a presi-
dent, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and auditor, and a
board of directors of twenty-four members, two from each
county as far as practicable.

• MEMBERSHIP.

Sec. IV. Each member shall pay an admission fee of one
dollar ($1.00), and an annual assessment of one dollar ($1.00),
which shall be due at the time of the annual meeting.

56

MEETINGS.

Sec. V. Article 1. This association shall hold at least
two regular meetings each year. The annual meeting for the
election of officers shall be held in the city of Worcester on the
second Wednesday in March at 11 o'clock A. M.

Art. 2. In the election of officers and the transaction of
other business, twenty members shall constitute a quorum. A
majority vote shall constitute an election. All officers shall
hold over until their successors are chosen.

Art. 3. The president and secretary shall have power to
call special meetings of the association or of the directors, or
upon the petition of fifteen members they shall issue such calls.
The object of these meetings shall be stated in the call, which
shall be issued by mail to each member at least seven days
prior to such meetings.

AMENDMENTS.

Sec. VI. Any amendments to this Constitution may be
made by a vote of two-thirds of the members present and vot-
ing, a notice of a proposed change having been given at a pre-
vious regular meeting.

BV=LAWS.

DUTIES OF OFFICERS.

Art. 1. The president shall preside at all meetings of the
association, and perform such duties as pertain to the office,
and in his absence his official duties shall devolve upon the
vice-president, or in his absence upon one of the directors for
the county in which the meeting may be held.

DUTY OF THE SECRETARY.

Art. 2. It shall be the duty of the secretary to attend all
meetings of the association, and to keep a record of its trans-
actions, conduct all correspondence, keep a list of members of
the association, collect the assessment and pay over the same to
the treasurer, notify members of their election and members of
committees of their appointment.

57

DUTY OF TREASURER.

Art. 3. The treasurer shall have charge of all moneys be-
longing to the association. He shall keep a record of all re-
ceipts and disbursements. He shall pay out money only on
the approval of the president and secretary. He shall report
in writing at the annual meeting. He shall keep a list of
members and their places of residence, and at the close of
Kis term of office shall turn over all records and funds in his
possession to his successor.

DUTY OF AUDITOR.

Art. 4. The auditor shall examine and report upon the
books and accounts of the treasurer. He shall be entitled to
demand all books, papers and vouchers three days previous to
the annual meeting.

DUTIES OF DIRECTORS.

Art. 5. The duties of directors shall be to bring the object
and interest of the association to the notice of the people in
their several counties ; to urge their claims and endeavor to
increase the membership. They shall examine and report on
newly introduced varieties in their several localities, as to their
quality and probable value for general cultivation.

ELECTION OP OFFICERS.

Art. 6. The president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer
and auditor shall be elected by ballot, and the board of direct-
ors by a majority vote of the members present.

They shall hold office until their successors are duly elected.

The first five officers shall be ex- officio members of the board
of directors.

VACANCIES.

Art. 7. Vacancies in any office, caused by resignation,
death or removal from the state, shall be filled by the board of
directors for the unexpired term of their office.

58

DISCONTINUANCE OF MEMBERSHIP.

Art. 8. Any member who shall neglect for a period of two
years to pay his annual assessment shall cease to retain his
connection with the association, and the secretary shall have
the power to erase his name from the list of members.

Art. 9. These articles shall take effect and be in force from
their adoption by a majority vote of the association.

Art. 10. These by-laws may be amended at any meeting
of the association by a majority vote of the members present
and voting, notice of the change proposed having been made at
a previous meeting.

%

1

Ac;e=

«^p

n

POMOLOGY LIB!

m

Report of the ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ .
Fourth Annual Meeting

Massachusetts
♦ . . Fruit Growers
Association*

SiS.o,

^

Organized . . . ♦
March 2 J, 1895.

»

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(Organized March 21, 1895.)

REPORT

FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING

HORTICULTURAL HALL, WORCESTER,

PRESS OF F. b. BLA1N<^HAKLJ <v ^kj.
1808.

A

FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

HELD AT

WORCESTER, MARCH 9 and 10, 1898.

OPENING SESSION,

Wednesday Morning, March 9fh, at 10.30 0^ Clock.

President Cruickshanks called the meeting to order, and in-
troduced Mr. O. B. Hadwen, president of the Worcester Horti-
cultural Society, who welcomed the fruit growers in the follow-
ing words:

Gentlemen of the Fruit Growers' Convention: I intend to detain you
but a few moments.

I esteem it fortunate for the fruit growing interests of the Commou-
wealtli that you assemble in the goodly city of Worcester, and the Hor-
ticultural Society feels honored ^\^th the presence of so many gentlemen
who have distinguished tliemselves in your especial calling.

Gentlemen Avho have devoted a major portion of their lives to the
progress of the fruit-growing interests of the Commonwealth, I most
cordially and heartily welcome you to this our Horticultural hall, the
recognized headquarters of all interests pertaining to agriculture and
horticulture. I esteem it fortunate that so many from all parts of the
state can meet together for interchange of thought and practical knowl-
edge, coupled Avith descriptive experience, tending to develop those re-
sources in the higher art which are so essential to promote the real in-
terests of fruit growing.

Gentlemen, may the purpose of your coming be accomplished in an
outgoing and ingoing ratio, and while you give us the words that shall
proceed from the heart of a well developed experience, moving all to
greater strivings after the perfect of our ideal, may I hope this meet-

ing may prove of siifficieut instruction and enjoyment to iucluce you to
visit us again.

About one hundred members were present, and after the ad-
dress of welcome the president addressed the assembly as fol-
lows:

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this the fourth annual
meeting of our association. Since its organization there has been a
steady increase in membership, until to-day we number about one hun-
dred and seventy-five members. Two field meetings were held the past
season, the first one at Belmont ajid Arlington, June 17th. Arrangements
were made by Vice-President Hartwell and Treasurer Wood. Valuable
assistance was rendered by JNIr. Varnum Frost and Mr. W. W. Rawson.
The straAvberry fields of Mr. Frost and the extensive fruit plantations
of Hittenger Brothers were inspected. The company was highly enter-
tained by Mr. Frost at Arlington. The vegetable fields and green-
houses of Mr. Rawson were visited, in which all were interested. Din-
ner was served at Arlington. Arrangements were made for only those
that returned postals stating that thej^ would be present. Sixty-eight
postals were returned. There were about two hundred present, which
caused much inconvenience to many of our members.

September the 7th the extensive grounds of the Massachusetts Agri-
cultural College were inspected. The experiments carried on at the
college grounds are full of interest to all fruit growers. An intei'esting
meeting was held in the evening in the parlors of the hotel, between
thirty and forty being present. The subjects discussed were "The Ap-
ple Crop," "The Strawberi-y" and "The .lapanese Plum."'

September 8th a party of forty visited the Mount Warner fruit farm
of Prof. J. W. Clark. We fonnd Mr. Clark with a large force busy
picking and packing a fine crop of peaches for market. The orchard
comprises about thirty acres of apples and peaches. The peaches were
a full crop. Apples wei-e light, but of excellent quality. Spraying and
thinning the fruit are practiced with good results. Very satisfactory ar-
rangements were made at Amherst by Secretary Maynard.

It will be remembered that near the close of the last annual meeting a
motion was made and carried that ladies interested in fruit culture be ad-
mitted to membership in our association without paying dues. Section
IV of our constitution reads as follows: "Each member shall pay an ad-
missiion fee of one dollar and an assessment of one dollar, which shall
be due at the annual meeting." The vote, therefore, was unconstitu-
tional and void, an amendment to the constitution being necessary to
make it operative. Section VI of the constitution reads as follows:
Any amendment to this constitution may be made by a vote of two-
thirds of the membei's present and voting, a notice of a proposed change
having been given at a previous regular meeting.

T would recommend that we procure a suitable badge, that will fit-
tingly represent our association, to be worn at all our regular meet-
ines. I submit this for your consideration.

May liarmouy aud good feeling prevail in all our deliberations and
discussions, aud may each member fe^l tliat the influence of this asso-
ciation shall exert is in his own hands, and may this organization l)e
indeed of the fruit growers, by the fruit growers and for the fruit
growers of the state.

The secretary's report was then read and accepted. As the
part of all the proceedings of the association for the year, except
the field meetings at Belmont and at the Massachusetts Agri-
cultural College, were published in the third annual report, and
reports of these field meetings were made by the president in
his opening address, only the closing words of the secretary will
be given here.

" Eeviewing the work of the year, we cannot but look back
with a feeling that great progress has been made, greater inter-
est has been manifested, and forty-one new names added to our
membership.

" The success of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association
must depend upon the work and efforts of its members. No
body of officers can achieve anything of great value without the
full and hearty support and co-operation of its members. All
must work together, and with mutual forbearance, each and
every one doing all that is possible to add strength to the asso-
ciation.

"Your secretary would call attention to the importance of
prompt payment of the annual dues. Notices have been sent to
all delinquents, and generally prompt remittance has been made,
but a few dues still remain unpaid.

" The greatest value of our meetings comes from the facts
brought out by the addresses and the practical discussions of
the members, and these facts should be put into permanent form
for reference, which can only be done when taken by a skilled
stenographer and then printed. The expense of this work and
the printing of the Annual Report cannot be kept up without a
large membership, and unless the annual dues are promptly
paid. Will not the directors make an especial effort to in-
crease the membership during the coming year?"

The treasurer's report was then read, accepted and adopted.
(See page 68.)

It was then moved that a committee of five be appointed by
the chair to nominate a list of officers for the ensuing year.
(Carried.) The chair asked a little time to consider the matter.

6

The lecturer assigned for the morning session, Mr. S. D.
Willard, having telegraphed that he could not reach Worcester
until late in the day, Mr. A. B. Holden of Westminster, Mass.,
read the following paper on —

THE CULTURE OF THE PLUM.

On the 17th of .7uue, 1897, while en route to the field meeting of the Mas-
sachusetts Fruit Growers' Association, at Arlington and Belmont, your
president invited me to write a paper upon my method of the cultiva-
tion of the plum. With dittidence and some misgivings I have con-
sented to do so, giving briefiy a description of my method and experi-
ence in plum culture.

In the spring of 1856 I set out a number of plum trees, in addition to
some that had been planted some twelve years before, in a small pear
orchard Avhicli I was then planting. They grew and bore well for sev-
eral years, but the black knot fungus attacked them, and not know-
ing then how to combat it successfully, the trees died.

In the spring of 1S5G one acre of pear trees Avas set out, three-fourths
of which were Dwarfs and one-foui-th Standards. In the spring of 1890
it Avas discovered that a large per cent, of the Dwarfs had died or be-
come unprofitable. They were therefore removed (my place had been
rented from 187G to ISOU), and plums substituted in tiheir places.

^ly soil is a gravelly loam, luiderlaid by a hard-pan. The orchard has
been fertilized with tine bone and hardwood ashes. The past year
muriate of potash and nitrate of soda have been used. No crops have
been grown. The orchard was cultivated with a spring tooth harrow.
The previous seasons growth was cut baclv from one-third to one-half.
In March of each year, before the buds started, the trees were sprayed
with copper sulphate (one pound to twenty-five gallons of water), and
again, as the fruit approached matiu-ity. Avith Bordeaux mixture, to
prevent rot. The affected fruit Avas then picked and destroyed.

The A'arieties cidtiA'ated are mostly a.s folloAVs: BradshaAA'. BaA'oy,
Guii, Lombard, :\Iiddlebury. Hudson River Pmiile, Egg, German Prune
and Quackenbos. Of the ueAver kinds on trial, I have the Grand Duke,
Stanton, York State Prune, Engelbert, Monarch, Diamond, Canada and
Orleans; of the .Japan varieties. Abundance and Btirbank.

In the purchasing of trees my experience has been somcAvhat varied.
I have fotind it extremely difficult to obtain exactly the kind ordered.
In pm'chasing a lot of Stantons, as I stipposed, they proved to be a yel-
low plum, of kind unknoAvn to me. Some of the nursei-ymen do not
act strictly on the square in filling their orders. After Avaiting yeai*s
for trees to fruit, to find that they are not what was ordered, does not
tend to give one a heavenly frame of mind. If a nurseryman can be
relied on rreri/ time, he is deserving of all orders that a fruit grower
can send him.

One of the most formidable obstacles to the ciiltiyation of the plum
is the black knot fungus {Ploicriglitia morhosu), Avhich has proved to
be such a terror to fruit gi'owers. It has been held in check by spray-
ing in the month of ^Nlarch with sulphate of copper (one pound to twen-
ty-five gallons of water), before the buds swell; also by cutting off at
the first appearance any of the fungus, and painting over the wound
witli linseed oil paint. Thus far I have been successful in holding the
disease in check, if removed at the first appearance.

The next enemy to conquer is the curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar).
Mr. T. S. Gold, secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of Con-
necticut, stated at the meeting of the State Board of Agriculture of
Massachusetts, in December, 1875, held at Haverhill, that "it has been
said that you cannot scare away the curculio^that y6u must catch him
and kill him." "But," he adds, "if I have not scared him away, I have de-
ceived him, and induced him to believe that there was no place for
him to lay its eggs in the young plum." The secret of success in avoid-
ing the curculio is to apply to the trees soon after
the petals fall some mixture or substance that will so
affect the curculio that he will avoid the tree. The
remedy may be in the form of a powder or liquid, as one may pre-
fer. What Mr. Gold recommended is this: North Caix)lina tar and
strong soft-soap, at a. ratio of one part tar to three parts soap, thor-
oughly boiled together until the tar is dissolved. Dilute one quart of
this mixture with three pailsful of water, adding more soap if the tar
is not all taken up. Apply with a garden syringe as soon as the blos-
/soms fall, or the fruit has grown to the size of a small pea. The tar
in the soap mixture causes the wash to adhere tenaciously to the plum.
Hard-coal ashes sifted fine have been applied at the time of spraymg
with good effect. ^ly object has been to put the plum on the de-
fensive from the attacks of the curculio: and I would say here that
after giving this remedy a faithful trial of three years I have found it
to be effective. It is important that it should be properly prepared
and its application timely. This remedy requires much less time than
using sheets and jarring the trees for those who grow plums in a small
way. Where one cultivates large orchards, as in western New York,
an implement on wheels, called the "curculio catcher.'' would perhaps
be preferred.

The next and last (but by no means the least) obstacle to plum cul-
ture of which I shall speak is the rot fungus (MonlUo fnictUjena);
and in consideration of the vital importance of the success of the dis-
covery of a remedy to checkmate this formidable foe, I trust the asso-
ciation will pardon me if I quote from Prof. L. F. Kinney's report of
the results of his experiments the past summer. Prof. Kinney has
charge of the horticultural division of the Experiment Station at Kings-
ton. R.I.

Prof. Kinney says:

"It is a thing to be regretted that the cultivation of the plum is such

8

a precarious undertaking in this state; nevertlieless the fact is too ap-
parent to require proof. I do not know of a single plum orchard here
from which the owner has received satisfactory returns, and fruit
growers generally are convinced that it does not pay to attempt to
grow choice varieties for the market, principally on account of three
destructive enemies, viz.: the black knot, curculio and the plum rot
fungus. It is now generally understood that the fii-st of these, the
black knot, can be controlled by cutting away the diseased parts and
spraying the trees occasionally with Bordeaux mixture, to prevent re-
infection. The second, the curculio, can also be partially controlled
by spraying the trees with proper poisonous solutions several times
while the fruit is small, or, more effectually, by jarring the trees.

"The third, the plum rot, steals in like a thief at night and devoui"s
the substance of the plums, just before they are thoroughly ripe. So
far this enemy of plum culture has baffled the ingenuity of plant
pathologists, and it still stands in the way of successful culture of the
fruit.

"As stated in the last annual report of this station (p. 180), an experi-
ment in the use of fungicides as a preventive of this disease has been
conducted in co-operation with Mr. N. S. Allen of East Greenwich.
Last summer the treatment in this orchard was restricted to one row,
containing a dozen large Spaulding trees. Fruit was set very thickly
on some of the trees, and they would have yielded a large crop if the
plums could have been prevented from rotting. An attempt to do this
by keeping the trees heavily sprayed with strong Bordeaux mixture
while the fruit was green was unsuccessful. When the spray-pump
was stopped, because the fruit was approaching maturity, then the
fungus improved its opportunity. It swooped down on the ripening
plum, from wlience we do not know, and, finally, nearly every fruit rot-
ted upon the treated trees as well as upon the others."
His conclusions:

"The results of these experiments are all negative, and we find noth-
ing to indicate that the plum rot can be controlled by spraying the trees
with the Bordeaux mixture. The treatment last season was made as
a final test, after considerable preliminai*y work had been done, and
the details were carried out in a most thorough manner. It is a fact
worthy of note that the fruit of different varieties of plum varies in sus-
ceptibility to injury by the rot fungus. This seems to be due in part
at least to the difference in texture of the skin of the plum, although the
early varieties are usually injiu-ed more by decay than those that ripen
their fruit later. Whether the Japan varieties will prove less subject
t0 the rot than the European, we do not know; but for the present we
find encouragement in the hope that they will, and defer discussion of
them until the end of the present season."

Fortunately, there is some liglit emanating from Prof. Kinney's ex-
periments which is encouraging. It is the power which some plums
possess to resist the rot. Of the varieties which I fruited last season.

the Guii, Washington, Beauty of Naples, Hudson River Purple, Egg,
Bradshaw, Imperial Gag'e, Pond's Seedling, Victoria and Lincoln yield-
ed most I'eadily to the attacks of tlie rot fungus. Tlie Quackeubos.
German Prune, Bavey, Middleburg and Grand Duke made the best
showing in resisting the rot. More than thirty-three pei* cent, of my
crop rotted; and I was not abl&, after vigorous spraying, to save some
of the varieties. I have no doubt a large part of this fatality the past
year may be attributed to wet weather and the small amount of sun-
shine during the growing season.

I believe a severe thinning of the fruit would do much toward ar-
resting the progress of the disease. No two plums should come in
contact with each other. Whether the fallen fruit, partially incorpo-
rated with tbe soil, will be a source of danger to the new crop the com-
ing year, I am unable to determine.

All plum growers, as well as those who cultivate other kinds of fruit,
owe a debt of gratitude to the experiment stations at Amherst, Geneva,
Kingston, R. I., Cornell, Wooster, O., and Washington, D. C, for the
persistent investigation and research for cause and prevention of
everything which hinders or obstructs the growing of all kinds of
fruit. Whatever success in my experience has been achieved is largely
due to availing myself of the information received from the numerous
bulletins of the above-mentioned stations.

In order to make a success of the growing of any kind of fruit at the
present day, a man should have a good degree of what is called by
some "stick-to-it-ive-ness." Nearly eveiT returning season brings with
it some new foe with a frightful name for the fruit growers to combat,
either in the form of an insect or of a fungous nature.

We are now threatened with an invasion of the San Jose scale, which
has become a teiTor to fruit growers in western New York and Long
Island, and with the gypsy and brown-tailed moth, already at our
doors, in addition to the numerous fungous pests. We are tempted with
the poet Heath to say (with a slight' alteration):

"Oh! watch, and fight, and spray,

The battle ne'er give o'er;
Renew it boldly every day,

And help divine implore."

Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Fruit GroAvers' Association, I have
given you a very brief desei'iption of my experience in the cultivation
of the plum, covering a period of some fifty-four years. I do not claim
to have advanced new methods or theories, but have faithfully tried
those that some of out illustrious fruit growers have practiced and rec-
ommended.

Fellow laborers in the growing of fruit, I feel that it is an inspiration
to us to meet in this beautiful hall, dedicated to the science of horti-
culture— to view I tlie portraits that adorn its walls, of the distinguished

10

men who have rendered inestimable service to the cause of horticul-
ture, in this beautiful city, in the Heart of the Commonwealth, and
who have now passed on to fields of fadeless green. May each one of
us here to-day strive to emulate their noble example.

At the close of Mr. Holden's paper the president announced
the following Nominating Committee: J. G. Avery, J. R.
Harrington, A. G. Sharp, \V. D. Hinds, Jonathan Eames.

The following discussion then took place :

Mr. E. S. Young of Orange — Is this disease you speak of a
new one that attacks the leaves of the tree f

Mr. Holden — It is what is called the "shot-hole fungus. " It
is a disease of the leaf. It gives the leaves a strainer-like ap-
pearance, and in consequence of that disease it is necessary to
use the Bordeaux mixture, and with the paris green it will ob-
viate in a measure the necessity of using the other remedies for
plum curculio.

Mr. Young — Mr. President, with your permission, I would
like to ask Prof. Maynard if he can give us the cause of the
'"shot-hole fungus. "

Prof. Maynard — Mr. President, the "shot-hole fungus" is a
disease that comes on a leaf — and we have a growth more or less
of the same nature on almost every crop — a fungus growth that
causes blight similar in effect, but of different species. This
species attacks the plum, the peach, the cherry, the apricot, and
all of the stone fruit. In hot weather, when there are drops of
dew or rain-water on the foliage, and the spores come in contact
with it, they grow, feeding on the leaf structure. Very soon
that part of the leaf tissue attacked dies, and finally falls out,
and we have the "shot hole, " i. e., the small holes in the leaf.
Some seasons it is very destructive ; other seasons less. One
year we have fungous growths in large quantities, when conditions
are favorable, and another, when conditions are unfavorable,
none ; and the same applies to the "brown rot" of the plum.
The plum is more affected than any other fruit crop. The more
vigorously a tree grows the more liable is it to the injury of this
fungus, and we find the best plum crops on trees growing rather
slowly. In regard to the application of Bordeaux mixture as a
preventive for the "brown rot," we have found that we can-
not wholly prevent it, but have reduced it very largely, so

11

that the fruit will be more profitable than when the trees are
nnsprayed. When the conditions are right for the "brown
rot" the fruit will not last long after picking ; it will very often
decay in a day.

Mr. Young — Does the " shot-hole '' attack apples "?

Prof. Maynard — There is a similar fungus on the leaves of the
apple, but it is a different species.

Mr. S. E. Fisher of Worcester — Mr. President, I would like
to ask the essayist which he considers the best of the Japanese
plums.

Mr. Holden — My experience with Japanese plums is not very
extensive, but I considered the Abundance last year the best eat-
ing plum I had. If you let the tree overbear, the fruit does not
have the same flavor as if you thinned the fruit out properly.
I think that the Abundance is the best thing you can plant, the
richest and most fruitful. The quicker that anything is taken off
the tree that you do not want, the better for the remaining crop.
I take the surplus fruit off as soon as developed enough, as
soon as you can determine which is the best fruit and which is
attacked by the curculio. If you can hold the curculio in check,
so they will not trouble you, then you can begin thinning very early.

Mr. O. Stockwell of Pitchburg — If you are going to set out
fruit trees for profit, would you discard setting out the plum and
set out other fruit instead 1

Mr. Holden — Well, that would depend on one contingency
which I mentioned in the paper. Unless Mr. Maynard, or some
other man like him, can devise some means whereby he can hold
the curculio in check, it is rather a difficult undertaking. I do
not propose to give up the ship yet. I am going to try it on un-
til I am satisfied that it cannot be done. I have selected the
most hardy varieties. Last year the Quackenbos, which I do
not consider to be a superior plum, proved to be the best plum I
had. Some of my trees bore two bushels. They were a sight to
look at. They sell well in the market — very showy and market-
able.

Mr. Young — Mr. President, as to what our brother said about
the flavor of the plum, by allowing it to grow and not overbear,
I hope all members of the association will make a note of it. It
applies to every kind of fruit that you can cultivate.

12

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend — I would like to enquire of the
essayist if he does not find that the market is becoming over-
stocked with plums, in competition with the California fruit —
harder to sell than it was ten years ago.

Mr. Holden — I do. When I set out my pear orchard I was
getting four dollars a bushel for Bartletts and four dollars for
Anjou. My farm is in the northern part of Worcester county,
away from the seaboard, and is not so subject to the inroads of
the plum-seller as in the lower towns, and I found a ready sale
for what I had. I pack them in common strawberry baskets.
Plums do not like abrasion. I believe if properly presented in
the market, and the kind selected which will prolong the season
of the plum, there will be a demand, and all the plums I set out
now will be later ones, so as not to come in competition with the
Lombard. Last season was a peculiar one for pears and plums.
In thinning, no two plums should be allowed to touch each
other.

Mr. Hinds — It seems that in our cities the California fruit has
taken possession of the market, and we can do nothing in com-
petition. For the first two or three crates shipped to Boston
last year I got eight cents a quart. I packed them in strawberry
boxes, and they arrived in good shape, and the Burbanks av-
eraged fourteen or fifteen plums in a box. They had been well
thinned. My commission man sold them for lOA cents a box,
and I do not see any money in it.

Mr. In regard to the thinning of plums, I have

been growing plums, and had in all sixteen varieties, and the
Quackenbos is the finest looking plum of all these varieties. It
is very dark colored, and it has a very fine appearance. It rots
on the tree the least of any except the Fellemberg. I wanted to
ask whether, if we thinned, for instance, the Lombard so that
they would not touch each other, they would be equally free
from the rot. The Lombard grows in clusters, and I have
counted as many as forty-five plums in one bunch that had
rotted and stuck together.

Prof. Maynard — I think the essayist has answered that ques-
tion ; you can reduce the amount of rot by not letting the fruit
touch, and there is a great difference in the varieties. Some rot
more readily than others, and the Lombard will rot more

13

than any other variety. The Duane, the Kingston and the Fel-
lemberg I think are about the best, showing the least amount of rot.

Mr. 1 would like to ask in regard to plums that

rot on the ground, whether they are any danger to the crop.

Prof. Maynard — There is no question about it. The dead
plums on the trees now are full of winter spores. Those plums
should all be picked off and destroyed. I think that all plums
which fall on the ground should be destroyed. The chances are
that a great many spores that have developed from fallen plums
will have germinated and lost their vitality, but there will be
enough of them left, and we should do everything possible to re-
duce the amount of spores. You know how many there are on
a single plum during the summer — a mass of dust over the sur-
face, and perhaps millions on a single plum.

Mr. Is there anything that will destroy this ?

Would air-slacked lime be of any benefit 1

Prof. Maynard — No doubt freshly slacked lime, that has not
been exposed to the air very long, will destroy a great many
spores.

Mr. N. P. Brown of Westboro- -We are told that the produc-
tion of the plum is unprofitable, but I have an idea that we have
something to learn in this matter. Last season was a peculiarly
wet season. I had plums of various kinds. My Bradshaw, as
a general thing, gives me an excellent quality of plum. The rot
last year was greatly helped by the season. I believe we can
help the matter a great deal by taking the decaying fruits off, and
at once destroying them. It is possible that we do not thin
enough ; but, after all, that is not entirely true, because the
Bradshaw hardly ever grows thickly. They are scattered all
along the limb, while the Lombard grows in heavy clusters.
The Japan plums are varieties I am afraid we are going to be
disappointed in. I have perhaps 300 Burbank trees set out, but
I take more stock in the European plum to-day than the Japan.
The Quackenbos plum is one of the best plums we have to-
day, and it bears heavily every year. It is the best eating plum
I think we have to-day. The California plum has not as good a
flavor as ours. The California fruit is raised in large quantities,
and floods our markets, and people will buy a thing if it is at-
tractive looking. They want large fruit. Strawberries must

14

almost fill a box in order to satisfy the public taste, and the one
who raises the largest strawberries is the one who will make his
mark and fortune.

Mr. W. H. Johnson of Northboro — I would like to ask the
price at which the Japanese and European plums will sell in the
market.

Mr. Holden — My plums sold for twelve, ten and eight cents a
quart. Perhaps some who have a larger lot in cultivation could
answer that question better.

Mr. H. O. Meade of Lunenburg — It looks to me that nearly all
the European plums are back numbers. I do not think there is
money in them. I wish to say just this in regard to spraying :
It pays, if a man knows his business, and has trees enough.
Now the whole point is this, can a man afford to spray his trees,
and then not make anything ? In the first place, a man does not
want to raise fungus if he can help it, and then be obliged to use
Bordeaux mixture to kill it. I plow my orchard. I have some
300 trees. Last year I had my plums all thinned, and the Bur-
banks were thinned to that point that I lost a very large part.
They cracked, and that caused rot. I prefer the Burbank to the
Lombard. The Satsuma is the only plum that I can raise here
that will keep. It will keep two weeks certainly in good condi-
tion, but it is not a good eating plum. The Abundance with me
is a nice looking plum, but of poor quality. I have had a little
experience with the Wickson, but it seems to me not equal in
quality. I think the Burbank will take the place of the Euro-
pean plum, if a man can raise them so the curculio will not at-
tack them. They will bear in three or four years.

Prof. Maynard — They are now growing the Japanese and
the American plums on the peach root. The claim is that the
peach-root finally dies out, and we soon have the variety on its
own root. This is a matter we know practically very little
about, and it will take a good many years before we can prove
its value.

Mr. Brown — A year ago I put out 100 Japanese plums. They
had been grafted on peaches. I have since purchased of Eogers
Bros., and they warrant their stock not to be grafted on a peach.
I should feel like prosecuting a man who sells me plum trees
grafted on a peach.

15

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — It seems to me that this ques-
tion has been pretty well discussed. There are thirty-nine ques-
tions here, and I was wondering what time we should get through
if we allowed a long discussion on all the subjects. Some of
these other questions might be taken up with advantage, al-
though I have been very much interested in the discussion of
the plum.

Prof. Maynard — One point in regard to the peach stock. If Mr.
Brown's trees were planted on heavy land they would not grow
as well as on light soil.

Moved to adjourn to 1 p. m. Carried.

Afternoon Session — 1 o" Clock.

President Cruickshanks in the chair.

The Chair — It is thought best to defer the first question until
the time for the paper on the same question, and so we will take
up the other questions, and follow along the list as far as we can
go, unless some member may elect other questions.

Member — I move we take up No. 4. (Carried. ) No. 4 is called
for: "What are the most important points in the growth
and marketing of choice pears *? " (The two members ap-
pointed to open the discussion not responding, the question
was open for general discussion.)

Mr. Meade — As far as packing is concerned I use boxes.
Markets want nice packing. If a man has good fruit he should
know enough to put it up in good style.

The President — Is there anything further on that question ?
If not, we will proceed to the next : No 5, " What are the most
important points in the growth and marketing of choice plums ?"
That seems to have been discussed pretty well this forenoon,
and unless some gentleman has something valuable to offer it
will be well to pass it over.

Mr. F. J. Kinney — I think the plum question has had more
than its share already.

The President — The next question is No. 6, " What are the
most important points in the growth and marketing of choice
peaches ? "

Mr. Hinds — Mr. President, fruit growers think that there are
several important points in growing peaches successfully, and

16

two of the most important to my mind are the location of orchard
and the variety planted. Perhaps as important as any is the
location, for we all know that it is useless to undertake to grow
peaches in the valleys, where the thermometer goes down 25 to
30 degrees below zero during the winter. So that those who
grow peaches are those who have climbed the hills. But then
there is a difference in the soil even on the hilltops. Land
naturally heavy that holds the moisture is not well adapted for
peach culture. I find that on the hilltop only a portion of my
land is well adapted for peaches. Then next would be the
selection of the varieties. That, perhaps, each one must test
for himself, something as we do in strawberry culture. You
will all agree that there are but few varieties that will succeed
in each and every location, and I think there is something in the
peach that is similar. I have never succeeded with the Early
Crawford, and yet there are others in this part of the country who
consider it the best with them. Of the other varieties, my
choice at the present time, commencing with the earliest, is the
Mountain Rose. The Oldmixon is very fine in quality, but it
does not grow as large as I would like to have it ; yet it is a
good peach. The Early Crawford and the Foster we used to do
something with, but have not raised many the last few years-
The Crosby has opened our eyes to the importance of that peach.
Hale Bros, came from Connecticut to see the tree before they
propagated it. This has been a favorite peach with me, the best
of anything we have ever had, and it is much hardier than other
varieties. Like the Japanese plums and all plums, it must be
thinned, unless nature does the thinning, as it seems to have
done this year. T am at present very much pleased with the
Elberta. It is a very promising peach ; 50 or 60 per cent, of
the buds yesterday were good, the Mountain Rose running a
little better than that.

Mr. M. P. Palmer of Groton — What fertilizer do you use ?

Mr. Hinds — I use coarse bone and meat (tankage) which
comes from the butcher's shop, and which has been subjected to
a high steam pressure that takes out all the fat. There will be
some large pieces, but I take a good deal of pains in spreading.
These larger pieces soon crumble.

Mr. Monroe Morse of Medway — (After a little discussion on

17

fertilizers.) It was a very important test spoken of at the
Fruit Growers' Association in council at Geneva which was
tried on an apple orchard. They tried these modern helps in
the way of fertilizers for three successive years on one-half, and
on the other half they did nothing, and the fruit proved as good
on the untreated as on the treated. The problem of modern
fertilizers I think is not yet solved.

Mr. Hinds — That may all be true.

Question — Tell us something about the pruning of peach trees.

Mr. Hinds — I thin out the tops of my trees ; I cut
them back but little. Some of the branches half the size of my
wrist I often saw off — two or three of them sometimes, — and
take the whole branch right away, to let in the sunlight on the
top of the tree. I prefer that to cutting back. On the trees
not cut back (after speaking of an experiment on 35 trees) the
sun came through and colored the fruit beautifully. Those not
cut back stood there very upright, making increased wood
growth on the top, a great deal of shade, and the fruit did not
color.

Mr. Palmer — I would like to say one word in confirmation of
what Brother Hinds says in regard to location. He lives with-
in 10 miles nearly of my place. My orchard is on a high hill,
and I set out 1000 peach trees 17 years ago, with Early and Late
Crawfords, Mountain Eose, Foster, Stump-the- World and Eich-
mond. Now I have realized more from the Early Crawford than
from any peach that I have had. I cut them back the first or
second year. There has not been a limb cut back since, and the
Early Crawford are in first-rate shape. I think I have had eight
crops on those trees. They are as tall as an apple tree. I have
to use a 16 ft. ladder to reach them, and I think those trees will
live as long as I shall. They have not had any barn-yard ma-
nure since first set out. The most they have had is ashes. I
have tried the Crosby, which Mr. Hinds says is the best peach,
and it does not do as well with me as the Foster or Early and
Late Crawford. So I do not see as you can establish any rule.
He trims, and I do not trim. He thins, and I do not thin. I
take all the Lord gives me, no matter how much. When you do
not thin them, and get them in the habit that way, they will not
have many more buds than they can support. There is a good

2

18

deal in education. If you go to work and try to twist a tree, it
will depend too much on you. I believe that a peach tree, like
an apple tree, if left to itself will educate itself.

Mr. H. C. Fuller — How many ashes do you supply your trees,
and what do they cost you ■? "Where do they come from "?

Mr. Hinds — I have bought some ashes from Canada, and I
tried the leached ashes, and supposed they were good, but I was
disappointed. The home-made I buy of the men who collect
for making soap, I think I have had the best results from them.
I do not put on a great many. I plow the land once a year, and
harrow it. Would set my trees between apples, then if you
have bad luck with peaches, you have apples coming along, and
the apple has become one of the best fruit crop.

Mr. Warren — Does the gentleman wish us to infer that the
ashes from the soap men are leached or unleached ?

Mr. Hinds — Unleached ashes. I do not think you would
make any money from ashes with the potash all taken out.

The President — Is there anything further on this question ?

Mr. Stockwell — Mr. President, I would like to ask someone
how it is best to deal with the effects of the borer to keep it
out.

Mr. J. W. Clark of North Hadley — I know of no better than
to dig them out. Go over the trees twice a year, and look over
them thoroughly.

Question — In a peach orchard I once saw the trees were all
wrapped around with tarred paper.

Mr. Clark — That is dangerous and is more expensive to put
that around than to dig the borers out. In the first place, if
you will scrape the dirt away from the trees, and then scrape
the bark, you can tell at a glance whether there is a borer in a
tree after going around a few days later. A great many places
look like the holes of the borers, but may not be. If you see
sawdust or chips in the gum there you will find a borer. It
does not take long to go over an orchard.

Mr. Morse — I would like to state a little of my experience with
borers.

Mr. Young — Mr. President, now I would like to suggest if
the gentleman is going to speak that we want to hear what is to
be said. I am here for information. I am exceedingly sorry

19

that I could not tell a word that Mr. Clark said, the man of all
men that I wanted to hear on the question of peach culture.

Mr. Clark — I said I should dig the borers out, and the method
of digging out is this : take a hoe and a knife, scrape the dirt
away, and scrape the bark around the base, and then in a few
days go around and see if there is gum coming out containing
chips or sawdust, and where you see that look for borers. The
gum alone does not amount to anything. Go over the trees
twice during the season, and you will keep the trees practically
clear.

Mr. Hinds — At what time would you do this ?

Mr, Clark — You find the borers in the trees sometimes left
over from last season. I would examine early and late in the
summer.

Mr. Morse — When I set my orchard I had quite a number of
trees. I used to dig them out, and to prevent their getting in
again for the last three or four years I have used a wash made of
lime slacked to the consistency of paint, and add a quart of lin-
seed oil mixed with two gallons of slacked lime mixture, and I
have painted the trees up to the forks with that lime. I shall
keep it up as long as it proves effectual.

Mr. Young — Give us the proportions.

Mr. Morse — I slack lime to the consistency of paint, and add
a quart of linseed oil with each pailful. I use the oil to make
the lime adhesive, and it lasts the whole season. It will stay
on till the heavy rains come.

Mr. Young — You call that one to ten !

Mr. Morse — Yes, more or less. I put in enough oil to make
it stick through the season.

Mr. F. H, Daniels of Sherborn — Mr. President, I will give my
experience, I believe the first thing is to examine the tree close-
ly. I have seen orchards completely destroyed by borers in the
trees. I take wire the size of an ordinary crochet needle, file
the end of it, and run it up in the hole, or take a knitting-needle
and hook them out. And I have been using a wash which is a
little different from that of Mr. Morse's. Sometimes I use it
twice during the season. I take about two quarts of good strong
soft-soap in a pail, and dissolve it with warm water. Then I
take a cloth, and wash the tree up and down. I give them a

20

good rubbing, because when a tree gets to be several years old
the bark is a little rough, and there are always places where in-
sects go in and lay eggs, and it is sure death to them, and even
the little borers that hatch out in the months of June and July
penetrate the bark, and work down, and get into the roots. If
you get a borer in a tree you have to cut a good deal to get it
out.

Mr. Manning of Reading — We had at our Horticultural Society
a few weeks ago a Prof. Slingesland of Cornell College, and he
went over a long list of remedies for borers, and among them the
wire, which is the most effectual and satisfactory. He said he
found no wash equal to putting on a coat of tar, that he said
would stay in place a year or more. They had tried it for
several years, and on young trees. ["Twenty-one substances were
tried by Prof. Slingesland, among them lime, salt and sulphur,
strong solutions of soap, Hale's wash, whale oil soap and
whitewash, lime and linseed oil, wire gauze netting, all prov-
ing a failure. Nothing was found that would kill the borer and
not injure the tree. " He reports the digging out process is
certainly the surest yet devised, and can be done as cheaply as
the application of washes. — (Secretary.)]

The President — The next question is, "What are the most
important points in the growth and marketing of choice
quinces 1 "

Mr. Elliott Moore — Mr. President and members of the associ-
ation, we are here to learn. One after another starts to say
something, and it is jabber, jabber, jabber in your ears behind,
and nothing can you hear from them. Now when a speaker
comes before an audience to speak I like to hear what he has to
say, and I felt this morning and a number of times since like
asking some of the speakers, " Where did you go to school ?"
It is one of the most important things of these meetings that we
hear, and get the ideas of others, and use them. I have had
very little experience in the growing and marketing of choice
quinces, but have tried in a measure to post myself on the
question. I find that one of the first things, as in the peach, is
in the selection and location. In looking around through the
various orchards of quince trees, I find that many of them are
in low, wet soil. My experience is that you are wrong. You

21

want good, strong corn land, where it will drain moderately quick,
where the soil is perhaps deeper than that suitable for the peach
and plum. We are trying all varieties on the market, but find
nothing better than the old Orange quince, which is the quince
that will sell for the highest price. In talking with one of the
large fruit dealers in a Boston market sometime since, I asked
him what quince he liked in particular. He said he did not care
what the variety was as long as it was a good quince. He says
it is not necessary to be confined to one kind of package ; he
could sell the fruit in any packages if properly put up. He says
the principal point is good, ripe, bright-colored fruit, andhehas
no trouble in selling in any kind of package. The dealers, he
said, can do best with the yellow quince. Quinces are worse to
get the borers from than the peach, and the best thing we have
ever tried is a little pliable wire, something like a crochet hook,
and hook them out. You can do it very rapidly and effectually.
I never have tried the wash, but shall try this lime and linseed
oil, for I believe if there is a preventive it is better than a
cure.

The President — The hour has arrived to hear the report of the
Committee on Nomination.

The Nominating Committee reported the following list of
officers :

President — George Craickshanks, Fitchburg.
Vice- President— John W. Clark, North Hadley.
Secretary — Samuel T. Maynard, Amherst.
Treasurer — Ethan Brooks, West Springfield.
Auditor — Calvin L. Hartshorn, Worcester.
Directors —Essex County, E. A. Emerson, Haverhill.

" " J. J. H. Gregory, Marblehead.

Suffolk " Wm. R. Sessions, Boston.
Norfolk " Monroe Morse, Medway.
" " A. F. Stevens, Wellesley.

Plymouth " Augustus Pratt, Middleboro.

" " S. S. A. Stetson, Lakeville.

Middlesex " M. P. Palmer, Groton.
" " F. H. Daniels, Sherborn.

" " M. W. Longley, Shirley.

" " W. D. Hinds, Townsend.

" " Geo. F. Wheeler, Concord.

Hampshire" F. C. Richards, Williamsburg.
" " E. H. Alderman, Middlefleld.

22

Directors — Berkshire County, A. G. Sharp, Richmond.

" " R. C. Race, No. Egremont.

Franklin " M. H. Vincent, Conway.

'' " E. L. Young, Orange.

Worcester " O. B. Hadwen, Worcester.

" " J. L. Ellsworth, Worcester.

'' " James Draper, Worcester.

" " J. Elton Green, Spencer.

" " H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.

It was moved that the secretary be directed to cast the electing
vote for the entire list recommended by the committee.

This was objected to by several members, not that they had
objections to any of the names mentioned, but that it was not
a good precedent to establish.

It was then voted that the association proceed to ballot for the
five leading officers all one ballot. When the votes were partly
collected it was moved that the polls be closed. Carried, but as
many declared they had not voted the ballot was declared void.

Voted to reconsider the vote whereby electing by ballot was
determined.

It was then voted that the secretary be directed to cast one
vote electing the entire list of officers as presented by the Nomi-
nating Committee. The secretary cast the vote as directed, and
the above list was declared elected.

The discussion of the question list was then resumed.

The President — The next question is, "What are the most
important points in the growth and marketing of choice grapes *?"

Mr, C. F. Hayward of Ashby^ — Mr. President, I should answer
that we have different weather from that of the last, which
we had no control of. I was not able to raise Concord grapes.
If I could have raised them I should have had no trouble in sell-
ing them for a fair price. Even at the low j^rice for grapes that
has prevailed for the last few years there is some profit in grow-
ing them. Put them in the right place, where the market de-
mands a choice grape, and we can get from 5 to 8 cents per
pound, but the question is, can we get such grapes ? I used to
raise them, but have not been able to get them for three or four
years past.

The President — Mr. Blake of Ashby grows some grapes. We
would like to hear from him.

23

Mr. Blake — Mr. President, I do not think I could add anything
for the information of anyone here. We cannot get good grapes
if we do not have a good season.

Mr. Bates — What is the best time for the pruning "?

Mr. Young — I think Prof. Maynard is the man to answer that
question.

Prof. Maynard — The sooner after the leaves fall the better —
that is, as far as the benefit to the vine is concerned. The best
time for that may not be the best time for the growers to do the
work most profitably. They may be pruned up to the 1st of
March. Dr. Fisher of Fitchburg has made the statement thathe
has pruned the grape-vine every month in the year, and has seen
no difference in the growth. When pruned after the 1st of March
the sap that runs out contains a large amount of starchy matter,
and must be a loss to the vine, but may not seriously injure it.
Any time during the winter will do, when it can be done to the
best advantage ; but for the benefit of the vine, prune it in the
fall, and then you have taken away a large amount of the surface
exposed to evaporation.

Mr. Blake — Mr. President, I prune the vines any time when I
can get time after the leaves fall until after the 20th of March. I
never have seen any difference in the bearing of the vines the
next year. I have trimmed them after the 20th of March with-
out having the vines bleed at all.

Mr. C. S. Pratt of Beading — I trimmed mine a week ago, and
they did not bleed.

Mr. Bates — A number of years ago a man from Ohio advised
me to trim my vines as soon as the leaves dropped in the fall,
and I have been quite successful in raising good grapes.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — I think it makes a difference
whether we are cutting last year's growth or wood four or five
years old. Don't you think the older stock is more liable to
bleed ?

Prof. Maynard — Yes.

Mr. Bates — I would like to inquire if bleeding is likely to do
much harm. I had a vine last year that I trimmed, and it bled,
I should think, for three weeks — from one end of the vine three
or four gallons.

Prof. Maynard — I think we can take Dr. Fisher's statement

24

that no serious injury would result from late pruning, yet, if we
set the sap that flows from a late pruned vine aside a little while,
it will thicken, showing that a large amount of starch is lost. The
vine may be able to make it up in future growth.

The President — Question No. 9, " What are the most import-
ant points in the growth and marketing of choice currants ? "

Mr. E. W. Wood, West Newton — Mr. President, this is a fruit
that, I am sorry to say, is often thought of little value. If you
find currants in gardens for domestic use, you often find them
tucked in under the fence or beside the dividing line, with no
opportunity for growth or culture, and still no fruit grows that
responds more readily or in a more profitable way than the cur-
rant, and the improvement that has been made during the last
ten years in the currant is perhaps greater than any of our prin-
cipal fruits. We used to grow almost invariably, as many will
remember, the old Dutch currant, which is very small. This is
now becoming almost obsolete, and we can hardly find it in
any of the old gardens, but a substitute in its place, the Cherry
and the Versaillaise, and the names are a distinction, perhaps,
without a difference. It may be more profitable for the nursery-
men to have two varieties than one; men will be more likely to
buy if two varieties are offered than if only one. The question
arose in the Eoyal Horticultural Society in London several years
ago, "What is the difference between the Cherry and the Ver-
saillaise ? " They appointed a committee of five (both varieties
are of French origion) to visit France, and ascertain the origin
of those two currants. They reported unanimously that they
were one and the same. Since that time they have been listed on
our schedule as " Versaillaise. " Both are desirable varieties,
and if you have a Versaillaise you need not buy a Cherry. The
currant is a fruit that can be grown where no other can be grown
successfully. It will produce quite as well, if not better, in the
shade. It may be grown in our pear or apple orchards. Con-
necticut furnishes a large proportion of the currants used in
Massachusetts. They may have the nutmegs, but there is no
reason why they should grow our currants. We have all the
soil and facilities for growing that they have in Connecticut or
anywhere else.

One word in regard to keeping currant bushes in bearing con-

25

dition : It was formerly the practice to cut them off as growers
of peach trees do, cutting one-half to two-thirds of the growth of
the present year. My practice is to thin out the shoots, cut
out the old wood. Currants thicken up, and opening the
centre of the bush will throw up sprouts which will make strong
bearing wood.

The bushes I have were set out twenty- five years ago, and
by this thinning-out process the wood has been renewed.

Mr. Stockwell — If one had half an acre of currants already
growing, what kind of trees should he set out for profit for
shade ?

Mr. Wood — A.ny kind of a tree. The question is often
brought up that in growing apple orchards it takes too long for
them to grow ; cannot expect to get a return under ten years.
Currants set out at the same time will bring in a good profit all
the time, while the apple trees are making growth and coming
into bearing.

Mr. Daniels — Don't you think the market is overstocked with
currants 1 Would you advise setting out currants now !

Mr. Wood— I would.

Mr. Daniels — I have thought for the last few years the market
has been overstocked with currants. If I remember right, I was
talking with Hettinger Bros., and I think they said last year they
had hard work to sell currants.

Mr. J. F. Record, Worcester — I set out different kinds. When
the price fell down to 10 cts. a quart, as it did a few years ago, I
made up my mind I was not going to sell a single currant if we
could eat them at home. So we put them on our table at every
meal, and I find there is no fruit I grow that has the tonic the
currant has. Yet last year currants got down to 5 or 6 cts., and
after bearing I pulled up half the remaining vines I had. I can-
not afford to raise them, and fight currant worms, to sell for 5
cents a quart. I grow what I can eat, but at present prices I do
not think I should advise anyone to set out currants.

Mr. Young — This gentleman on my right has the same trouble
with the leaves falling off after the fruit has been picked, like a
Shanghai rooster, and cannot discover the trouble.

Prof. Maynard — For the past season there have been two difiB-
culties : the ordinary currant worm trouble, which is always

26

with us, and the leaf blight. This last year during the ex-
tremely wet weather the leaves were attacked by the currant leaf
blight, and they dropped off. Spraying with the Bordeaux mix-
ture is necessary to prevent this blight. You know the currant
often loses its leaves the latter part of the summer, sometime in
August. The result is the canes stand bare from that time up
to winter, and are very seriously injured. The treatment for the
next season would be to spray just as soon as the leaves begin
to come out, and perhaps again just before the fruit sets ; then
once more after the fruit is gathered.

Mr. Warren — Mr. President, I would like to add a word. The
great trouble with the currant worm is that we do not attack it
early enough in the season. You want to go through the leaves
well, and look sharp down near the bottom of the bush, and if
you see a leaf or two with holes looking as if a pin had been
stuck through, look on the under-side, and you will find those
little worms just hatched out. Give them a good dose of helle-
bore, and you will not be troubled.

The President — The next question is, " What are the most im-
portant points in the growth and marketing of choice black-
berries *? "

Mr. Jacob Murphy — When I received a notice of this meeting,
and found that I, an amateur in fruit-growing, was to be on the
list to address these veterans, I thought the secretary had cer-
tainly made a mistake.

Prof. Maynard — It was because I saw some extra good black-
berries on Mr. Murphy's place a year or two ago.

Mr. Murphy — You gentlemen here are devoting your lives to
the culture of fruit. You are older than I, and a great many get-
ting your bread and butter from that line of business. I went
into this business because I love the business, because I love to
see things grow. A gentleman on the train asked me to tell him
all I knew about fruit culture, the varieties, and intricacies of
the market, and after he had pumped me dry I asked him one
question : "By the way, what variety of corn is it that you have
been shipping to Boston ! " " Why," he said, " I am not pub-
lishing that ! " I find a great many fruit growers, not belonging
to this society, are not willing to give away these things. I said
I would study it up myself, and see what I could do with the fruit

27

business, and I went to the Agricultural College, and talked
with Professor Maynard and others ^ and decided what variety of
blackberries I wanted, and then I set them out. My first selec-
tion was Wachusetts, but I found they were subject to disease
and rust, and then I set out the Snyder. I set out four years ago
four acres of berries. The first two years I did not get much.
A year ago last summer I shipped 200 crates of berries ; this last
year 300 crates — 250 crates of blackberries, and about 80 crates
of raspberries. I set them out in rows, and raise a crop of peas,
potatoes, or something you can get out of the way early, between
the rows. And I experimented with manures, phosphates and
ashes, and everything of this nature recommended by colleges, —
it cost me something! With all my experimenting, I have
come to the conclusion that stable manure is the best. I have
taken another theory, that when in blossom if you give them a
little help by an extra edition of phosphate you will get an extra
crop.

I think the marketing is as important as the raising of fruit.
I said to a young man that works for me, packs my fruit, and
takes it to Boston, " If I ever ship a quart of berries, it will be
an honest quart, and the bottom will be as good as the top. "
The commission merchant that sells my fruit said to me, "I have
no trouble in selling your berries. My customers call for your
berries, and I get two cents a basket more for them than for
others." After the crates are all packed, or being packed, I
cut off a blackberry leaf, and put one on the top of each basket,
and the contrast is quite attractive. I was amused with one
berryman from Westford, who said to me, "What do you do
with your poor blackberries'?" I said, "I say to my pickers, ^All
your poor berries iiiust be put in another basket.' I do not
want poor ones mixed in, but sell them for very little. Would
throw them away before I would put them in with good berries."
He said, *' We put ours in the bottom, and cover the top with
good berries.'' That is why he gets two cents less, and hard to
sell at that.

Mr. Warren — Mr. President, as I understand, the Snyder is
the only variety he has.

Mr. Murphy — The only one I have at present. I have set out
some others, but they have not fruited.

28

Mr. H. C. Fuller — I have no fertilizers to sell, but would like
to ask the gentleman when he used the phosphate, if through the
dry season or a wet one.

Mr. Murphy — I could not say, sir. It was summer before last,
if you remember the season ; I do not. I do not want to use a
fertilizer that will not do any good in dry weather.

Mr. Young — Mr. President, I would like to ask the gentleman
if he has made a study of the fertilizer question to any great ex-
tent.

Mr. Murphy — I do not know as I have made any study of it,
but I have come to the conclusion that there is a good deal of
humbug in fertilizers.

Mr. Pratt — I would like to ask the speaker how much cultiva-
tion he gives blackberries after the second year.

Mr. Murphy — Mr. President, that depends somewhat on the
weather with me. If very dry, I cultivate often ; after a rain I
cultivate. I cultivate at least once a week, and in very dry
time oftener.

Mr. C. V. Griggs — What variety of blackberry would you ad-
vise for this latitude ?

Mr. Murphy — Mr. President, if you want quality I should not
recommend the Snyder. If you want quantity, I should say
Snyder. I am experimenting now with the Eldorado, and I be-
lieve it to be a very good thing, from what we read in pam-
phlets and from the experiment stations. What we want for
market is a black blackberry — we do not want a red one. That
is the trouble with the Snyder.

Mr. Warren — If fall-planted would they be killed at the tops'?

Mr. Murphy — In the fall setting I cut all plants, raspberries
and blackberries, nearly close to the ground, and then put a
mulch of manure over the plant so deep that it is not visible,
and will not be until next spring. I can answer better another
year.

Mr. A. G. Sharp — What price did the berries bring?

Mr. Murphy — Mr. President, I will say in explanation that I
live in Billerica, six miles from Lowell, and twenty miles from
Boston. Of my first picking of blackberries a friend in Lowell
wanted a sample. I gave him one crate at ten cents, and got
fourteen cents for the balance in Boston, for some, and seven
cents for the balance.

29

Mr. W. C. Jewett — I thiuk it is a profitable berry, if you
understand how to raise it, and I think it is the easiest berry to
raise we have. It will grow on almost any soil. I certainly be-
lieve it will grow better with a fertilizer than stable manure. I
have selected the Wachusett. A good many claim that it rusts,
but I think under cultivation it is not any more liable to rust than
others. If you let witch grass, or any other kind of grass or weeds,
get into a blackberry patch, it will rust. A Snyder, I think, will
produce more berries than any other variety, but is very liable
to turn red in ripening, and two or three berries on the top of a,
basket spoil the whole basket. The most successful berry I
have grown is the Agawam. I think if one takes pains to trel-
lis, it will produce better, sweeter fruit, and I do not know but
more than any other berry I ha\'e grown. It will give better sat-
isfaction than any berry I have grown, unless it is the Taylor,
which is also a large berry. Any berry that has a thorn like the
Taylor has is hard to winter-kill. It is of very peculiar growth ;
it is as red as fire until within two or three days to the time of
ripening, and then it turns black. In regard to packing, I have
the best luck by packing the berries in the afternoon. You
should not pick blackberries with any dew on them, because
they will soften very quickly. I pick them in the afternoon,
and put them in the cellar, and sell them the first thing in the
morning.

Mr. Murphy — I would like to ask the gentleman the question:
Do you believe in taking up suckers to reset, or do you believe
in root cutting! Do you sell sucker plants to reset!

Mr. Jewett — I dig up all that grow between the roots where it
is possible to get them out of the way. They will keep growing
all summer, and you have to keep them down. The more you
get out I consider the better.

Mr. Morse — I would like to ask the question: How many
years is a blackberry plantation supposed to be profitable!

Mr. Jewett (inaudibly) — Six to eight years; not longer.

Mr. A. G. Sharp — I endorse what the gentleman said in re-
gard to the quality of the Agawam. I had no difficulty in dis-
posing of mine. Have raised them for thirteen years.

Mr. Stockwell — I would like to ask the last speaker, as he has
grown the Agawam so long, if it is not a characteristic of the

30

plant the first year or two to trail on the ground, and afterwards
to stand up erect.

Mr. Sharp — It is ; and I find also that, in training it, it is best
to pinch the laterals off. If you do not pinch them off they grow
top-heavy. I tie them to stakes five and six feet high.

Mr. C. V. Griggs — When are the fruiting canes cut ouf?

Mr. Murphy — Mr. President, if you want me to answer that
question, I would say that just as soon as the berries are picked
I cut out the old wood and canes that have borne and all the
slender canes I do not want. I trim as soon as the berries are
picked, except what I want for next season. I want all the life
there to go into the main stalk that is to bear next season.

Mr. Jewett — Had we not better let nature take care of herself,
and trim the dead wood out next season 1

Mr. Murphy — I should think not. I want to assist nature,
and I think we assist nature when we cut out all the old wood.
I claim instead of the sap going down, it is still going up the last
of July. We are assisting the rest of the canes that are left for
next year by taking out all the old ones. That is my theory,
but I understand we arenothere to ventilate our theories. I com-
mence picking about the 15th of July, and get them off about the
10th of August.

Mr. Stockwell — I would like to say for the benefit of those go-
ing to set out blackberries, do not set out any Snyders, and if
you are so unfortunate, don't set them out on the dry ground.

Mr. J. AV. Clark — I wanted to ask about the success of fall
planting, whether you think fall is as good a time as spring to
plant.

Mr. Jewett — I have not had experience in fall setting. I be-
lieve in getting the land ready in the fall, thoroughly manuring,
and planting in the spring.

The President — The members who visited Amherst will re-
member the fine field of blackberries that Professor Clark had.
We would like to hear from Professor Clark.

Professor Clark — Mr. Chairman, I do not know what you want
of me. I have simply the Snyder and the Agawam. I set out the
Agawam, and wish I had not done it; I wish they were all Sny-
ders— thus we differ. In other places the Agawam does well,
and it is a nice looking berry, not very firm. The pickers do not

31

like it because the vines do not stand up, and are quite thorny;
but if I could get a good Agawam berry , I would be willing to plant
that, but with me it does not do well. I have not seen any that
would give the amount of fruit that the Snyder does. I do not
know^what the best fertilizers are. I mix high-grade sulphate of
potash, South Carolina rock and nitrate of soda, although this
year I have used cotton-seed meal. I do not know but I shall
mix some of both, half and half of each, nitrate of soda and
cotton- seed.

Mr. Young — I would like to ask if you have any objections to
saying how many berries you picked a year ago.

Professor Clark — I do not know. I know this, that I sold
over 4000 quarts to make wine of, fruit that I could not dispose
of in the markets. I sent it to Boston, Brattleboro, Newport, New
Hampshire, Amherst and Northampton. I had between four
and five thousand quarts that I could not sell anywhere; so sold
them to make into wine.

Mr. Young — Will Mr. Clark tell us about how many acres he
thinks he has?

Professor Clark — Between three and four acres. I think this
year they will bear a good crop.

Question— Is it not very discouraging to set out blackberries'?

Professor Clark — The trouble two years ago was that the wild
berry produced such a crop as we never knew. We could buy
huckleberries and blackberries at three cents a quart wholesale,
and you had to compete with them. The Snyder does not need
winter protection.

The President— If there is nothing further on the blackberry,
the next question is, "What are the most important points in
the growth and marketing of choice red raspberries'?"

Mr. A. G. Sharp — Mr. President, the first thing important in re-
gard to growing red raspberries is to obtain a berry of large size,
good color and firmness. Therefore the question is, how can
we obtain these points'? This we can do if we use a fertil-
izer— it does not make much difference what that fertilizer is;
that is, of what ingredients it is composed, if you get the proper
ingredients, whether it is from barn-yard manure or from bone
and potash. I find, in order to get a good crop, I must have a
good foundation, good growth of wood and good foliage, to ob-

32

tain these points — size, color and flavor. With this we also
want thorough cultivation, and to give the plants plenty of room,
so that they may obtain sufficient sunlight and air; and therefore
I prefer the hill system of cultivation. I think if I had raised my
raspberries in the hedgerow system, I should have lost fully
thirty to forty per cent, of the crop. And further, I think that
spraying is a very important point. I have practiced it for two
years, and I find I can obtain and hold much better foliage — in
fact, I spray blackberries as well as raspberries. As far as
marketing is concerned, the first point I should place the high-
est is care in picking. A great deal of fruit, fine on the bush,
spoils before it reaches the retail market. The pickers, when
they get their baskets full, start for the shanty, and perhaps
stop on the way, and set the berries in the sun. I think it a
very necessary thing to do, perhaps, and economical also, not to
allow a picker to leave his row, and, in fact, not to allow him to
leave his picking from the time he goes to pick the berries in the
morning till noon. If he wants a drink of water, have it passed
to him. And when he has a sufficient number of baskets of ber-
ries, have some one come around with empty baskets and take
the baskets from him. This keeps them from talking away their
time, and the berries are carried in the shade, protected from the
sun. Last year one shipment of berries that I sent to Boston on
a Friday morning was kept over and sold Monday morning for
Seventeen cents a box. This could not have been done by care-
less packing or handling, raising them in the hedgerow system,
or using too much nitrogen, which makes the berries soft and of
poor color. If we get firmness and color we are quite sure to
have a good flavor of fruit. In regard to variety, I prefer the
Cuthbert. They call me an old fogy. I have several other va-
rieties, but I do not find anything on my soil, with my mode of
culture, that will give me as large and fine fiavored fruit as the
Cuthbert; and still there may be other varieties more profitable.

Mr. Murphy — Mr. President, I would like to ask if he gives
the plants winter protection. Does he cover them all over, or
the tips^

Mr. Sharp — I throw up all the earth I can each side; I am not
particular how much we cover, but cover the top half of the
bush. I do not think it necessary to cover the last two or three

33

feet next the ground. I cut them back in the spring. I find
that cutting them back when growing produces stiff stalk, and
cannot so well lay them down. The best rule I know of in re-
gard to the number of stalks in a hill is to give a strong Cuth-
bert bush the same room you would give a stalk of corn to get a
good ear.

Mr. Stockwell — Mr. President, two or three years ago I had
an acre of raspberries, and I thought I would have a crop when
some of my neighbors did not; and I covered over the whole
acre, and the tops broke to some of them, and the piece I had
adjoining was two to one better than that I protected, and after
that I would not cover.

Mr. Sharp — I have covered mine for seventeen years. I know
one year they died everywhere, whether they were covered or
not.

Mr. Murphy — Do you get raspberries eighteen years from the
same plantation!

Mr. Sharp — I have had them on different soil, one running for
eleven years; but during that time I got some new plants from
Ohio, and changed my stock. It is better not to run one piece
more than eight or nine years. I ran mine eight years.
Mr. Murphy — I ran mine seven and one-half years.
Mr. Sharp — Perhaps you tried to get too much in one year. I
picked in one week forty- five bushels off less than three-quarters
of an acre. I never did better than that. They need to be prop-
erly thinned.

The President — We have with us a gentleman experienced in
the growing of fruit of all kinds. I will invite Mr. Hale to give
us his experience with the growth and marketing of choice red
raspberries.

Mr. J. H. Hale of South Glastonbury, Conn. — Mr. President,
and Brother Fruit-Growers : I think after our friend Sharp has
talked to you on the subject of raspberry culture, it is useless for
me to say a word, because I am glad to say here, for your sake
and his as well, that he is the most successful cultivator of red
raspberries in New England, but, while you have some good
fruit cultivators in the vicinity of Worcester and Boston,
away on the hills of Berkshire he has beaten you out of your
boots, and he is a man to listen to. (Applause.) T think he
3

34

has given you the keynote of the situation — planting at broad
distances, giving plenty of room, liberal culture, close pruning
at the right time, tying up to stakes where they can get air and
sunlight, and his method of handling is all right. It is a very
delicate berry, and needs careful handling. I do not know as I
could say a word to supplement what he has said. He has cov-
ered the ground, and no question but there is a good market in
New England for choice red raspberries, and they can be grown
at a liberal profit to cultivators. The hedgerow system of rasp-
berry culture is a miserable failure.

The President — The next question, ''What are the most im-
portant points in the growth and marketing of choice strawber-
ries?'' Here is a field for discussion. We have some very suc-
cessful growers here, and we hope to get some information from
them.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — One of the most important
points to begin with is the soil — to have new land, virgin soil.
No fertilizer that I ever tried can take its place. I would have
a moist soil. Strawberry plants require perhaps as much or
more water than almost any other berry. I perhaps have done
one thing that a great many would not do. I like not only the
new land, but I would put strawberries right on to a piece of sod
land ; but I know what I am about before I set them out. If
you do not see, when you are turning over the sod in plowing it
late in the fall, the muck-worms at the bottom of the furrow,
you need not be afraid of the muck-worm. That is the objection
to setting them on sod-soil ; but in moist land you will not
find any muck- worms; it knows enough not to deposit its eggs in
that moist soil. I have a piece of land I have cultivated now
for the last ten or twelve years. Some of it is very moist soil.
It was an old reclaimed swamp or peat meadow. In one portion
of it I dug a hole fifteen feet, and did not touch bottom. I have
graveled a part of it. Where graveled they do much better. I
turned the sod right over and put the plants right on. One rea-
son why people do not get a good crop of strawberries is because
they do not feed them enough. If you are going" to put them on
old land, give them plenty of manure. The matter of keeping
the soil well stirred after every rain, particularly after a heavy
rain, is very important. It is a showy berry that brings thedol-

35

lars and cents. We must have a good size, and if we can add at
the same time a nice quality, all the better. I remember a few
years ago, after I had been delivering a nice, large berry, I finally
had another variety that was of extra quality, but they were a
nubby-looking berry. So, when I went around to my custom-
ers, I said, ''You have been asking for a berry of best quality;
now here they are." "Oh, I do not want those! " We must
have a berry that will please the eye ; but I think the time is
coming when people will demand a berry of better quality.
Then another important point is the manner of packing the ber-
ries. Put them up honestly; put them up so that the lower tier
will be just as good as the top. Another very important point
is to deliver the berries fresh to your customers. I have raised
strawberries for forty-five years, but never pick one on Sunday
to sell, nor to use at home, only in small quantities. Care in
picking is a very important point. If we have pickers that
bruise the berries, the sooner we get rid of them the better.

Mr. Benj. P. Ware — What is the best variety of them all?

Mr. Warren — The best variety for dollars and cents would not
really be the best variety. Nine-tenths of the growers of the
Marshalls never get a new dollar for an old one. Under certain
circumstances they are apt to blight. For dollars and cents I
presume there is no berry that we have ever cultivated that has
paid as well as the Bubach, but it is not very good in quality.
I have fruited the new berry (which may be new to most of you)
called the Clyde. I do not think that I have ever had anything
that I was more pleased with. The Glen Mary with me does
not do well. It is a splendid plant. I have it on different
soil this year, and am in hopes to get better results. We all
know that in some places it will do nothing at all, but move a
short distance and it may do splendidly.

Mr. How about hill culture!

Mr. Warren — There is no doubt but that we get larger, and I
do not know but just as many quarts of, berries in hill culture
as in the matted rows, but there are some outs about it. They
are not apt to winter as well in hills as in matted rows. There
is not that protection, although properly mulched or covered in
the fall, they are all right.

Mr. If you set out a piece for fruit, how far

apart would you plant?

36

Mr. Warren — For full culture I set them four feet apart, and
vary the distance somewhat according to the variety. For com-
mon varieties I set them two feet apart in the rows. I have set
them four by six feet. I think it is better to pick them with the
dew on them than in the hot sun. I think it well, if obliged to
pick them in the hot sun, to put them in a cool place as soon as
picked. If I were going to cultivate for the berry, I would set
them out with the rows four feet apart, and leaving a narrow
path, twelve to fifteen inches, and would keejj every runner cut
off until September. Do not let them grow a foot or two and
then cut them off. You have lost the vitality.

Mr. 1 could not see the advantage of not letting

the runners start until September.

Mr. Warren — The objection to setting the runners the first
part of the season is that they are in the way of cultivation.

Mr. Is a late plant as strong and healthy?

Mr. Warren — In some respects it is not. Perhaps almost
everyone that grows strawberries knows that where vines are al-
lowed to grow as they will, each runner producing four or five
or six plants from the start to the tip, the following season the
parent plant is all exhausted, and good for nothing. If from
three to four plants to each runner were allowed to grow during
the season without any cutting off, it has been found the third
or fourth plant is the best for producing berries.

Mr. How many seasons do they bear?

Mr. Warren — I hardly ever fruit them more than one, but have
kept them over the second year. An old bed is no good to sell
plants from, and I can make as much money from selling plants as
from the fruit. If I were going into berries, and kept them in
these narrow beds, I think it pays to keep them the second year,
if not very weedy, but if there are many weeds it is an awful job
to clean them out.

Mr. How much land would it take if a man de-
voted his whole time to if?

Mr. Warren — That depends altogether upon .the soil. Take
virgin soil, that has not been cropped year after year, and not
weedy, and a man could take care of a number of acres. Where
there is another piece, and weedy, half an acre would be all he
would want to care for. We always used to think the pistillate

37

varieties would bear more fruit than the staminate; but the
Clyde is staminate, and I never had a pistillate that would bear
more fruit. No kind is perfect.

Mr. Have you tried the Bismarck?

Mr. Warren — I have had it growing. It is a nice, healthy
plant. It has never fruited with me.

Mr. What tool do you use to set plants with!

Mr. Warren— I use the tool God gave me, my hands. I have
a little plow I use to open the furrow. I think it is called the
"Knox " hoe. I mark out rows with a wheelbarrow, then mark
with the above hoe, and set plants in furrows. Plants are dug
with a spading-fork, and the dirt not all shaken off. The wheel-
barrow load of plants is taken into the field, the plants sepa-
rated as dropi3ed for planting.

Mr. C. S. Pratt — I regret exceedingly that Mr. Frost and Mr.
Marshall are not here. To be successful in the cultivation of
the strawberry, you have to be dead in love with your business.
Then if you make a failure at first you will still stick to it. I
should put on about 17,000 plants to an acre. I am in the plant
business. There are men in my neighborhood that can beat me
in fruit, simply because they grow for fruit, and I for plants.
The two do not work together. I would market them in shallow
crates, one layer each. If you put them in ordinary crates they
get bruised. For fancy fruit I should market in these shallow
crates. I would never send them over the railroad. If I were
within fifteen or eighteen miles of the market, I would take them
by team; and I believe in irrigation.

Mr. How would you set the plants?

Mr. Pratt — I would set my rows three feet apart. My laud
is just as heavy and hard as this floor. I have an iron tool
(plunger), made at the foundry, shaped like my hand. Rows
are marked out by a heavy rope, fifteen or twenty feet longer
than the rows. Two men use it. At one end the rope is
drawn taut, laid on the ground and drawn the fifteen to twenty
feet. The next space is then marked off, the rope drawn taut,
laid on the ground and drawn fifteen to twenty feet in the other
direction, and so on. It makes a big difference when you culti-
vate, for if you use the cultivator you can run right up close to
the plants, which you cannot do if the rows are crooked. And

38

then a man goes along with a plunger and cross- marks the rows,
and you set the plant there, putting the plant in with your hand,
and you plant solid. My men would set three or four thousand
a day. The plunger makes it solid. I want my plant to come
down solid. When I take hold of a leaf of a newly set plant
and the plant comes up, I say it is not planted firmly enough.

Mr. How often do you cut the runners?

Mr. Pratt — I cut them every week, clear up into November. I
have two wheels, about fourteen inches apart, and on the edge is
a circular knife, which is drilled on to those wheels. They are
made of cast-iron. The cutter weighs sixty pounds. I have
one lighter, with the wheels made of wood, but the runners
slip down under it. A man and a boy can go over an acre in two
hours' time, and cut every runner. They are made of the very
best steel, such as saws are made of. If you have a knife on the
edge of the wheel that is perfectly square, no more than one-
sixteenth of an inch thick, it would cut the runner.

Mr. Would it not injure the roots'?

Mr. Pratt — Well, you do not go within seven or eight inches of
them.

Adjourned at 4.30 P. M.

SECOND DAY.

ThurHclcuj, March 10th, 1898.
Morning Session — 10 o'clock.

President Cruickshanks in the chair.

Mr. J. G. Avery — I have been requested to speak in regard to
a badge. It has been suggested that the members should have a
badge, especially on field days. A sample has been sent from
New Jersey, I think, of a badge representing a medallion of
fruits. The cost of this badge would be about twenty cents to
each member, and of any desired color. I was requested to
bring this matter before the convention, to know if it was the
choice of the members that we have such a badge. This has on
it the date of the meeting. We should need to have a new one

39

every year. One reading, "Member of Massachusetts Fruit
Growers' Association, Worcester, Mass.," is all we need.

(Discussions.)

Mr. Young — I move, in order to dispose of this matter, that
we leave it with a committee, consisting of the president, secre-
tary and treasurer, to report immediately at the afternoon ses-
sion.

(Carried.)

The President — Mr. Willard's reputation has spread far and
wide, and he has the knowledge and ability to impart that
knowledge to others. He has grown a great many plums, so he
tells me ; but the best plum he has ever had come to him was
when appointed postmaster of the '^ little village, " as he calls it,
of Geneva, N. Y. You are now invited to hear the address of
Mr. S. D. Willard of Geneva, on —

THE PLUM; ITS CULTIVATION AND MARKETING.

In order not to be misunderstood, I desire to state that I have pur-
posely divided, in what I may say to you, the plum into two classes,
viz., the Domestic or European and the Japanese sorts, and propose
to first consider those of the former class, as they have up to recently
been more generally grown. Further, that in everything said, refer-
ence will be made to plum growing commercially, based upon my own
experience on a soil differing somewhat from that of New England;
hence exceptions may be taken to some statements growing out of
different experiences and features unavoidable in the nature of things
and over which no control can be exercised.

In growing and marketing a crop of this fruit there are more draw-
backs and risks than that of the production of most other fruit crops
in cultivation ; hence, until recently, the area where plum growing
has been followed in any large way has been somewhat limited, the
successful efforts being largely confined to the northern fruit-growing
regions, if we except the Pacific coast. A brief enumeration of some
of the difficulties that have confronted the orchardists may not be out
of place at this time.

While more hardy than the peach, it certainly is more sensitive to
its environments as well as atmospheric changes than that fruit ;
therefore, we find the peach being grown with marked success in many
instances where the plum is an absolute failure. We shall ask your
consideration to such ways and methods as seem best calculated to
maintain the health and vigor of the structure from which we are to
hope for future products, in doing which reference will be made to

40

some of the diseases and low forms of plant life that prey upon the
plum, and how to combat and hold them in check, even though ex-
termination may not be hoped for.

The black knot, as widely and well known as the plum itself, con-
tinues to be the most destructive agent known to the grower of this
fruit. My own observation and experience have led me to regard it as
more prevalent and destructive upon light soils than upon those in
which clay predominates, and that commercial fertilizers containing a
large proportion of potash and phosphoric acid are more to be desired
than barnyard manure, in which nitrogenous matter may be in excess.
I do not wish to be understood as saying that an excess of nitrogen in
the soil can be construed as a cause for the development of this form
of fungus, that has already caused the plum growers of this^jcountry
hundreds of thousands of dollars, but rather that those elements of
plant life that aid in producing a hard, well-ripened, cold -resisting
wood, as well as a healthy, rugged foliage may be instrumental in a
measure in holding in check this work of devastation; while a rigid
semi-annual inspection, cutting off carefully all infested limbs and
burning them at once, I have found as essential in preventing the
ripening spores from spreading and infecting other neighboring trees.
It is in evidence that over-production or other influences that weaken
the tree or lower its vitality -cause it to be a more ready victim to
this scourge; hence we find a marked difference in varieties as to
their susceptibility, to its influence, those making excessive crops in
alternate years or possessed of constitutional weakness being more
subject to it than those of more^regular^habits that make quite moder-
ate crops annually. The various forms of fungi that in seasons favor-
able for their development prey upon the foliage we have found can
be controlled in a very great measure by several sprayings of Bordeaux,
and, as a healthy foliage is an important requisite for preparing for a
crop, we cannot too strongly urge the importance of watchfulness in
preserving the foliage intact throughout the season in the preparatory
work for a crop of fruit. We have long been of the opinion that thor-
ough cultivation from early spring through to fruit-producing period
was a principle not to be lost sight of, by which the elements of plant
life are set free and moisture conserved, all aiding nature in perfect-
ing a growing crop as well as stimulating a healthy action of root and
leaf, making the tree itself more thoroughly non-resistant of all dis-
eases and pests. The plum rot I have found less inclined to prevail in
trees so handled, and have suffered from it to no serious extent. My
principal plant food has been unleached wood ashes, with a moderate
supply only of barnyard manure.

We believe we have seen the folly of over-stimulation with nitroge-
nous matter, which has resulted in the death of thousands of fine trees
that under different treatment^would have been in bearing at the pres-
ent time; in view of which we suggest conservative measures in the
use of such kinds of plant food.

41

The curculio is no insignificant antagonist to the plum grower, who
may have in sight a promising crop of fruit to-day, which two weeks
hence may be blasted beyond all hope of saving or maturing. The use
of arsenical poisons we have found of no utility, and believe the only
effective measures to be " the jarring process," by which the insect is
caught and destroyed. For this purpose we use what is known as the
Johnson machine, beginning the work as soon as the bloom falls and
following the same daily for a period of a week or ten days, at the end
of which time the number found is usually so greatly reduced as to
render it safe to relax our efforts to alternate days for a week longer.
We have found with the scarcity of the plum these same insects nearly
as destructive to the cherry and the peach.

Commingling of Varieties. While admiring the beauties of solid blocks
of given varieties of all fruits, we believe the best results in plum
growing may be looked for in mingling different sorts to such an ex-
tent as to insure a perfect pollination of the bloom. Certain it is, no
mistake can be made in so doing, while it may afford a policy of insur-
ance, economical in cost and of inestimable value. Experiments have
shown beyond question that other fruits are susceptible to such influ-
ence, and who would dare to affirm that many \arieties of plums may
not be so infertile in their own bloom as to need the aid of their more
prolific neighbors in distributing the necessary pollen for perfecting
the anticipated crop? I cannot but think that the numerous crops I
have frequently seen produced in orchards containing fifty or sixty
sorts may have been the result of such combinations. I have seen sol-
itary trees standing distant from all others of their species, in which
the fruit has formed and grown to the size of my thumb, then to drop
entirely, and upon being cut into no pit formation could be found,
simply a watery substance, with no feature of reproduction in sight.
Nature has no use for such material, hence they perished with no fur-
ther draft upon the vital force of the tree. May not our suggestions
be worthy of your consideration?

It is a fact not generally known that many of our best and most val-
uable varieties are exceedingly poor growers, making surface so slowly
as to discourage the planter, who in turn denounces them as not worthy
of cultivation. We have learned from experience that when top-grafted
or budded on free growing sorts, like Lombard or Bradshaw, new vigor
seems imparted to them and satisfactory growths are produced.
Among such varieties are Grand Duke, Italian Prune, Copper and the
Damsons, the fruit of which sells at all times at the best prices. The
Reine Claude De Bavay and some others are often found more or less
tender as usually grown in the nursery, while they show more hardi-
ness and retain their vitality for a longer period when grown as sug-
gested; hence we recommend the adoption of this method by the or-
chardists wherever it is regarded desirable to produce varieties not
easily obtainable upon the markets, as one of the roads to success in
plum-growing.

42

Pruning. We believe that thousands of plum trees are unproductive,
and hence unprofitable to their owners, because proper pruning is
neglected. After being two years planted they should be cut in an-
nually, taking off one-half to two-thirds of the previous year's growth,
assuming that at this period they have made the usual start of from
eighteen inches to two and three feet, while at the same time remov-
ing any superfluous branches and shaping in the head to suit our tastes
for the foundation of the future tree, following up the same treatment
annually, until continued cropping shall cause such growth to cease.
This pruning can be done at any period after maturity of the tree in
late autumn. Our own plan is to prune all through the winter, during
such days as the wood is not filled with frost.

Varieties. This is a subject more difficult for consideration than is
usually understood and appreciated. Like the strawberry, the plum is
somewhat capricious in taste and habit, hence a variety giving satis-
factory results in one section may be a failure in another. While soil,
plant- food and environments may be factors requiring consideration
and study, it is safe to say that a few sorts only should be found in the
commercial orchard. In my own experience, after testing seventy -
five to eighty sorts, I have found the jmoney- makers reduced, in the
main, to extreme early and late sorts, with a few only of those ripening
at mid-season. Of these exceptions the Damsons are recognized as
among those specially desirable, the French and Farleigh Damson
heading the list. The Italian Prune should not be forgotten as one of
the most desirable of the family to which it belongs. The Black Dia-
mond, an English variety of great beauty and productiveness, of dark
color, carrying a rich blue bloom, is one of the most promising of re-
cent introduction. It is, however, an old plum in England. Of the
early sorts the Field heads the list. It is a seedling of the Bradshaw,
but ripens ten days ahead of that variety. Of the late ripening va-
rieties, I have found nothing to excel the Reine Claude as a light col-
ored plum, while the Grand Duke, Monarch, Arch Duke and Copper,
ripening through September and into early October, give us products
that place them in the paying list. The last four are all dark colored,
exceedingly productive, and, with the exception of the Copper, of
large size. All are good handlers and shippers. The Grand Duke and
Copper, both poor growers, cannot be found in the hands of the nur-
serymen, unless as top-worked upon other sorts; hence, if wanted,
should be obtained by scions and top -grafted. A good, healthy foliage
is an essential not to be lost sight of in the commercial plum orchard
which should be carried by the tree well into auttimn. Many varieties
are defective in this respect, while others may be greatly aided by
spraying at the proper period, or by liberal applications of such plant-
foods as are best adapted to produce healthy foliage and fruit buds.

We have been considering, so far, the domestic or European sorts,
while rapidly coming to the front are those of recent introduction
from Japan, or the seedlings from them originated in this country.

43

Of these there is a large family, many of which, in my opinion, will be
of little value in the commercial orchard. So far as tested, the fol-
lowing have been the most satisfactory, viz.: Red June, Wickson,
True Sweet Botan and Burbank, with the probability that Hale and
October Purple may rank high as they become better known. The
latter, as fruited in Geneva, fully equals the fruit produced on the
Pacific coast, and, as its name indicates, it belongs to the late ripen-
ing sorts. All of the Japan type are favored with a foliage that would
seem to insure health and hardiness, hence the outlook would seem to
warrant a general planting over a wide area. As growers they are un-
excelled, and the best results will be obtained only by strong pruning
or cutting-in annually. All may be regarded as good shippers and
handlers. The Burbank cannot be surpassed, and scarcely excelled,
as a producer, and it is superior to most other plums as a canning
fruit. With a crop of 2500 baskets in 1897, there was no waste; they
hung well upon the trees, giving us three consecutive weeks for pack-
ing and marketing, the larger portion of the crop going to Ohio.

Thinning of the fruit upon the tree, while important with all plums,
is doubly so with these varieties. It has been oar custom to use the
ten-pound Climax basket for shipping, and on those sorts, which have
a fine, red bloom, we pick directly into the basket from the tree, so
as to avoid any unnecessary handling, and thus retain the bloom
upon the fruit perfectly for shipping. The Red June is the earliest
of any of the varieties of plums we have attempted to grow and mar-
ket. It has a fine cherry red color, and ripened in '96 about July 17th.
This, however, was an extremely early season with us. This, as well
as the Wickson and October Purple, may be picked quite green, and
will color up and ripen well when picked in this condition. The ques-
tion is often raised: May not this branch of fruit-growing be over-
done? As over-production seems to be the order of the day, we can-
not say this may not be so. And yet, all good fruit, well grown and
sorted, in my opinion, will continue to be in demand, the demand
being measured only by the capacity or purchasing power of the peo-
ple, whose taste is being educated and increased in the consumption
of those fruits that contribute so largely to health and happiness.

Distance apart in planting may be determined somewhat by the na-
ture of varieties and strength of soil. I have often done that which I
would not advise others to do, hence I have many thousands of plum
trees that are planted very much closer than I would consider desir-
able to be practiced by others. We have them 16x16 feet apart, 16x10,
and 16x8. My own opinion is that 16x16 or 16x12 is a perfectly safe
distance at which any one may plant most varieties. Sorting,
packing and sizing-up are all considerations that should not be
overlooked. Poor, defective specimens of fruit should be thrown
out, and a uniformity of size maintained so far as is possible. If
there is an excess of small fruit of any variety, let it be
packed by itself, with a mark indicating the character of the

44

same. The commission merchant is frequently censured for not ob-
taining better prices for the producer; and yet, in my own experience,
I have had no difficulty of this kind, and believe these complaints are
frequently unreasonable, and grow out of careless packing upon the
part of the grower.

Reference has been made to the danger of over-production. I can-
not regard this as serious when near-by home markets exist; but it
will be more apparent when, situated as I am, a long distance to
markets, I am compelled to ship in car-load lots to compete
with productions from the Pacific coast^that are laid down in the same
markets at a cost not in excess'of those that I am compelled to pay
when shipping by express.

I believe I am safe in advocating a more general planting of Japan
sorts for home use as well as for marketing, some of which will be
found of excellent quality. The fruit-grower must not expect the high
prices of years since; small profits must be anticipated as the out-
growth of conditions with which we are surrounded, but the busi-
ness is legitimate, the successful prosecution of which will be deter-
mined by the economical methods resorted to in management. I have
found it fairly profitable, and expect to continue in it as an impor-
tant branch of my farm -work from which to derive my living, and see
no reason why others whose tastes and inclinations follow in the same
line should not succeed equally as well, provided they are willing to
work early and late for the one purpose of Commercial Plum- Growing.

And now, thanking you for your very kind attention, I trust that
those who desire to engage in the work as a profession may find it
not only profitable, but equally as pleasant as I have.

S. D. WiLLARD.

The President — From the appearance of this audience it is evi-
dent that there is a great interest being taken in the paper that
has just been read by Mr. Willard. He has been acknowledged
to be probably the best authority in this country on the subject
of plum culture, and not only the plum, but the general orchard.
I only wish to say that we have but twenty- five minutes before
we adjourn for dinner, and we wish to let everyone who has a
question to ask to put it to Mr. Willard, and he will undoubt-
edly be willing to answer any reasonable question ; but be brief,
and do not ask any question unless some information is to be
gained.

Mr. Pratt — I would like to ask Mr. Willard if he has found
the Japanese plum freer from "black knot" than the European,
and if it is to be expected to continue.

Mr. Willard — Yes, sir, almost absolutely. I do not know as

45

it has been absolutely proved, but we have yet to find a solitary
one that we have seen the " black knot" on ; yet I do not know
as it is so with others.

Mr. Warren — What is the best stock to top-graft?

Mr. Willard — I should think the Lombard every time. We
have a good many Burbanks that have been top-grafted on the
Lombard, and we find the fruit very fine, and there seems to be
what I hardly expected, an affinity there that is satisfactory,
although the bark of the Japan plums is a little thinner than
that of our domestic kind, and wants a very sharp knife and a
little more care in grafting than on the domestic type, but there
are a good many details to it.

Mr. You spoke of bugging machines. What is

the expense of those"?

Mr. Willard — I do not know of anybody excepting this one
person in Geneva who manufactures them. Whether he has a
patent or not, I do not know. I think they are selling them now
for about twelve dollars — that is guess-work. For the first ones
we had we gave twenty- five dollars apiece, and for the last fif-
teen dollars, I think ; but my impression is he is offering them
at twelve dollars.

Mr. Moore— How do you graft?

Mr. Willard — That is a very interesting subject. Pack the
scions away in damp sawdust, and freeze solid. Then put on
ice, and keep them there until about a day or two before you use
them. I have grafted Japanese plums as well as the European
type. It was a marked success last year. We began on the
fourth day of May, and quit on the twentieth. That was con-
trary to the old idea to put in a scion in the month of April. Do
not let the drying winds take out the life of the scion, but keep
it perfectly dormant. Put them in when the trees start the
sap vigorously, and I think as a rule you will get the best
success.

Mr. Hinds — Will you give a little more explanation about
grafting?

Mr. Willard — It is the ordinary cleft- grafting. Yet that is a
matter of expediency. The majority prefer cleft-grafting.

Mr. Brown — One question we had a little confiict about
yesterday — whether it is proper and right to graft upon peach
roots.

46

Mr. Willard — You are bringing up a v^ery interesting point,
sir. In the first place I do not think you can very readily graft
on peach root. I think you can bud on a peach seedling. I
think a large percentage do best on peach. In northern Michi-
gan there is a large section where you could not sell the plum
tree grown in any other way, and they can show you plum trees
as large as my body in circumference, and they won't have any-
thing else but peach root. There is an affinity between our
plum and the peach.

Mr. Warren — [ understand the essayist to say that he hadn't
any plum trees but what had some black knots.

Mr. Willard — Oh, no! I do not have a great many that do
have them. There is a great difference in varieties. On the
Italian I do not think that I have ever found one.

Mr, Warren— I set out a few years ago 125 trees, and in that
lot I got forty (I never knew what they were) that never had
the "black knot," while some others were covered; and I
might also add that they hardly had a plum on them. The
plums they did bear looked like red cherries.

Mr. Willard — That very fact would go to emphasize the idea,
which was this: that those varieties of plums that were liable to
over-production, with a lowering of the standard of vitality to
the tree, were more subject to the depredation of the " black
knot " than those varieties that had a lighter crop.

Mr. Suppose you had some nice, large trees

filled with " black knots ;" would you graft on to them?

Mr. Willard — I should look twice. I don't like to have any-
thing to do with that animal except to burn it up. We shall
graft over 2000 trees this spring, many half as big as my body,
because I have learned that that which was once fashionable and
profitable is not so now. The fashion in fruit changes as do our
hats. We have got to keep in line with the world.

Mr. Young — In reference to this grafting the plum on to the
peach stalk, are we to infer that the peach stalk is cut off close
to the ground, or root-grafted?

Mr. Willard — There is no root-grafting on the peach. I never
heard of such a thing.

Professor Maynard — I would like to make an explanation in
regard to grafting plums on the peach. We have an experiment

47

going on, i. e., root-grafting the Japanese and native plums on
the peach. So that in a very little time the peach root will die,
and we have a tree on its own root.

Mr. Willard — Do you think that will be a success"?

Professor Maynard — Yes, I think we shall have a Japanese
plum on its own root.

Mr. Fuller — I would like to ask if, at our time of life, we
want to set out an orchard of apple trees, whether it would be
more desirable to jjlant seedlings, let them grow a few years,
and top-graft, than to plant the trees as we get them from the
nursery.

Mr. Willard — Old as I am, within three years I have put out
trees for that very purpose, and the varieties I would select, in
my opinion to-day, would be such varieties as the Northern Spy
and Tallman Sweets, a good rugged sort, and would put them
out for a purpose, and that purpose would be to put upon them,
sooner or later, some of these newer varieties coming up in pub-
lic favor. I have done so myself, and on the seventh year after
planting took off a barrel of apples. They were planted for a
purpose, to get something out of them just as soon as I could,
for I wanted money pretty bad.

Mr. Griggs — I have placed a small order for Abundance and
Burbank plums. If I can change that and substitute some other
variety, what would Mr. Willard recommend?

Mr. Willard — I would put Eed June, and yet you cannot get
the trees, because they have been grown only in a small way by
nurserymen.

Mr. Johnson — Has the essayist any experience in summer
pruning?

Mr. Willard — Yes, I have had all the experience I
want.

Mr. Johnson — Is it practical?

Mr. Willard — I do not think it is. It produces an abnormal
condition. You thin out the leaf-buds, and let them mature
naturally, and wait just a little bit and you will get results. But
we injure our trees by summer pruning.

Mr. Fuller — I found an orchard that had been pruned so badly
that the sap from the tree had run down on the limb, and the or-
chard was destroyed. Can you tell me at what season it would

48

be most likely to be injured? I cannot tell the varieties. In that
orchard were some local apples. I have seen in my own orchard
sap on my own trees trickle down from the side of the limb so
that it would injure the tree very much.

Mr. Willard — There are two things. I do not know the cir-
cumstances. In the first place, there is the size of the limb.
Man ought not to let a limb get as big as his body before he cuts
it. There is a little bit of a shoulder on the body, put there for
a purpose, and it was not that you should prune that shoulder
right down into the body. That tree would bleed and suffer.
There is a little shoulder left there which ought to be preserved.
I tell you there have been more trees ruined by cutting into the
body, and a rotten-hearted tree is about as bad as a rotten-
hearted man.

Mr. Young — It seems to me the impression I have, and I feel
constrained to mention it in this audience, that the consider-
ation of the almighty dollar to be had during our lifetime is so
large that we are a little inclined, I am afraid, to forget the gen-
erations that are coming after us. God knows, and it is a fact,
that a man does not stand in need of the almighty dollar any
more than your humble servant ; but I do believe we ought to
keep in mind, and not let the dollar get so large that we cannot
l)lant for our children.

Mr. Holden — What remedy do you use to prevent plum-rot?
We are troubled very much in this direction when the plums be-
gin to ripen.

Mr. Willard — We have found by spraying with Bordeaux,
and doing it two or three times, that we can protect ourselves
against plum-rot. That is to say, I have not been troubled with
plum-rot to so large an extent as to require it. Some of my
neighbors have. When we get a little plum-rot we buy a bun-
dle of laths, and nail a couple if necessary, and go through
them; and those laths being thin, they can pinch between the
different plums, and pinch out the decayed ones, and we go over
and do that when first seeing evidence of decaying plums. It
practically puts an end to it. Some of our neighbors say it does
not succeed; but, on the other hand, they spray with Bordeaux,
which is a protection. I think we can do a great deal to pre-
vent an increase of many of these diseases by carefully regard-

49

ing the question of plant-food, and that in many instances we
get too much nitrogenous matter in the soil.

Mr. How soon do you do the spraying?

Mr. Willard — As soon as the fruit forms. We do the bugging
first, and as soon after as may be, but not until the blossoming
is out of the way. Those little honey bees of our neighbors' are
worth a good deal to us. This honey business is a great big
industry in some states, but I think that I never would spray
anything when in blossom, I should be very much afraid that I
would injure the blossoms.

Mr. Kinney — Are those Damson plums the kind that boil to
pieces when cooked, or are they hard-meatedl On the market
and in the orchard we find Damson plums good for nothing.
The people do not want them mashed when preserved.

Mr. Willard — I could not answer; never cooked any. They
are hard enough when picked.

Mr. Butler — What do you think of the Spaulding plum?

Mr. Willard — It is not worth growing.

Mr. Butler — In what respect is the Eed June superior to the
Abundance?

Mr. Willard — It is superior to it in the first place because it is
a better color. Almost everybody likes a bright red, scarlet
color. In the second place, it ripens before any other plum can
be found anywhere in our country to put on our markets. The
early bird catches the worm. I have frequently got from sixty
cents to one dollar a basket because on the market at such a
time, when equally as good a plum a week later dropped to
forty cents.

Mr. Can you grow the Eed June as large as the

Lombard?

Mr. Willard — Oh, yes. We had them last year larger than
the ordinary Lombard.

Mr. Pratt — Mr. Hoyt, in making up his list of plum trees last
year, included a plum by the name of the "Willard."

Mr. Willard— Oh, Lord bless you! I want to warn you. If a
man comes along and undertakes to sell you a plum by the name
of "Willard," tell him Willard says that plum is not worth one
solitary sixpence.

Adjourned to 1 p. m.
4

50

Afternoon Session — 1 o^ clock.

President Cruickshanks in the chair. The question list was
then taken up until the time should arrive for the address of
Prof. John W. Clark, under the auspices of the Worcester
Horticultural Society.

The Chair — The first question is, "Shall we market our apple
crop in the local markets, or ship them to Europe!" A young
man in Fitchburg, Mr. Cushing, I invited to speak on this sub-
ject, knowing he had had experience to answer this question, to
be followed by discussion. This is the first question, and seems
to cover the same ground. The short letter that Mr. Cushing
sent to me the secretary will read.

Mr. Maynard — Mr. Cushing's letter:

MR. CUSHING'S LETTER.

Fitchburg, Feb. 15, 1898.

Mr. Geo. Cruickshanks: Dear Sir— I promised you I would write a few
lines on my experience in selling apples in Fitchburg.

During the fall and winter of 1896 and '97 apples to the amount of
nearly $600 were sold, and of these, with the exception of two car lots,
were sold at retail.

We all know the great difficulty in marketing apples in a season
when they are so plentiful, but I thought the best way was to market
them in bushel baskets.

The apples were put in nine bushel baskets, or the number that
would exactly till the express wagon. A load was taken to Fitchburg
every morning. Pains were taken to have the fruit look the same on
the bottom as on top. Regular customers were supplied, and a new
route was taken each day. This season's apple crop was marketed in
about the same way as those of '96 and '97. The amount sold this
year was close to $27.5. Apples this year were sold for 25 and 30 cents
a peck and $2 and $3 per baiTel.

Respectfully yovu's,

CHARLES W. CUSHING.

Mr. Hadwen — Of course that would depend on the situation of
the grower. If he lived near a large home market, I should
have no hesitation is saying his home market was the best. If
he lived in a remote section, perhaps it would be better to send
them abroad, providing the commission houses that he dealt
with were reliable. According to what I read, I have learned

51

within the last year or two that apples sent abroad really did
not net the producer very much. I am afraid that the expense
was sometimes reported greater than the value of the apples
themselves. In my own experience, living near the city, I have
devoted my attention to the home market. I commenced, per-
haps, in marketing apples in August, and I believe year before
last, my marketing had to continue until May before my crop
was disposed of. I have two ways of shipping apples: one is
in bushel boxes. Sometimes I put in two qualities, and ask
different prices, as the qualities may seem to warrant ; and in
the other way, I put them into barrels for, perhaps, the whole-
sale trade. Two years ago we had a great difficulty in dispos-
ing of our apples. The crop was so common that it required a
good deal of attention to get rid of a large amount ; but my im-
pression is that if a person lives near a large home market, and
has the run of that market, there is no better way than to use
it as may seem to him best. I know very well that the selec-
tion of apples for his market is an important one. He knows
of course some customers who will bid for a good article willing-
ly, and pay a good price, and he knows of other customers that
want a cheaper quality, and he probably has both. Conse-
quently, he must suit his apples to his customers, in both qual-
ity and variety. For the Palmer Greening, one of the apples
originating in this county, from people who know them, I
have had no difficulty for the last fifteen or twenty years in get-
ting one dollar a barrel more than for the Baldwin or Greening,
for the people who have got hold of that apple have become de-
moralized, and willing to pay one dollar more for good fruit.

Mr. J. C. Eice — I do not know as I can say anything — only a
little business I do out there. I beg to be excused.

Mr. Hadwen — I notice he sends his apples to the Horticul-
tural Society in Boston, getting |5 a dozen in premiums.

Mr. Eyder — Where did the Palmer Greening originate"?

Mr. Hadwen — It originated in Sterling, about twelve miles
north of here. After April it seems to lose a little of its flavor.
I regard the Palmer Greening in its season as the best apple I
have in ray variety of some forty kinds. It is firm when cooked,
and still will dissolve in your mouth when put into it, and the
texture and the aroma I regard as unequaled by any apple in its

52

season. It is a good bearer. In fact, it bears a little too much
if you cultivate your trees highly. It is not a good grower,
because it bears every year, and such apples are exhausting to
wood growth, but, nevertheless, for private families or for the
market I regard it as an important one. When first introduced
here, it was when John Milton Earle, whose picture stands
there, one of the best horticulturists, was postmaster; he re-
ceiving the mail from Leominster, the postmaster of Leomin-
ster, in putting the mail into the mail-bag, just put his pocket-
book in it besides the mail. Mr. Earle returned the pocket-
book, and the postmaster sent him a barrel of Greenings. Mr.
Earle of course, being a good horticulturist, brought some of
the apples to this hall for exhibition. We had an opportunity
of tasting them, and that was the first introduction. I took
some of them home, and I found I was beaten. The Palmer
excelled. I went to Leominster, and got my bearing trees into
Palmer Greenings, and I think I found my reward in so doing.

Mr. Fuller — The original tree of the Palmer Greening is a
mile from where I live. There were a good many trees set.
One orchard near me is twenty years old, I presume, and the
man who formerly owned the farm told me that there was not
so much money in the Palmer Greening as in the Baldwin.
The cellar on this farm is a remarkably good one, probably
seven or seven and one-half feet deep. The fruit has often been
kept there from the last of March to the first of April, and I
helped to take the fruit off myself. A man purchased the
apples a few years ago, and he bought them, I think, for|8 a bar-
rel, perhaps seventy-five cents more than for Baldwins. Unless
it has a remarkably good cultivation, which I presume Mr.
Hadwen gives, it is a little apt to grow knotty, much like the
Mildling. That apple is far better for pies or sauce, a little
more tart than the Palmer Greening.

Mr. Eice — Mr. President, I should like to ask Professor.May-
nard to explain about the Fanning apple. I tried hard a year
ago to get some scions, and was referred to someone in New
York, and it cost me $20 to get my information.

Professor Maynard — I cannot give you very much informa-
tion regarding it. It is a fact that we cannot report the value of
a new apple until tried many years. We must test it year

53

after year. It seems to be a promising variety. Perhaps Mr.
Willard can tell us something about it.

Mr. Willard — One time I got some scions, and they failed,
and I tried again and failed, and gave it up; that is all I know.

The Chair — An invitation was given through the directors to
members to have them hand in such questions as they wished
to have printed on this list. We had only a few sent in. This
was handed in yesterday: ''Have there been any new discover-
ies in relation to the peach yellows since our last meeting?"
If anyone has anything new to offer we want to hear it.

Mr. Had wen — I would only say, Mr. President, that the yel-
lows was first known in this country in 1819; it was first
known in Massachusetts about 1840. In those days there
were a great many peach trees brought from New Jersey
to Massachusetts. Our growers had not learned to grow
peach trees as New Jersey men had. The yellows was intro-
duced from trees that came from New Jersey, and we have had
the yellows more or less ever since. Now, then, I do not know
whether the yellows is contagious, or what it is, but I do know
it exists, and I attribute the one great cause to the budding of
peach trees of desirable varieties in order to propagate those
varieties. As those varieties are propagated, in the natural
period of life which all fruits seem to have, longer or shorter, I
think that the tree becomes enfeebled and powerless to with-
stand the disease or extremes of heat and cold. Consequently,
I think the best remedy for the yellows for the farmer is to pro-
duce his peach trees from the stone, if he can procure the stone
from sections where the yellows is unknown, until he has the
greater probability of lengthening the life of the peach tree, and
also being comparatively free from disease by that process. It
is well known that the yellows can be propagated by buds from
diseased trees to others. It has been demonstrated for a great
many years, and the only way I can see to prevent the propaga-
tion of the yellows is to plant the stones from sections where
the yellows is not known, and I think you will have trees of
longer life, with less liability to disease.

Mr. Johnson — I had in my orchard two years ago a number of
trees that appeared to be injured by the winter so severely that
some were killed outright. When the trees came into growth I

54

found that I could trace the different grades of seriousness of
injury from the tree killed outright to the one so slightly injured
that I could scarcely discover an injury. As the season pro-
gressed I found symptoms in some of the trees of peach yellows
by the peculiar color of the fruit. On some of the trees the fruit
rotted before half grown. The pertinency of the fact is in this,
that the diseased condition of these trees was due to the cold.
In an adjoining orchard a friend of mine had set a board fence
against trees to exclude the sun during the winter. Every one
of the trees, some twenty in number, to which there was not a
board fence, but which were exposed to the sun, dropped its
fruit before half grown. The tree with the board fence ripened
a perfect crop of fruit. It was one of the symptoms that I dis-
covered from the dead row to the one on the other end that had
the peach yellows. The conclusion I draw from the fruit rotting
on the trees when it is half grown is that it is one of the symp-
toms of peach yellows. The interesting problem to me is, what
are those trees going to do this summer? It is possible we are
going to discover something from that exjieriment, and later on
we will tell you what it is.

Mr. Young — Digressing a little: In 1865 I was visiting a
young lady living near Springfield, Mass., and I was residing
in one of the Southern states. Going on a visit North to see
her I stopped at New York, and going through the Washington
market there, it was the height of my ambition to select the
finest looking basket of peaches for one of the finest ladies I had
ever met. The young lady's mother took the pit of one and
planted it, and I had the pleasure of plucking from the second
year's bearing three bushels of peaches from that tree and re-
ceiving the sum of f 18. I never have heard of such an instance,
but the tree killed itself.

Mr. Meade — I think it is policy if you cannot make a tree
grow to pull it up. I had a tree that had the yellows. This
year and last I gave it a very heavy dose of chemicals, and I
picked from that tree as sound peaches as I ever ate. The
peaches were not premature, late as any Crawford I had, and I
think I could say that tree had the yellows. At the present
time it looks healthy.

Mr. Kinney — I would like to ask if that tree had ever grown
imperfect peaches'?

55

Mr. Meade — I think it did a few years ago.

Mr. Jones — I would like to say that I am a stranger here, but
following in the line of remarks in regard to the yellows, two or
three years ago I had an orchard of 300 trees infested with the
yellows, and I have put on sulphate of potash. Last year I had
a fair crop. Now I have put around two tons of tobacco, and at
the present time the buds are all right.

Mr. Meade — If any gentleman that thinks he understands the
yellows will come to my place, I will pay all his expenses.

The Chair — The officers have been looking over the ground
for the field meeting the coming season. One plan has been, as
in the case of Brothers Meade and Hinds having a crop of Jap-
anese plums and peaches, that that shall be the subject of one
of our meetings next fall. So he ought to find from the large
number that will attend enough among the number that will
answer his question.

Mr. A. D. Perry of Worcester — There is a question on the pro-
gramme that I would like to have answered. I move that we
proceed to the discussion of the topics.

The Chair — As we cannot get over all the questions, if anyone
has a question he would like discussed, he can call for it. Ques-
tion No. 24: "Which will give the best results for fruit and
growth of the peach — wood ashes or commercial potash?"

Mr. F. H. Daniels — As the time is short I will simply give a
little of my experience in regard to this question. I think it is
almost impossible to lay down as a rule what fertilizer would be
best. If I should go back to where I started a peach orchard,
would say I always started them with apple trees. I manure
same as for corn, for I usually plant corn in the orchard in pref-
erence to other things. I believe if you manure the land thor-
oughly, your tree will get enough without any special manuring,
with a few wood ashes around the root. That will help keep
out the borers a little, as they do not like the potash. I use that
with the wash I was speaking about yesterday. When I first
commenced raising peaches I used to fertilize with wood ashes. I
buy them from soap dealers. There are one or two in Natick and
Holliston. When they get a load they bring them for twenty-five
cents a bushel. I use two to four hundred bushels every year.
Now the factories are shut down, and it is almost impossible to

56

get them. I send the teams around in the adjoining towns and
pick up what I can. A great many of the families in Holliston
used to burn wood, but now they burn coal and I cannot get
wood ashes, and I have resorted to muriate of potash and ground
bone. If I could get wood ashes I would prefer them to any-
thing else. I put about half a bushel of strong wood ashes on
each tree about as far out as the limbs stand. I usually plant
my trees 16 feet apart, or 16x18 feet.

Mr. Ware — I would like to inquire if he finds native ashes
better than the Canadian.

Mr. Daniels — Yes, sir. They warrant the Canadian ashes to
stand analysis. You will find the Canadian ashes bite your
tongue more like lime, but the native ashes have a different
bite.

Mr. Ware — What proportion do you use?

Mr. Daniels — About 100 of potash to 300 of bone, and usually
put seven or eight pounds of the mixture to a tree, about half a
peck. I would like to state one little circumstance that occurred
to me on my trees last year from spraying. I never had it happen
before. I noticed it on the first day this association went to Bel-
mont. Under one tree I noticed a great quantity of leaves on the
ground. In the course of a week, in one of ray orchards, one-
half to three-fourths of the leaves, I should think, dropped.
The ground looked as it does in the fall of the year. The rem-
edy I used was thorough cultivation. The fruit was not quite
up to the mark. If anyone has ever had any of that experience
I would like to hear from him. I sprayed my trees. I never
have used anything before except Bordeaux mixture. I use half
the formula for apple trees to fifty gallons of water, and put in
about a teaspoonful of paris green. It did not seem possible it
was strong enough to burn it.

Mr. Morse — I sprayed my trees once with Bordeaux mixture;
am not positive whether I i^ut in paris green or not. The spray
was weak, about half the strength, and in about two weeks
my trees acted as Brother Daniels', and I never sprayed
again.

Mr. Sharp — I should like to ask if Mr. Daniels used barn-yard
manure.

Mr. Daniels — I never used any barn-yard manure in planting

63

fairly well, but where the ground is in grass it gets hard — noth-
ing for the trees to feed on. By stirring up the soil you will
keep this moisture in the ground.

The President — Question No. 39 is called for: "Has anyone
tried lime- wash to protect the peach buds from injury by cold?"

Prof. Maynard — Spraying the trees with lime- wash to prevent
winter-killing of peach buds has proved a failure with us. We
sprayed with lime under four conditions : one lime- wash mixed
with skim milk, one mixed with glue, one with salt, and one
lime-wash alone. The result of examination a few days ago was
that no difference whatever can be seen at this time in the num-
ber of buds killed ; all seem to be killed.

The President — Question No. 21: "What are the best ferti-
lizers for each of the fruits?" The secretary will read the letter
from Mr. Jabez Fisher, Fitchburg, Mass.

DR. FISHER'S LETTER.

"What are the best fertilizers for each of the fruits?" I do not care
to attempt to ansAver the question in this form. 1 do not think we are
in the possession of sufficient linowledge to give a discriminating reply.
Wliat are the best fertilizers for fruit? All of the fruits liave require-
ments that are largely identical. Analysis shows that they are all built
upon a general plan. Plants have the power of transforming ami com-
bining the elements of the atmosphere and the soil each in its own way
to create their different products. The same elements are used by all
of them, and in very nearly the same proportions. We must not forget
that the composition of the fruit itself is not the whole story. The
plant must first come into existence and then attain sufficient age and
maturitj', sometimes requiring many years, before we can look for the
fruit, and for this purpose all the conditions must be supplied from
start to finish.

The question relates to added fertility onlj'. A soil may be conceived
that would of itself contain all that was desirable for some years at
least, but New England does not furnish such under ordinary condi-
tions. The atmosphere holds in unlimited amount all the oxygen, hy-
drogen and carbonic acid required. Nearly all soils afford sufficient of
those materials, of which plants demand but small proportions, for all
crops; but we find that the natural decomposition of the ingredients
of which soils are made up do not give sufficient supplies of some of
the elements for the production of maximum crops, and to obtain such
we must make use of artificial additions. The one that is demanded in
greatest quantity is potash. The second in order is nitrogen; then
phosphoric acid, and for most soils lime and magnesia. Plants will not

64

groAY iu the entire absence of any one of these substances, and if any
one of tliem is deficient iu Quantity, tlie amount of crop is limited by
tlie laclc of tliat one, notwitlistanding all the others may be present in
excess. To attempt to grow plants in the absence of sulficient phos-
phoric acid would be like attempting to build a substantial wooden
dwelling witli only a single cask of nails. Better a slight surplus of
aU the constituents entei-ing into the plant or building than a deficiency
of any one or two, or a wasteful profusion of any one.

Science, experience and observation indicate that an orchard, or its
equivalent, covering an acre of ground, will take from the soil, if
present in available forms, not less than 120 pounds of potash, 50
pounds of nitrogen, 32 pounds of phosphoric acid and 16 pounds of mag-
nesia, togethei- with some lime, in each season. The first few years of
an orchard, while the trees are small and wide apart, they may thrive
with less, but any fruit plantation, just previous to and as long as in
bearing, should be supplied with at least these amounts. Only one of
tlxem can be produced on the land itself, and that is nitrogen, through
the groA^-th of clover or peas, to be plowed under, in cases where cir-
cumstances admit. The others must come from abroad.

The best form in which to buy potash is as a carbonate as found iu
ashes, but it costs fi'om six to eight cents per pound of potassium ox-
ide. The sulphate is nearly as good a form, and can be obtained as
liigh grade to cost not more than five cents. The muriate or chloride
is the least valuable of the three forms, and is objectionable where the
product sought is sugar or starch. It is well adapted to all the grasses
proper, including Indian corn, but is less valuable for fruits, clovers,
and perhaps dicotyledonous plants in general. It costs slightly less
tlian the sulphate. Nitix)gen, unless produced on the spot, can be
bought in stable manure, but is more costly than in other forms.
Nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia are the best sources of imme-
diately available nitrogen, and that is mostly what is wanted, While
cotton seed meal, dried blood or fish will furnish it later in the season,
where desirable. Phosphoric acid is best obtained in what is known as
acid phosphate. In this preparation the phosphoric acid is all soluble,
but without the presence of free lime or its carbonate in the soil it can
hardly be looked upon as a plant food, contrary to the genei-al notion.
The end attained by the solution is the extreme division of the atoms
of the phosphate of lime, after reversion, in the presence of more lime.
Magnesia is best supplied in the sulphate of magnesia known as
kieserite.

A formula to embody the above Avill be. for an acre:

240 lbs. high grade sulphate potash, containing 120 lbs. potash.

160 lbs. nitrate soda, containing 24 lbs. nitrogen.

130 lbs. sulphate ammonia, containing 26 lbs. nitrogen.

2.50 lbs. acid phosphate, containing 32 lbs. phosphoric acid.

100 lbs. kieserite. containing 17 lbs. magnesia.

Total, 880 lbs.

65

This .should covst ^15 to $18. Apples will do witli less. Pears will be
tliaukfnl for more; strawberries very much more, and others depeudiug
upon the market value of the product. Two applications, one-half be-
fore growth commences and one-half later, aa^IU be better than a single
one.

JABEZ FISHER.

(Discussion continued.)

Prof. Clark —I can tell you what I use. I said to Dr. Fisher,
"What do I want to use on my fruits'?" He advised me to use
high-grade sulphate of potash, South Carolina rock, magnesia
and nitrate of soda, in this proportion : 2 lbs. of South
Carolina rock, 1 lb. of potash, and 1 lb. nitrate of soda,
and use according to the size and condition of the tree, any-
where from one to six pounds a year. He told me that in
his orchard they put the ground bone side by side with the
rock, and saw no difference. One was as good as the other.
Thought the rock might give the best results, and the rock
costs only about half the price of the bone. The leaves of your
apple tree will be dark, and your trees will make a much
heavier growth the year they bear than when they do not bear,
for the reason the growth is made early in the season. The
tree has had a chance to rest one year, and starts off in the
spring rapidly, and makes a good growth, and the year it does
not bear, i. e., after fruiting, it does not start as strongly.

Mr. Griggs — You recommend rock phosphate?

Prof. Clark — It may take a little longer to begin to get results
from the rock than bone. I got my rock last year for |12, and
the bone cost about $25 or $28.

Mr. Willard — Years ago I was a great believer in the use of
barnyard manure — very liberal — as intimated in some notes I
read this morning, and I can see where I made very great
mistakes in getting too much nitrogenous matter in my soil. I
was impressed wonderfully by the experience given by one or
two parties on the Hudson in regard to pear orchards. They
cultivate the pear very largely on the Hudson river, and there
were instances of suffering from blight. I knew it forty years
ago when it existed in all its virulence, but I have always
noticed that the disease has been aggravated where there has
been a superabundance of nitrogenous matter in the soil. I
was a very firm believer in the early planting of my pear or-
chards in the use of barnyard manure in a very liberal way,
5

66

and I learned to my sorrow that we were developing succulent
growth of wood liable to be injured. I believe we developed
"black knot," or aggravated it. So far as we had drawn off
from the use of barnyard manure we have found the trees
becoming more healthy. Hence I am a firm believer of more
general use of fertilizers with a large amount of phosphoric acid
and potash. The portion of the country in which I reside is
the home of the Orange quince, and where it has been grown to
perfection for years. We were suffering very greatly from the
scab on our quinces. I said to myself, "We have got to do
something to stop it, or quit growing quinces." The quinces
there that never had the soil stirred, never had plant food put
on, are growing perfectly every year, when I have been all over
this orchard plowing away, and cultivating the trees like orange
plants. We had been disturbing the roots when they ought
not to have been disturbed. We withdrew barnyard manure;
I said it was that. That fine cultivation has been pursued
through a series of eight years, and we have had perfect crops
the last three or four years. Near me is one of the largest
quince orchards in the United States, perhaps in the world, and
few suffer. I give them simple wood ashes, and have always
used them very liberally on our place for the last six or seven
years. I believe a more general use of these mineral fertilizers
referred to is what is more generally needed in our orchards, on
light soil especially, and the soil which I cultivate so much, the
heavy clay there, we found upon examination and analysis
contains an abundance of potash. All we have to do, is by
some method to set it free. In many instances in our heavy soils
I believe it is best to plow in clover or something of that sort.

The President — Question No. 16: "What are the advantages
of a cold storage room to the average fruit grower?"

Prof. Clark — (Describing storage room.) When the ther-
mometer is 90 degrees outside, it is not down to 40 degrees in
there, and that is cooler than I want to keep berries — about 45
degrees ; but you can keep peaches, and plums the same if not
too ripe, pears and grapes. For all fruits, keep them cold and
you can keep them over the glut, and in that way double the
price. In putting in twenty-five bushels of berries the ice is
melted very fast.

Mr. Pratt — If the fruit is put in at 9 or 10 o'clock, and going

H7

to be delivered in Boston at 4 o'clock the next morning, would
it not get too cold"?

Prof. Clark — No, sir. I should not put the temperature down
too low on berries, and I would not get them too cold. The
moisture comes from the outside atmosphere. If your fruit is
colder you are liable to have the moisture condensed.

Mr. Johnson — I think there may be a very great mistake in
keeping fruits too cold before going immediately to market.
We have heard of wet packed apples sent to England. T think
that what are known as wet packed apples are apples that have
sweat in the humid atmosphere of England after being in the
ship and taken to a higher temperature outside, and the dealers
there think we do not know anything of the cause, and send us
word back that they are wet packed, and sell them at a low
price. I think we make a mistake in cooling our fruits. As
soon as apples are picked they should be put into the cellar,
and kept there until they are ready for the market.

Prof. Clark — I say, do not put them in the cellar. I have lost
considerably many apples by putting them in the cellar. Keep
them out when the weather is warm.

Mr. Fuller — I want to say a word in regard to what one of
the best dealers in Boston said. He told me they had apples
from one man in Maine. He said they were packed well. He
did this way: Picked his apples, and put them in a cold shed.
He let them stay there until they were well cooled off; very late
in the season in heading up the barrel. He said they kept best
of any fruit from any quarter.

Mr. Johnson — I find that apples in the cellar should not be
colder than the cellar.

Prof. Clark — It is simply this, the nearer you can get your
apples to freezing, and keep them there, the better they will
keep.

Mr. Hunt — I have had a little experience in putting berries
in a cold room. My berries go by team to Boston about three
in the morning. If put in cold storage they do not do as well.
If you have a near market I supjjose the case might be different.

The Committee on Badges recommend that the style present-
ed be adopted, cost 20c. each.

Voted, to adopt the badge recommended. Voted, that secre-
tary be empowered to purchase as many as are paid for. Voted,

68

that same number of annual reports be printed as last year.
Voted, that the arrangement and place of holding field meeting
be left with the officers of the association.

Prof. Clark — Mr. President, I move that a vote of thanks
from the Fruit Growers' Association be extended to the Wor-
cester County Horticultural Society for the free use of their hall
during our convention. (Carried.)

Adjourned at 4:15 P. M.

TREASURER'S REPORT.

1897.

March 10.

Cash on hand,

$109 12

Annual and admission fees.

156 00

Interest to Jan. 1, 1898,

2 70

BILLS PAID.

F. S. Blanchard & Co., publish-
ing report of annual meeting,
F. S. Blanchard & Co., 400 pro-
grams.
Stenographers,
Postage and telegraph,
June 9. Postage for winter meeting, 1897,

July 1. Postage for mailing, etc.,

July 1. Extra postage to date,

July 6. Bill of Carpenter «& Morehouse,

for printing,
1898.
Feb. 18. Bill Sentinel Printing Co.,
Feb. 18. Bill Geo. Cruickshanks, postage

$2.50, express .25,
Feb. 23. Carpenter & Morehouse,
March 4. Sentinel Printing Co.,
March 5. Postage to date,
March 9. Cash on hand.

$267 82

•^7 20

8

25

25

00

1

50

2

00

8

80

1

00

13

60

7

35

2

75

3

00

8

00

1

00

98

37

$267 82

\

Report of the

Fifth Annual Meeting

IDassacbusem
. . . Trull Growers'
Association.

Organized
March 21, J895.

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(Organized March 21, 1S95.)

REPORT

f-aURTH ANNUAL MEETING

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,
March 8 and 9, 1899.

TlClorccstcr, /IDass.:

Press of F. S. Blanchard & Co.
1899.

~1

FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

HELD AT

WORCESTER, MARCH 8 and 9, 1899.

OPENING SESSION,
Wednesday Morning, March 8ih, at 10.30 o'' Clock.

President Cruickshauks, after calling the meeting to order,
introduced Mr. O. B. Hadwen, president of the Worcester
Horticultural Society, who addressed the fruit growers iu the
following words of welcome :

Mr. President and Members of the Fruit Growers' Associa-
tion : In behalf of the Worcester Horticultural Society, I bid
you a most cordial and hearty welcome. This society has taken
great interest in the growing of fruits so far as its influence
could .be felt throughout the county of Worcester, and I think
its scope has reached even beyond that, for a great many fruits
have originated in Worcester county that are now being dis-
seminated all over the country. We really pride ourselves upon
some of the apples that have originated here. The Sutton
Beauty at the present time is receiving a great deal of attention.
It is only a few years since it was introduced out in New York,
but it is a good many years since it was introduced into exhibi-
tions of this society. I think about the first exhibition of the
Sutton Beauty here was perhaps along in the forties. It created
some interest, and one of our wise men called it the Hubbard-
ston-None-Such, and so it is called in our reports, but since then
we have learned better. There are a great many kinds of
apples, but I am not going to take your time to enumerate or
give a recitation on fruit growing. I am very glad to see so
many of the fruit growers of Massachusetts assembled here to-

day. We hope to make the occasion a pleasant one. We hope
you will derive benefit as well as pleasure, and we give you a
most cordial greeting.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

It is with pleasure that I welcome yon to this the fifth annual
meeting of our association. Two field meetings were held the
past season, one at Worcester and one at Lunenburg and
Townsend. June 15 about one hundred started from Hor-
ticultural Hall, Worcester, to visit the 3'oung orchard of Joseph
T. Perry, the extensive market gardens of Mr. A. S. Wolfe, and
the strawberry fields of Messrs. Asa Ward and J. A. Allen, re-
turning to Horticultural Hall, where an excellent dinner was pro-
vided. In the afternoon the fine old homesteads of Mr. O. B. Had-
wen, Mr. C. L. Hartshorn and others were visited, the extensive
parks of Worcester, and many of the public buildings. Most
excellent arrangements were made by the committee, Messrs. O.
B. Hadwen, A. A. Hixon, J. L. Ellsworth, and J. T. Perry.
August 24 the fruit farm of Mr. Herbert O. Mead, of Lunen-
burg, was inspected. This farm is almost entirely covered with
fruit trees, mostly apple, peach and Japan plums. Peach
trees had a light crop ; plum trees were carrying a fine crop,
but had not come to maturity. If the fruit had been ripe, I
venture to say that our friend Mead would not have had so
many to carry to market, after over a hundred had sampled the
splendid large Burbanks and other varieties. On reaching
Townsend, and partaking of a hot dinner, the large peach
orchards of Excelsior Fruit Farm were inspected. The Hinds
Brothers have made a success in growing the peach. Arrange-
ments were made by the president, H. O. Mead, and W. D.
Hinds.

The secretary's report was read and accepted.

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

As the proceedings of the last meeting and the report for the
year were printed in full in the fourth annual report, and the
remainder of his report simply covered the field meetings,
which were spoken of by the president in his opening address,
together with a few statistics, and, in order to save time, the
Secretary requested permission to read simply the few statistics
which he had entered in the records, as follows :
Total number of members at date on books, 219.
Of these we have lost by death and withdrawal 11.

New members gained during the year, - - 36

Dues unpaid for 1898 58

". " " 1897 - ■ - - - - 22
'' " " 1896 7

DECEASED.

George B. Andrews, Fitchburg, Mass.

J. Henry Hill, Amesbury, Mass.

Benj. A. Nourse, Westboro, Mass.

F. M. Marble, Worcester, Mass.

F. C. Putnam, Marlboro, Mass.

Geo. A. Rogers, No. Andover, Mass.

S. S. A. Stetson, Lakeville, Mass.

John F. Brown, Lunenbuig, Mass.

L. H. Bassett, No. Andover, Mass.

Eeport of the treasurer was then read, accepted and adopted.

TREASURER'S REPORT,

1898.

CASH, DR.

March 9.

Received from former treasurer,

$98

37

12.

membership dues.

$86.00

1899.

March 6.

Received from membership dues,

68.00

154

00

from sale of badges,

20

interest on deposit,

-

2

97

$255

54

1898.

CR.

March 12.

Paid S. D. Willard, lecturer,

$25

00

hotel bill for same,

2

50

stenographer for annual meet-

ing,

25

00

express charges,

85

May 6.

printing annual reports,

74

80

Aug. 30.

programs and postals,

13

45

1899.

March 4.

Carpenter & Morehouse,

15

50

postage, etc. (Maynard),

9

50

freight and express (Maynard),

50

telegram (Maynard),

25

cash book (Maynard),

50

Cash on hand in savings bank,

87

69

$255 54
ETHAN BROOKS, Treasurer.
March 8, 1899.

The chair suggested as the election of officers would occur at
the afternoon session, that a committee be appointed to nominate
a list of officers for the ensuing year.

6

It was then moved by J. L. Harrington of Lunenburg, that a
committee of five persons be appointed by the chair, to bring in
a list of candidates for the respective offices of the association.

Carried.

The chair accordingly appointed the following nominating
committee : J. L. Harrington of Lunenburg, chairman ; Au-
gustus Pratt of North Middleboro, Benjamin P. Ware of Mar-
blehead, E. A. Hersey of Westboro, and C. S. Pratt of Reading.

The President — The next thing on the program will be the
paper or the talk upon insects injurious to orchard fruits. We
are very fortunate in securing a gentleman who stands as high
as any gentleman in his line in the country, if not in the
world. The object of this association is to furnish information
which members can rely upon, and in securing Professor Fer-
nald to talk to us about insects injurious to fruits, we certainly
need not go farther to find the best that can be had. It gives
me great pleasure to introduce to you Prof. C. H. Fernald of the
Massachusetts Agricultural College, who will now address you.

INSECTS INJURIOUS TO ORCHARD FRUITS.

Mr. President and Gentlemen : It affords me pleasure to come
before you at this time, and in thinking over what I would speak
of, I thought it hardly seemed worth while to devote the time
of so intelligent an audience as this to our more common insects,
and therefore I have decided to call your attention to-day to a
few of those which involve great expense, and which are burning
questions in this Commonwealth to-day. Before speaking of
these, however, I wish to call your attention particularly to the
canker-worm.

You are well aware that we have two species, the so-called
spring canker-worm and the fall canker-worm, one of which
comes out of the ground in the spring, after having passed the
early stages, and ascending the trees lays its eggs far up on the
twigs, while the other comes out in the fall. Both kinds hatch
at about the same time in the early summer, so that by spraying
you may deal with both species at the same time. In Amherst
we have the spring species, with only an occasional specimen of
the fall canker-worm.

Our people in Amherst have been accustomed to protect their
trees from the spring canker-worm by putting bands of paper
around the trunks and painting this paper with tree ink. In
the eastern part of the state both species of the canker-worm are
equally common, ard if one depends upon banding the trees and

covering these bands with printer's ink or any other sticky sub-
stance, it would be necessary to continue that work for some time
in the fall and again in the spring. Latterly 1 have experimented
with different methods of holding these insects in check and have
considered the relative costs of these methods. I tried them on
fruit trees on my own ground, doing the work myself and allow-
ing $2 a day in my estimate, thinking this price was sufficient
to secure a man capable of doing good work in spraying and
caring for the trees. I put bands of tarred paper around the
trees and Morrill's tree ink on the paper. Below this was placed
a band of cotton, picked apart so that it was very fluffy, and
above this I put a band of raupenleim. This substance, which
has been used in large quantities by the gypsy- moth people, is
imported from Europe, but the mode of manufacture and the
materials of which it is composed have been kept a secret. I
placed these different bands in various ways, so as to ascertain
whether the canker-worms could cross any of them, and if so
which method was most effective, so that if it were necessary to
use bands of this kind around elms and other large ornamental
trees, we would know which was the most effective in keeping
the canker-worms from ascending the trees. The result of these
experiments proved that raupenleim was by far the best. Early
in the morning, when the printer's ink had hardened through
the night, especially on the shady side, some of the females
actually crossed over and ascended the trees — how many I can-
not say — but I saw several during the spring make their way
over the printer's ink. A large percentage were also able to make
their way over the cotton and wool. Bands of cotton or wool
proved nearly worthless, printer's ink only partially effective,
while raupenleim proved most effective in preventing the ascent
of the canker-worms.

The next year I sprayed the trees on my grounds with paris-
green, using a Johnson hand-pump, and the cost was five cents
per tree. The next year the cost was but three cents per tree.
The difference in cost in the two years was due to the fact that
when the trees were sprayed the first year a strong wind was
blowing, and therefore more time was required to do the work.
The cost of banding a tree with tarred paper, including the cost
of the paper and tacks to fasten it on, the cost of labor in putting
it on and the cost of the printer's ink, amounted to about eighty
cents a tree. As to the relative results, I had fewer canker-
worms on my trees after spraying than when they were banded,
so that for ordinary orchard work where you have the canker-
worms, the cheapest and most effective method is to spray with
some insecticide, as paris-green or arsenate of lead.

Having made these few remarks on the canker-worm, I wish
to pass to another insect, the San Jose scale, which is really a

dangerous pest. The fruit growers in this state, all the farmers
who raise fruit of any kind, and those who have ornamental trees
are in great danger from this insect. It is impossible to say where
this scale came from — that is, what its native country was. It was
first discovered in California in 1870, in San Jos6 county, and
hence the common name. Because it was first discovered there
does not prove it to be a native of California, however. The
chances are that it first came from Japan. This has not yet been
proven, but every evidence we have seems to point in this direc-
tion. It was first described by Prof. Comstock in 1880, when he
found it destroying the fruit trees in California. This insect is now
distributed very widely over the United States and also in Can-
ada. That country has already adopted laws excluding nursery
stock from the United States, and they have done and are still
doing everything in their power to eradicate it. What success
they will have remains to be seen, but they are doing all they
can to keep out infested nursery stock, and they are watching
all efforts made in our country for the suppression of this pest.
I was told not long ago that a nursery in New York state, which
was infested with San Jos6 scale, and could not send its stock to
any of the states where there are laws excluding it, was planning
to send it to the state of Maine and dispose of it there. We
have no law in this state to prevent nurserymen from doing the
same thing here, and it seems absurd that we should allow un-
scrupulous men in other states to send stock of this sort into
Massachusetts. Not only the citizens of this Commonwealth
who are raising fruit, but the nurserymen as well, are at their
mercy. I do not know how familiar our nurserymen may be with
the scale, whether they would recognize it, but I fancy, in the
rush of business in the early spring, they have not time for
that. There is a bill now before the Legislature to have an in-
specting officer and a law to prohibit the introduction of stock
which has not already been inspected by entomologists in the
states from which it comes, with a penalty imposed upon any
common carrier who introduces such stock, or brings in cases of
stock which does not bear the seal or stamp of the inspecting
officer legally appointed for that purpose. Such a law will
directly protect not only our nurserymen, but other citizens as
well, and I am in favor of the protection of both parties.

Many of the citizens of the state are sending me twigs of fruit
trees and shrubs infested with something which they fear may
be the San Jos6 scale. In case it proves to be this insect they
will not be likely to purchase any more stock from the nursery
where they obtained this, and therefore it seems to me very
important for a nurseryman to send out only uninfested stock.
It is very difficult sometimes for the fruit growers to distinguish
the San Jose scale from some other less injurious insect, but I

am always ready to help in this matter when infested twigs are
sent to me.

Many states have laws excluding all nursery stock from other
states unless it has been inspected within a year by competent
entomologists appointed by the state in which the nursery is
located. The bill which is now before our Legislature makes
provision for the inspection of nurseries so that their owners
can ship their stock to other states, and at the same time prevent
the introduction of infested stock from other states.

Having made these few remarks, Mr. President, on the San
Jose scale, I want to pass to another insect which has given me
a great deal of trouble, and about which I feel very anxious,
and that is the brown-tail moth, which you probably have heard
more or less about, and which you have possibly supposed
would never give you any trouble. But it will not be many
years before you will have to deal with that insect yourselves at
your homes; that is my prediction now.

The brown-tail moth is a native of Europe. It was intro-
duced into this country about ten years ago, as near as we can
locate the time of its introduction, presumably on nursery
stock. The very habits of the insect are such as would favor a
transportation from one country to another in that way. The
centre of infestation was at a nursery where they had been im-
porting rose bushes from Europe for a number of years. I do
not suppose those people have the slightest suspicion that they
imported that insect ; I know they would not do it intentionally.
No nurseryman would intentionally introduce any injurious
insect, nor was the San Jose scale knowingly introduced. This
insect is a pure white moth with the tip of its abdomen of a
brown color, and during the time it is on the wing, about the
middle of July, the female lays a cluster of from 200 to 300 eggs
on a leaf, and covers them with the brown hairs from her abdo-
men. After the eggs are deposited they look like a brown
mass. These eggs hatch early in August, and the young feed
during the following months upon the surface of the leaf, and
even upon the surface of the fruit, eating the epidermis and
injuring the leaves, causing them to turn brown. In the latter
part of September all the progeny of one cluster of eggs hiber-
nate in a tent which they have formed during the summer by
drawing together a cluster of leaves and spinning over them a
web, fastening the leaves to the main stem so they will not fall
off. They remain here till about the middle of April, when
they emerge and proceed at once to feed, devouring all the leaf
except the midrib. These caterpillars feed until they reach
their full growth and changeinto the next or pupal stage, which
occurs from the first to the middle of June. They remain in
this stage till the moths emerge at the same time as in the

10

previous year, and then lay their eggs. These caterpillars are
provided with three different kinds of hairs over the surface of
the body, one kind of which is very small, so that they are
scarcely visible to the naked eye. These hairs are sharp-
pointed at one end, and have diverging branches at the other
end, and when they fall upon a person they work into the skin
and set up a most intolerable itching. People in the infested
region in Somerville and Cambridge have told direful stories of
the poisoning, and the men at work on the gypsy moth have
also been poisoned by the nettling of these hairs. 1 requested
our chemist to investigate these hairs to ascertain, if possible,
what the poison was and discover some antidote, but he found
no poison whatever, and came to the conclusion that the action
was mechanical rather than the result of poison. The form of
these spines is such that they work into the flesh and set up an
itching which every one experiences who comes in contact with
this caterpillar. Of the remedies thus far tried vaseline proved
the most satisfactory, but these experiments are not yet com-
pleted.

A year ago last spiing, when this moth tirst made its appear-
ance and was brought to my attention, I discovered that we had
a new insect from the old world. I at once sent notices to the
press and then called the attention of the Gypsy Moth Commit-
tee to it, because there was no one else to consult, and as it was
too late to get a bill before the Legislature we went to the gov-
ernor, who became so much impressed with the importance of
having the matter considered that he sent a message to the
Legislature recommending action in this case. The Legislature
was asked to appropriate ten thousand dollars, but the commit-
tee cut it down to six thousand, and even this sum was not
granted by the Legislature, and a golden opportunity was lost
for the extermination of this insect. During that summer these
insects spread over an area of more than twenty-five miles, and
to-day they are distributed over more territory than the gypsy
moth has ever been. While they are not very abundant in any
one place, except in the original place infested, they are in so
many towns at the present time that I do not believe the Legis-
lature would appropriate money enough to inspect all that ter-
ritory. So I say the probabilities are you will have to deal
with that insect yourselves, and that being the case it seems
proper for me to say something of its habits and the methods of
dealing with it.

I have told you of its habits and its history, how it forms its
tents on the twigs of the trees, and how the caterpillars come
out after hibernating there all winter. The method which has
been adopted for destroying them is to cut off the twigs haviiig

11

the tents on them with long pruning-hooks, then gather and
burn all of those tents.

We have already found the brown- tail moth feeding on forty
different kinds of plants in this country, and these include most
of our fruit and ornamental trees.

I now desire, Mr. President and gentlemen, to call your atten-
tion to the gypsy moth. This is an insect which you have all
heard very much about. I do not know an insect that has been
more widely advertised in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
or in the country than this. It was imported into this country
over thirty years ago, and escaping accidentally has spread over
a large territory in the eastern part of Massachusetts. There
are some people who believe there are no gypsy moths in this
state, while others believe there are but few. There are those
who believe the gypsy moth to be a terrible pest, while others
believe it is comparatively harmless. There are those who do
not believe it is possible to exterminate the insect, and others
who do believe it is possible; and so we find people with all sorts
of ideas on this matter. Now, somebody is wrong, for all those
things cannot be true. I have given the most careful study to
the gypsy moth, and have devoted a large amount of time to it
during the last ten years. We must acknowledge that the ex-
termination of this insect is a stupendous undertaking, and will
cost a great deal of money. The question naturally arises
whether it is worth while to undertake so great a task. It
seems to me that there are but three things the Commonwealth
can do with regard to this insect : first, to keep it from spread-
ing and hold it in check ; second, to exterminate the moth ;
third, to drop the work entirely. The work of the last ten
years has led me to conclude that it would cost not far from
seventy-five to one hundred thousand dollars a year to hold the
gypsy moth in check, and even then, because of the habits of
the insect, there would always be great danger that in some way
it would escape and spread over the country, but the point is,
does anyone believe that our legislatures will make an
appropiiation of one hundred thousand dollars, or seventy-five
or fifty thousand dollars, or any sum of money annually from
now to the end of time? I do not believe that such a policy
would be pursued for any length of time, and therefore, I
believe it to be a fact that the state will do but one of two
things — that is, either exterminate this insect or allow it to
spread over the country. Now, which would be best? Which
would be the cheapest? I have made as careful an estimate as
possible of the number of years and the annual appropriations
that would be required to exterminate this insect, and that es-
timate of time and money has been given in three reports of the
gypsy moth to the Legislature. With five years' appropriation

12

of $200,000 a year, and then after that five years with an appro-
priation of $100,000 a year, I believe the moth would be exter-
minated. Then for fear some insect might be left I added five
years more with $25,000 a year to keep up the inspection lest
any should have been overlooked. This may seem a large sum
of money, and a long time, and as Dr. L. O. Howard was sent
to Maiden two years ago, by the United States government, to
investigate this question of the possibility of extermination,
spending more than two months on this work, I wrote to him,
asking whether in his judgment my estimates of time and money
were not approximately correct, and he expressed the opinion
that they were. The other alternative is for the state to aban-
don the work. The insect would then spread, of course, all
over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, over the United
States, over a portion of Canada, how far north I cannot tell.
But if we judge from its distribution in Europe, it would extend
as far south as the tropics. It occurs all over Europe and Asia
except the extreme north ; it is in the southern part of Sweden
and K^orway ; reaches as far north in Kussia as Riga. It does
not reach St. Petersburg, but it is abundant in Moscow. These
facts assure us that it would spread over all the United States
and portions of Canada, and how far north I do not know.

I have made as careful estimates as possible, based upon the
latest and most reliable statistics of the annual amount of de-
struction this insect would cause if allowed to spread over the
state, and am confident that the destruction it would cause
would amount to vastly more than the cost of extermination.
I state these things to you in order that you may do what you
think best. If you are willing to fight the insect at your own
expense, then write to the members of the Legislature to vote
against the appropriation. If you think it cheaper to exter-
minate it, write accordingly. What will be the cost of exter-
mination to individuals? An appropriation of $200,000 a year
is a tax of less than 1-12 of a mill on a dollar of the taxable
property of this state, and if a man is paying taxes on $5000 he
would then have to pay 41 cents and 4 mills to be protected by
the state. I cannot clear a single tree for that price.

In passing I may have omitted some things of which you
would like for me to speak, but I wish to call your attention to
the fact that the Gypsy Moth Committee received no pay, and
they give, I think, on an average, forty days each year to this work.
I have never seen men conduct a piece of business in a more
business-like way than they have done. They called me fre-
quently to their meetings, and I often went when they were not
expecting me, for I wished to keep in close touch with the
different departments of the work. Mr. Forbush, the field
director, wrote frequently for me to go to Maiden, and I went

13

when he did not send for me. So I have kept in close touch with
the work during all these years, and I feel, Mr. President and
gentlemen, that I am in a jjosition to express a positive opinion
about the work of exterminating the gypsy moth.

A few years ago I felt the responsibility of urging the Legis
lature to grant such large appropriations year after year, appro-
priations which perhaps may seem burdensome to the citizens
of the Commonwealth, and [ asked permission of the Gypsy
Moth Committee to invite other entomologists to inspect the
work, that the responsibility might be shared, and that we
might get their advice in this matter. They gave me permission
to do so, and I invited all the prominent economic entomologists
of the United States. The economic entomologist of Canada
came on his own account, and made the inspection without
being known. These entomologists all agreed that the work of
extermination could be accomplished. I ought to say that
several of them before coming doubted whether the gypsy moth
could be exterminated, for theoretically it did not seem possible.
But when they spent day after day going over the territory and
studying the problem in all its details, they came to the con-
clusion, without any shadow of a doubt, that it was possible to
exterminate the moth along the lines advised by the Gypsy Moth
Committee. There are many honest doubters in regard to this
work, but I think that before a man settles on an opinion on a
work of such a serious character as this, he should make a per-
sonal investigation of the matter. If anybody doubts the work,
I simply ask him to go and make a critical examination of it
himself and not take anything from hearsay. If, after a careful
examination of the work, he still feels that the insect cannot be
exterminated, I have nothing more to say.

Three years ago the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture
employed Professor J. B. Smith, of Rutgers College, to make a
critical examination of the work. He went and studied it for a
week in every phase and made his report to that society, and
that report was one of the strongest arguments in favor of the
work that I have ever seen. The Massachusetts Forestry
Association, believing that the work was not conducted
properly, and that extermination could not be accomplished,
appointed a committee to make a thorough investigation, and go
to the Legislature and oppose the work if necessary. That com-
mittee was given every facility for study. They went to the
opponents and heard all they had to say. They went all over
the whole work, and as a result they appointed a man lo go to
the Legislature and work for the whole appropriation. In every
case where the work has been studied by an opponent, he has
become a convert to it, and therefore I feel like encouraging all
who feel opposition to the work to go and study it.

14

Mr. B. P. Ware of Marblehead — Mr. President, may I put a
question to the professor? He has stated here that he has un-
mistakable evidence that the San Jose scale is in one nursery
in Massachusetts, and in only one.

Prof. Fernald — I did not intend to say only one, because I do
not know.

Mr. Ware — He is quite sure it is only in one nursery.

Professor Fernald — I do not know as it is there now.

Mr. Ware — We will pin you down. He says he has evidence
it is in one nursery. His sympathies are with this large body
of fruit growers, and all in the Commonwealth. He hesitates to
tell the nursery where he has evidence it exists, I suppose on
account of his overflow of good nature. He says also he would
do by others as he would have others do by him. Now, if he had
that nursery infested with the scale, I do not believe he would
distribute that stock or sell it to anybody. So I feel as a matter
of duty he is an official in Massachusetts. We look to him for
information and for protection. He says he has evidence that
it exists in one nursery, and I feel that duty requires him to tell
us which nursery it is — he need not condemn all — so that we need
not buy stock there and distribute the scale over Massachusetts.
We have seen the effect of that. If we can pin it down to one nur-
sery and keep it there, let us do it.

Professor Fernald — If the gentleman will read my public
reports he will have his question answered, but what has oc-
curred in the different nurseries since that time I am unable to
say. I can only speak of the condition of things when those
reports were published, and if the gentleman will read them and
also a report of Mr. Kirkland, in one of the crop reports of last
year, with regard to the inspection of nurseries and San Jose
scale, he will get some further information.

Mr. Charles V. Griggs of Westboro — I would like to ask if
the treatment of hydrocyanic acid is an effectual preventive to
the scales.

Professor Fernald — Those who have tried it think it is. One
of my former students who is government entomologist in South
Africa claims that he has prevented the destruction of a large
number of trees by fumigating with this gas, and he is trying to
teach the people how to use it, and fumigate large trees in the

15

orchard in this way. From his observations and also from the
observations and investigations of Prof. Johnson of Maryland,
who is working along the same lines on the San Jose scale, it
seems that fumigation with this gas is one of the best things that
can be used for the San Jose scale, but, after all, the very best
thing and the thing which is thorough and complete is cremation.
The only question that might be raised is whether a tree slightly
infested might not be saved, and whether the hydrocyanic acid
gas will absolutely kill every San Jose scale. This, I think, has
yet to be fully demonstrated, but it will undoubtedly kill more
than anything else we know of. There is one thing with regard
to it, however, in the inspection of nursery stock : when a bud
rests against the side of a twig, and in one instance at least that
bud was broken or cut off, and behind it was concealed a San
Jose scale, and no inspector of nurseries would ever have seen
it because it was completely concealed, I do not know whether
hydrocyanic acid gas would kill that scale. It might have been
so protected that the fumes would not have reached it. I did
not mention this gas because it is such a deadly substance I was
afraid of the accidents that might arise. I think experiments
will be made and we shall know more about it before many years.

Professor S. T. Maynard — I would like to ask Professor Fer-
nald in regard to the use of arsenate of lead.

Professor Fernald — I am much obliged for the suggestion. In
the first year of our work on the gypsy moth we found that paris-
green did not kill the caterpillars, even when used in as large
proportion as possible, without injury to the foliage. Our chem-
ist was then directed to experiment with other arsenical com-
pounds and the result was the discovery of arsenate of lead.
This insecticide can be used in any proportion, when properly
made, even as high as 25 pounds to 150 gallons of water, without
injury to the most delicate foliage. We have now used arsenate
of lead so long that the experimental stage is passed and it has
proved a most excellent insecticide, and not only can it be used
in any projDortion desired, but it remains on the foliage for a
long time.

Mr. Is it as cheap as paris-green!

Professor Fernald — It costs the Gypsy Moth Committee from
six to seven cents per pound. There is a firm in New York

16

who propose to put it on the market for twelve cents. You do
not need to consider the cost of the insecticide, for the great cost
of spraying is the labor, and if you have to spray only once with
arsenate of lead and two or three times with paris-green, the
former will prove much cheaper.

Mr. Charles E. Parker of Holden — Would it be equally effect-
ive on potatoes as paris-green?

Professor Fernald — I have tried it on a great many of our
common insects and find that they are all readily destroyed by
it, even the potato beetles. Prof. Smith, to whom I have pre-
viously alluded, said in his report that the discovery of this
insecticide will prove worth as much in time to the people of the
United States of America as all the money that the state has thus
far appropriated for the extermination of the gypsy moth.

Mr. Elliott Moore of Worcester — I am hoping the gypsy moth
may be exterminated by large appropriations, but how can it
when we have had large appropriations and at the same time
the gypsy moth has spread!

Professor Fernald — Have we, my dear man, ever received all
the appropriations asked for before last year! We asked for
$200,000 and got $100,000. $100,000 is a large appropriation,
but with it we just held the insect in check, and at the end of
the year we were just where we were before, and the state adopted
an unwise policy.

Mr. Moore — Isn't it a fact that they are increasing?

Professor Fernald — By no means. It has been greatly reduced
in numbers, and every one who has investigated the matter is
confident that it can be exterminated. They were spread over a
large territory, but three-quarters of that territory is already
clear.

Mr. Munroe Morse of Medway — I wish to say a few words in
regard to arsenate of lead as an insect destroyer. I have used
it some and I find, as the professor says, it does not injure the
leaves when used at any strength, and I have used it very strong.
It stays on as long as any one wants to have it, but to use it on
the potato bug I found was not very effective. It seems to kill very
slowly, and the bugs were very thick and ate the tops off where
they were dying. At the time the bugs are present the potatoes
are growing very rapidly, and you may spray your leaves

17

thoroughly and iu a few days there will be a fresh growth to
feed on. and they eat the fresh growth and live. I had to use
paris green to keep thera out.

Professor Fernald — ^The gentleman is right. Arsenate of lead
is a slow poison and paris-green is a quick poison. Paris-green
is a poison you may use safely on potatoes, and I think in that
case it would be better, but where you cannot use .enough to kill
the insects arsenate of lead is better. In ordinary fruit culture
I found that arsenate of lead was superior to paris-green, but, as
you say, there is a rapid growth of the potato tops, and it gives
the potato beetle every opportunity to feed on it and thrive. I
would not do away with paris-green.

Mr. Would it not stay on the fruit too long?

Professor Fernald — There is no danger in this respect with
arsenate of lead or paris-green. There is a hospital in North
Cambridge where sick and worn-out horses are used in the man-
ufacture of soap, and one of my assistants sprayed a tree thor-
oughly with arsenate of lead and also the grass underneath the
tree. He then mowed the grass and fed it to one of these horses
and the horse thrived on it.

Mr. J. W. Manning of Eeading — In relation to the gypsy-
moth, the results are good so far where they have been experi-
menting on it. As a matter of fact, where we are they have
worked and got them off and you don't see them returning. I
think as long as $200,000 will keep them down we had better
have it. While they are held in check we should never give it
up. I do not know how soon they will break over beyond all
bounds. We thought we had pretty good rulers in our country,
and I suppose as they gave $200,000 to kill cows with they
thought this would be enough, but we have money left.

Mr. M. P. Palmer of Groton — It may be well, or won't it be
well, to pass a resolution indicating that this society is in favor
of an appropriation to exterminate this insect?

The Chairman — Will the gentleman please prepare resolutions
in writing!

Mr. Palmer — Perhaps I will. It seems to me the men in Mas-
sachusetts are not going to be beaten by a gypsy- moth, and if
we withhold the request for appropriations now it will show to
the world that we acknowledge ourselves beaten by a worm. I

18

do not believe it is good policy. I happen to know something
about the first of it. I had something to do with the bill that
was before the Legislature, upon the committee. I went out
to Medford and saw the first operations of the worm, and the
days we were out there the sidewalk was literally covered with
these worms — certainly there was half a bushel; we could not
walk on the sidewalk. If we want that kind of business all over
Massachusetts and the United States, then let's give it up and
go off somewhere and die.

Mr. Parker — Mr. President, when I heard the statement of the
Legislature last winter, I saw their lukewarmness on this ques-
tion. I heard one gentleman say he had visited the place several
times, and he had never seen a gypsy moth yet, and I heard
another gentleman say he had gone over ten acres of his lot and
he did not see one. It did seem to me that something was
wrong that with all the reports that had been made people
should not have come nearer together. I am glad for one that
the appropriation went through last winter, and since then I
have taken a day and visited the places. From Boston I went
out and visited the moth-infested district, and spent the whole
day there, and if I was not wholly converted before, I have been
ever since, and I do not believe, Mr. President, that we can
afford to let that insect spread over the state of Massachusetts,
to say nothing about our neighbors, and it strikes me that these
intelligent fruit growers are the parties that will be really more
affected by this pest in fifty years than any other class. If a
man lives in the city, he can sweep them up and dispose of
them, but what will the farmer do who has his 20, 30 or 100
acres to care for"? He is simply clay in the hands of those in-
sects, so to speak. They are master of the situation, and so
will be. I am willing to pay a good deal more than 41 cents on
five thousand dollars of my tax for more than five or ten years,
for the sake of having this pest exterminated.

The Chair — I could not quite understand the remarks of Mr.
Palmer, but I am ready to put a motion that a committee be
chosen to prepare resolutions to express the feelings of the Fruit
Growers' Association, and have it sent to the Committee on
Agriculture, with all the effect he can give it.

19

Mr, Palmer — I move that a committee be appointed to make
resolutions for presentation to the Legislature. (Carried.)

Mr. J. G. Avery of Spencer — Mr. President and Gentlemen :
In 1895, '96 and '97 I was a member of the State Board of Agri-
culture, and was appointed on this committee of the gypsy moth,
and served for three years. I was not on last year, in 1898
was the first year the full appropriations were granted to this
committee, and in that year there were $10,000 taken from it for
the browD-tail moth. After being on the committee for three
years, and watching the work faithfully, and spending each year
nearly fifty days of my time, last year I took upon myself to go
over the work to see what they had done in 1898 with this ap-
propriation, and I went over the territory where I knew were
the most of them the year before, where they were very thick,
and went into a little place of some four acres, and the trees
had been literally covered with these nests, and amongst them
was one tree not over 10 inches in diameter, and I said I thought
there were nearly 3,000 nests there. The men were treating
these nests, and counted 2,360 nests on that one tree. When
you multiply that by 600, the average number of eggs to each
nest, you can have some idea of how they multiply. I went
over that section, and spent two days last fall in going over the
work, and I consider the work done last year was marvelous.
In the two days I was out looking for nests where they were so
thick before, I did not see fifty, walking for miles and miles
as I did. And after the three years' experience I had with the
work, and knowing what quantities were exterminated, I believe
extermination possible. In 1897 the question of the gypsy moth
was brought up, and I was interested, as I was on the committee
of the State Board of Agriculture in this work, and was in a
measure responsible for the appropriation, and the whole com-
mittee was responsible, and the whole Board of Agriculture was
responsible, and very few of them had been out over the terri-
tory, and I insisted on having a day set apart when as many as
possible should go to Boston. Quite a large number promised to
go. I was at Boston at our regular meeting, and the next Monday
we were to go out. It was a rainy day. I went to the State
House, and Mr. Sessions thought it was not worth while to go,
but I went to the depot and found two there, Mr. Kilburn of

20

Lancaster and another gentleman. Mr. Kilburn has been a man
somewhat skeptical in regard to the work, bnt had never seen
it. We went over the work thoronghly that day, and into a
swamp of 150 acres, the worst i^atch we ever had, where it was
very rough and full of briars and stub-brush and everything
else, and we did not find one for more than an hour. And from
there we went to Saugus, and this was about a month before the
annual meeting that we took this trip. At the annual meeting,
on the first day, Mr. Kilburn asked permission to have some-
thing to say, and he wished to tell about the trip which he had
made with the committee looking over this work, and he did it
in order that we might hurry the work through, urging that the
members from Boston should go out one day and see what he
had seen. He acknowledged that he had been skeptical about
this work, but was satisfied then that the extermination was
possible ; that he did not want the pests in Worcester county
and over the Commonwealth, and he wanted every man as mem-
ber of that state board to see it, and as Prof. Feruald has said,
no man who has inspected the work thoroughly but what has
been satisfied. On the trip when he went with Mr. Smith, Prof.
Fernald and Mr. Forbush, I had the honor to be in company
with those gentlemen on that inspection. We passed four days
very agreeably with each other, but T want to assure you, gen-
tlemen, that if this pest is allowed to go loose over the Common-
wealth, it would be the greatest curse that could happen to it.

The Chair — Before we adjourn I would like to ask Prof. May-
nard to make a statement.

Prof. Maynard — Gentlemen, as I said in my report, there are
58 fees due for last year. There are the dues for the present
year, which we hope the members will bring forward to the
treasurer or to the secretary, as it is very necessary that we
have money to carry on the work of the association.

Adjourned to 2 p. m.

Afternoon Session — 2 o'' Clock.

President Cruickshanks in the chair.

The report of the Committee on Resolutions regarding the
gypsy moth was called for, and Mr. M. P. Palmer, chairman of
the committee, submitted a resolution urging the Legislature to

21

grant the request of the commission for the extermination of the
gypsy moth, and appropriate the amount of money needed for
this purpose.

This resolution was unanimously adopted, and the secretary
directed to send a copy at once to the chairman of the Senate
committee who had the bill in charge.

Mr. S. H. Record of Worcester — I thought this motion was to
have been discussed before putting to a vote.

The Chair — It would have been discussed if you had requested
it. There are a few moments before the Committee on Nomina-
tions is ready to report. If there is any question to be dis-
cussed, it may be now taken up.

Mr. Charles E. Parker — Mr. President, it seems to me the
Fruit Growers' Association ought to take some action upon
that other insect pest that was discussed so ably by the essayist
this morning, — the San Jose scale. It seems to me this associa-
tion ought to put themselves upon record as saying whether or
no they desire legislation that shall if possible keep this pest
from the borders of Massachusetts. We had it explained to us
this morning that other states by legislation prevented anything
from Massachusetts going into their borders, but there is nothing
in Massachusetts to provide for the inspection of any nursery
stock that has come into this state. It seems to me this ques-
tion is worth consideration, and some action ought to be taken.

Mr. J. W. Manning — There is no law in this state to enforce
an examination of nurseries by entomologists, but there are
several states that will not allow a package to go through by ex-
press or freight unless a certificate or some card is on every
package, saying it has been examined by an entomologist and is
free from insects. Somebody sent packages to North Carolina,
and they destroyed them. We are all liable to that. There is a
bill in Legislature pending to help this thing along. If we can
adopt a resolution here to mate it stronger let us put it through.

Mr. Parker — As Prof. Fernald says, it seems to me wholly
impractical, if not impossible, to inspect all nursery stock so as
to say it is free from disease and insects, and, if I understand
right, the state of Maryland requires all nursery stock to be
fumigated so as to destroy all this, and all nurserymen have

22

fumigating houses to do it, and it seems to me it would be the
cheapest method that could be adopted with the scale.

Mr. N. Porter Brown of Westboro — I would like to ask Mr.
Manning how it could be prevented from coming in.

Mr. Manning — I would have the law so made that no package
of stock could be brought in unless it had a certificate.

Mr. Jewett — There are several bills before the Legislature now
in regard to this question — one bill that all nursery stock shall
have a certificate saying it shall be inspected. I will say the
hearings have been fully attended, and the nurserymen have not
seemed to have light on the subject, and could not seem to
agree. I doubt, unless some action is taken very soon, if there
will be any bill reported to give any relief on the question,

Mr. Manning — The people of California were the first to wake
up to the importance in importing that no stock and no package
could come into the state unless somebody was there to examine
thoroughly. If they found infested stock they destroyed it forth-
with. It seems to me their own land was full of that which
they were persecuting. TheSan Jose scale came from California
to New Jersey, and from there to Massachusetts, and it is all
over the country to-day ; it is in Canada and Minnesota; it is
far and near, and it will stay here. It is only kept down by
vigilance. When I was in California they told me laws would
not stop it. They seem now to make a target of the nurseryman
and destroy his i)roperty ; when the insect is so common in so
many places it is a troublesome thing, and an entomologist will
go on the ground, and give a certificate that as far as he can
see he did not find any insects, and that certificate is good for
a year, and there were lots of places where he did not go, per-
haps, and they might have been there all the time. Mr. Hale
says the San Jose scale is a good thing ; that it will be only the
careful nurserymen that will get free. A man can keep it off if
he attends to it. Therefore, those that do grow fruit and take
care of it will have the market.

Mr. J. G. Avery — I have a suggestion for a change of Article
1 of Section 5 of the Constitution : " This association shall hold
at least two regular meetings each year. The annual meeting for
the election of officers shall be held at 11 o'clock a, m, of the first
day." We want to change that to 2 p. m. for the election of

23

officers. This has to lay over one meeting before that change
can be made, as I understand it. I therefore give notice that
such an amendment will be offered at the next regular meeting.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend — It seems to me there is an-
other line in which the fruit growers ought to take some action
It has become very fashionable nowadays to sell or give away
all our crates, berry baskets, or whatever we ship our fruit to
market in. Once we put them on the express, it is the last we
ever see of them. I think it is the greatest waste we have to
submit to. In my immediate neighborhood I and several of my
neighbors piad $40 for strawberry baskets ; and now we have not
25 baskets apiece. The ladies are willing to save the baskets
for us, and it seems to me the fruit growers might combine and
comj^el the commission men to return them. They are good for
several seasons, with the exception of getting broken. Four or
five years ago I had 150 crates all painted and stenciled to ship
raspberries in, and to-day I have only 20 or 25. It seems to me
it is a tremendous waste we cannot endure. I wish some action
would be taken to recover the lost crates.

Mr. Brown — Mr. Chairman, I think this subject a very proper
one to bring before this meeting. I ship my berries to Boston
or elsewhere, and never recover the crates again. It is
an item of expense, and the small margin we get for
berries above the cost of picking and marlceting is very small.
I asked the commission man the price of baskets, and he said
$3.25 and $3.50 a thousand. I asked him if he kept crates.
" Oh, no," he said, " I do not keep crates; you can go to the
grocer's and load up with them.'' The customers like their
beiries in clean boxes, and generally the way you put up a thing
determines the price at first sight. It seems to me that the
policy of the Boston marketmen, the greenhouses and express
companies, who have banded together not to return crates, hurts
Massachusetts men as much as anything I know of.

Mr. James Draper of Worcester — Mr. President, in this very
line I would like to say a word or two about my early experi-
ence in putting small fruits on the market. There were few
growing fruits at that time, and I took pride in grading my
fruit to a high grade, and establishing a reputation as my brother
Hinds has, and at that time we were using the round quart-

24

boxes. So I bought enough of these to carry me through, and
stenciled on all the covers, " Bloomingdale Garden and Nursery,
James Draper, Proprietor," and the press said some very pleas-
ant things for me, gave me a good start, and I exposed them in
leading concerns in selling fruit. They commanded the highest
price in the market, and I felt quite proud of that year's record
in growing fruit, but I noticed after I sent them out and my
boxes came back. I got a heterogeneous mixture in place of my
nice fruit boxes. And some had put a second class of fruit in
them, and were selling for Draper's first-class fruit, and it
worked against me. My friend, Wm. H. Earle, who was one of
the best fruit growers of the time, put his fruit in small, cheap,
gift baskets. I think he sold strawberries at the highest price
in the city of Worcester that was commanded, and the box went
with it. I believe today the thing to do is to build your reputa-
tion for a high grade of fruit, so high that you can afford to let
the box go with it. Get up as neat and as cheap a crate as you
can transport your fruit in. Customers want a nice, clean pack-
age, and they buy what pleases the eye, rather than have the
broken-down, stained, rickety boxes that used to come back
to me.

Mr. E. S. Young of Orange — I fully agree with and indorse what
the last speaker has said. It has been my experience for about
thirty years. I commenced the same way, getting back dirty,
moldy baskets, and it was really necessary to have one man to
keep track and send out a tracer for them to get back the crates
and baskets stenciled with your name. You know, as we all know,
that we have established, and the great fruit-growers of the
South have established, the rule of gift crates and gift baskets,
and I believe all the action of this Fruit Growers' Association
of Massachusetts in rebuttal of that will amount to nothing.
For my part, I propose on a small scale to raise such berries
that I do not want to put them in a basket that has been used
once. I agree with J. H. Hale of South Glastonbury, that a
basket that has been used once for berries is not fit for use again.
There are some exceptions, but I never put fruit a second time
in a berry- basket that does not show to as good advantage as
the first time.

%

25

Mr. J. L. Harrington, Chairman of Committee on N^omina-
tlons — Your committee have looked over the field very carefully,
and you will see by the nominations we wish to present that we
have made a good many changes, especially in trying to even
up the directors in different parts of the statf^. We present the
following as the list of officers for the ensuing year:

President — George Cruickshanks, Fitchburg.
Vice-President — H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.
Secretary — Samuel T. Maynard, Amherst.
Treasurer — Ethan Brooks, West Springfield.
Auditor — Calvin L. Hartshorn, Worcester.
Directors — Essex County — E. A. Emerson, Haverhill.

" " Benjamin P. Ware, Marblehead.

Suffolk " William R. Sessions, Boston.

Norfolk " Abel F. Stevens, Wellesley.

" " Monroe Morse, Med way.

Plymouth " Augustus Pratt, Middleboro.

" " Walton Hall, Marsh field.

Middlesex " M. P. Palmer, Groton.
" " W. D. Hinds, Townsend.

" " C. S. Pratt, Reading.

" " Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln.

Hampshire " John W. Clark, North Hadley.
" " D. E. Hoxie, Northampton.

" L. W. Goodell, Belchertown.
Hampden " L. W. Rice, Wilbraham.
Berkshire " A. G. Sharp, Richmond.

" " R. H. Race, North Egreraont.

Franklin " E. S. Young, Orange.

" " M. H. Vincent, Conway.

Worcester " O. B. Had wen, Worcester.
" " John G. Avery, Spencer.

" " J. L. Ellsworth, Worcester.

'* " James Draper, "

" " E. A. Hersey, Westboro.

The Chair — You hear the report. What is your pleasure to
do with it?

It was moved and seconded that the stenographer cast the
electing vote for the list of officers as reported by the committee.

Carried.

Stenographer cast the vote and the list was declared elected.

Mr. Cruickshanks — I thank you, gentlemen, for the repeated
election as president of this organization. It had been my in-

26

tention not to be a candidate for this coming year, but in con-
versing with several of our members they have persuaded me,
against my will I must say, but I will endeavor to do my best to
carry on the work of this organization, and hope and trust at the
end of the year that we will have made some advance, and next
year that you may elect a new president.

The Chair — The question list now comes up for discussion.
Question 1. " Will each member who has grown the Baldwin
apple the past season give the following questions relating to
that variety careful thought, and be prepared to report upon
them!" a. To what extent have your Baldwin apples been af-
fected with the dry-rot spots or sponge- spots the past season?
Also in 1897 and 1898, and 1896 and 1897? h. At what time did
it appear so as to seriously injure the sale of .the fruit? c. Has
the fruit been affected upon all trees, under various conditions
of soil, cultivation or fertilization? If not, what are the condi-
tions under which the trees are growing that produce sound
fruit? d. Are other varieties affected in the same manner?

Professor Maynard — Perhaps I should make some little ex-
planation in regard to this question. We find everywhere al-
most, as far as I have been able to know the conditions of the
Baldwin apple this season, under the skin these dry- rot spots
or sponge-spots, and called by various other names. The cause
of these spots is not known. No fungous growth has been dis-
covered. A person buying a Baldwin apple and cutting through
it is not satisfied with its conditions, no matter how well the
fruit looks. He does not buy the second one, and if this condition
largely found throughout the state and the country, the Bald-
win apple will very soon fail to be a profitable variety. If there
are any conditions under which the Baldwin apples are success-
fully grown, I hope the members will be free to give any facts
they may have.

Mr. Young — One year my Baldwins did not have the spot
and another year they did, I think this year they spotted with
me; last year they did not.

Professor Maynard — Were they on the same trees?
Mr. Young — No; I had what I think is called the odd year.
1 have a long-stem and a short-stem Baldwin. One kind grows
very large, and another does not grow as large unless I thiu

27

them, and the large kind does not spot and is as free from spot
as any apples I ever picked, and this year I noticed particularly
they were entirely free, and the others I did not notice were any
more so than in former years. I sprayed them thoroughly.
The Chair — What are the soil conditions?

Mr. Young — Mine is clay loam with clay sub-soil — I think you
would call it hard-pan.

The Chair — The soil is the same in both trees?

Mr. Young — Yes, they are all in one orchard. The hard-pan
I should think about six or eight inches thick. The soil will go
down about sixteen or eighteen inches and then strike hard-pan,
and underneath that it is clayey. No roots ever get through this
hard-pan.

Mr. Elliott Moore — T wonder if there was any such thing as
the cause of spots by variation of soil or location. This idea
indicates there may be such a thing. I had not seen these pro-
grams and did not know this question was to be discussed here.
I have a tree standing north of the barn, so near that the sun
strikes it through the winter season but very little, and another
four rods from that that gets the sun, but the soil is the same.
The fruit from these trees I never knew to be spotted, and they
bear freely every other year. On the south side of the house
there are two oldish trees that are not odd-year Baldwins. They
bear the even year, and are in highly cultivated ground,
the fruit is almost invariably spotted, but they will grow nice
large apples aside from the spots. I would like to have it
determined whether cultivation has anything to do with it.

Mr. Palmer — Will the gentleman tell us about the spot"?

Professor Maynard — It is a dry brown spot under the skin,
and in many cases going deep into the flesh. The impression
prevails that the apples will be very much less spotted in cool
soil or on a northern slope, and Mr. Moore's observation would
lead to the same conclusion.

Mr. Palmer — I have never seen anything of that kind in my
life, and my soil has a clay sub-soil.

Professor Maynard — I would like to ask Mr. Palmer if his
trees are in grass-land.

Mr. Palmer — They are in grass. I had two hundred barrels
this year, and did not see any spots — never saw Baldwins so

28

large and red. I have heard it said that the Baldwin apple is
running out.

Professor Maynard — I think we can understand that the roots
of Mr. Palmer's trees were not so much affected by heat as if
they were in cultivated land. That is only one point, but per-
haps it may lead to more light.

Mr. Palmer — It is something new in our section. I never
heard any complaint.

Mr. C. E. Buruap of Eitchburg — Our orchard is situated back
of the barn, and through which Che liquid manure runs during
the summer season. The trees situated near this ditch will
invariably have these spots Those that were away so as not
to receive the liquid from the ditch are free. Where the land is
heavily fertilized and the trees have very strong growth, there
is more.

Mr. Monroe Morse — Thirty-five years ago I had two Baldwin
trees standing thirty-five feet apart, one on lower ground. The
trees were young; they were large enough to bear two barrels
apiece. The one on the lowest ground invariably grew so spot-
ted that the apples were scarcely worth anything, while the
other bore good apples, and the spotted ones were the largest.

Mr. Hinds — I should like to ask Mr. Palmer what he fertil-
izes with. I think fertilization may have something to do with it.

Mr. Palmer — I seed my orchards, and after seven or eight
years in grass I plough and plant fodder-corn or oats, and seed
down again. I use barn-yard manure, and I do not think there
would be anything in the dressing to do it, for if anything of
that kind would do it I should think barn-yard manure would.
I never saw anything of the kind in town. My orchard is on
the side of a hill, and the land is springy and holds water.

Pi-ofessor Maynard — I would like to ask if the orchard is on
the northern or southern side.

Mr. Palmer — Some are on the northern and some on the
southern and some eastern.

Mr. Manning — This is nothing new. I certainly think I saw
it sixty years ago in New Hampshire, and it was on fifty young
trees my father grafted.

Mr. A. G. Sharp of Richmond — I have an opinion that it is
due to excessive wet weather.

29

Mr. Brown — Mr. Hersey of Westboro, who has the control of
six or eight hundred barrels a year, I would like to hear ex-
press an opinion on this.

Mr. E. A. Hersey — I have nothing to say.

The President — I would like to ask Mr. Rice again if he has
not noticed any of this difficulty in the Baldwins, and under
what conditions.

Mr. Kice — Mr. President, I have but very few Baldwin ap-
ples. Those have been very free from spots. I attribute it to
putting coal-ashes around the trees. I dig the earth away from
the trunk of the tree perhaps two feet, and put perhaps two
bushels of coal-ashes directly around the tree, and cultivate
with a spring-toothed harrow. That is all I can say as to the
treatment I give them. I do not know as that had anything to
do with it. A few days ago I sold one bushel for two dollars,
anl another for ninety cents, and had nearly another left. So
you can see they have kept well, and are quite free from spots,
or anything I know of as being spots.

Mr. Hinds — As I understand it, you find under the skin little
brown specks the color of a sponge, and as big as peas?

Professor Maynard — Yes.

Mr. Hinds — That is what I have, and I see a great deal of it.
I had an impression that fertilization caused the trouble, or
lack of fertilization of the proper kind. From my experience
in pasturing colts I noticed in the outside rows of my orchards
where the droppings were most abundant the apples grew large
and yellow, and half rotted on the trees before ripe, and in the
next row, where I used chemicals and ashes, the apples would
I e bright, and keep with scarcely any specks. I thought the
trouble was caused by lack of potash.

Mr. — '■ What kind of fertilizers do you use?

Mr. Hinds — I put on leached ashes generally. I put on un-
leached ashes this fall. Those trees growing where the colts
dropped all their fertilizers make great wide growers. They
had too much shade, and so I did not give them fertilization,
and the apples kept in the cellar were half rotten. One lesson
I learned was that too much nitrogenous fertilization is not tlie
thing for growing apples. And the same experience with hen-
yards where there is a large amount of fertilization. In my ex-

30

perience with chemicals, the use of muriate or sulphate of
potash gives me more apples than where the hens are kept.
Several years ago I noticed spots on my Baldwins, and since
then I have used ashes from a lime-kiln, and T have not dis-
covered any spots on the last year's crop. Whether this has
been a cure or not, I do not know. I scrape the trees and put
lime ashes under.

Mr. Wm. M. Barrett of Westboro— My apples grow by the
side of the road, and three or four years ago they were unfit to
eat, from the little brown spot under the skin. After the apple
was pared it would be covered almost entirely, and I lost almost
all my crop, and since that — two years ago — the canker-worm
destroyed the blossoms and I have had no apples. Three or
four years ago I lost almost my entire crop from this rot.

Mr. F. G. Gilson of Groton — I would like to ask if he found it
on young or old trees.

Mr. Barrett — In my experience, it is more abundant on the
old tree that had been standing there thirty or forty years.

Mr. Young — I supposed it was little brown specks just be-
neath the skin, and from what these gentlemen say, I may have
it in a slight form. I have not had anything as bad as they say,
not bad enough to injure the sale. I never have heard of any
trouble, but there were little black specks all over under the
skin, and I have seen this ever since I remember what a Bald-
win was. I might have said something more about my mode of
cultivating. The orchard which I have came under my control
two or three years ago, when I went to Franklin county. It is
a small orchard. It is the finest place I ever saw for growing.
Evidently hogs had been running in previous to my taking it.
The next year I let the hogs in there, but I thought they rooted
too much and took them out. Last year I had no hogs, but one
hundred chickens — I boarded some chickens for a man. I gave
the orchard thorough cultivation, and used Clark's cut-away
harrow, or whatever you call it, and I find it is a real good
thing, and I go over it with a spring-toothed harrow, and then
what wood ashes I make in the house from two fires I put into
that orchard, and that is enough cultivation and fertilization for
two years. Now, when I took hold of this orchard the trees
were all covered with lichens and had been neglected. I thinned

31

out the tops and scraped the trunks, cleansed off the old bark,
and got off all the lichens as far as possible. I went over them
with good whale-oil soap from Philadelphia, and I tell you those
trees took a jump. That was the first dose, and they bore tre-
mendously the first year. I do not expect those trees will give
me an apple this year, but I expect to get as many the next year
as the first. I used to go out in the morning and hunt for tent-
caterpillars. I did not allow any, and afterwards could not find
any in my orchard, and the whole of Franklin county and the
village of Orange were completely stripped — so much so that
they put items in the paper .about the neglect of people to keep
down this pest in their orchards. I do not believe there is any
better soil in the state.

Mr. Manning — I think a great many young trees that begin to
bear have that spot. I have noticed in many parts of the coun-
try that the spot would be on the apples. It is not confined, I
presume, to old trees, too.

The President — We would like to hear what our treasurer,
Mr. Brooks, has to say about it.

Mr. Ethan Brooks of West Springfield — I do not believe I can
throw any light or answer any questions, and do not believe I
better take any time.

The President — We would like to hear from Mr. Fisk of
Grafton.

Mr. D. L. Fisk — My experience is a good deal like that some
others have had. Some twelve or fifteen years ago our apples
spotted very bad and all around our section. For some reason
or other the apples did not sell well, and I suppose the buyers
caught on that they were spotted, although I do not know as
anybody did when they were picked. So I put them in the
cellar and thought I would sell them later on. The first I knew,
they began to show spots under the skin, and I think you could
not find half an inch but that would have those spots, and
people began to say the Baldwin apple had run out ; been culti-
vated so long that it would not amount to anything. But I
never have seen them spotted to any extent in our section since
that. I know one of the trees bore two dozen barrels in one
season. The trees were set out by one party, and after a while
a quarter of it was sold to another party. Now, in the year

32

that they spotted so badly, the quarter part of that orchard
spotted very bad, the same as mine did and a good many others,
and the other part of the orchard bore some twelve to fifteen
barrels, and they were as perfect apples as I ever saw. Kow,
the only difference that could be seen was that the part that was
spotted was manured pretty heavily with barn-yard manure. I
have heard it suggested in this hall that another variety would
supersede the Baldwin. Now, in 1894 we had all around our
section handsome apples — why, I could not hope, if I lived one
hundred years, to see handsomer apples than we saw there in
Grafton and Shrewsbury, and as far as I observed. So, evi-
dently at that time the Baldwin was not run out, and when we
read, as we do, that the green Gage plum was growing on the
highway some 150 years ago, and is to-day the standard of ex-
cellence in plums, I guess we better not think that any special
variety has run out.

Mr. Parker^ — A number of years ago I had a large crop of
Baldwins, and they were spotted, not with the spots that our
secretary describes as being under the skin, but with a black
mildew on the outside, that evidently toward spring struck
through and commenced to rot. I suppose that is a different
disease.

Professor Maynard — It is undoubtedly different. It is the
apple scab.

Mr. Parker — The one our secretary describes I do not know
anything about. We had much wet weather, so it could not be
that.

The Chair — Question No. 2 is called for, if you have nothing-
more to say on the Baldwin question :

"The peach, Japanese and domestic plum-buds are reported
killed by the extreme cold about January 1st. Will each grower
make a careful examination of the buds, under as many condi-
tions as possible, and report if, under any conditions, they find
the buds uninjured, and what are these conditions ? "

It seems as if there were reasons enough this year, from all
the reports that come to us from all over the state and the coun-
try, to inquire into the condition of the peach and plum trees.
Even apple and pear trees in some cases are said to be injured,
particularly the Ben Davis apple, and with that report also

33

comes the statement that perhaps there will not be much loss.
I know but little about it, but that seems to be the opinion.
The second question is before you.

Professor Maynard — I would like to ask Mr. Morse to tell us
about the buds which he has left upon the desk.

Mr. Morse — There are two varieties here. Those of the
Crosby and the Pratt. The Pratt, I think, is a peach not very
well known. I do not know as it is a profitable peach to grow,
but I will say that it has borne as regularly as anything that I
have. The Crosby you all know about. Now, I brought these
here so that individuals can examine for themselves. I think
there are more than 50 per cent, of the Crosby alive; and I
think 50 per cent, of the Pratt are alive. My orchard is on the
north slope of a hill about 90 or 100 feet above the Charles
river, and 75 or 80 rods from it. The temperature at my house,
which is about 30 or 40 feet below the orchard, has never been
below 10 below zero, and was that but one morning. It can
never drop as low on the hill as at the house. Behind the house
I have a few trees, and the buds are practically all killed. It
shows the advantage of a high location for peach trees. I will
say that I dressed my orchard with Canada ashes last year, and
they went into winter quarters with the buds in the best condi-
tion I ever saw, and I never saw the trees look as well as they
do this spring.

Professor Maynard — If the buds can be passed around you
will see that they have started in growth, having been in the
house a few days.

Mr. Morse — They have been in water, and that makes them
swell.

Mr. Moore — I wish these programs might have been received
by members of the association more generally. I have been un-
able to see one. Last Saturday or Monday I went into my or-
chard, where I have plum trees of perhaps all the varieties in
the market, and gathered samples of each one, and put them in
the house, expecting to bring them with me, but seeing no pro-
gram I left them at home. On examination of the plum trees, I
found the buds were perfect, and I never saw them heavier
loaded than at the present time. The peach buds are good, I
think 75 per cent. My peach trees stand on an elevation on a

34

side of a hill sloping to the east, and are well protected. The
land is what is called good corn land, with gravel sub-soil for a
considerable depth, and from that clay. They are in excellent
condition so far.

Mr. How low did the temperature go ?

Mr. Moore — It registered 8 below.

Mr. How high is it 1

Mr. Moore — Perhaps 50 feet higher than the brook running
below the house.

Mr. T. J. Sanderson — I wish to ask if there is any gentleman
here that has had experience with native plum trees, and if there
is, I should like to have him give it.

The Chair — Can anyone answer it !

Professor Maynard — We have examined the fruit-buds at the
college, and I intended to have brought the list giving the per-
centage of injury to different varieties. The peach-buds were
all killed; the Japanese plum-buds, from 50 to 95 per cent,
killed ; the native plum-buds were not injured at all — those in-
clude the Wild Goose, the Wolf, and perhaps six or eight other
varieties in bearing conditions. We have also perhaps a dozen
or fifteen newer varieties of the natives, which are said to be
promising, possibly profitable in the east. In regard to the
W^ild Goose plum-trees on the college grounds, they are large
trees, probably thirty years old, and every year they bear a fair
crop of i)lums. They are most beautifully colored, and put in
strawberry baskets, we can sell them more readily than anything
else, but they must be thoroughly ripe. A number of other
varieties are claimed to be superior to the Wild Goose, but we
have not fruited them to determine this point. TheW^ild Goose
will sell more quickly because of its beautiful color. It will lie
on the ground two or three days and not rot. Of the two im-
portant species of native plums, one is a native from this section
to Canada, and the Wild Goose type is more found further west.
The trees of most of the varieties we have are five or six years
old.

Mr. Sanderson — How many kinds have you of the native?
Professor Maynard — Twenty-five altogether. There may be
eight or ten more grafted on domesticated stock, however.
Mr. Sanderson — Where did you get the stock?

35

Professor Maynard — From various sources. J. W. Kerr of
Denton, Md., claims the native plum more profitable to grow
than domesticated.

Mr. Sanderson — Did you get them from him?

Professor Maynard — Some of them ; yes, sir.

Mr. Moore — Did you ever know the Wild Goose crop to make
a profit?

Professor Maynard — The trees mentioned were not near the
native plums. They never yield a large crop. It is claimed that
by planting certain other varieties near them they will be fer-
tilized and produce a full crop.

Mr. Moore — I have trees and never found them guilty of bear-
ing, and the other plum-trees are very near.

Mr. How about the European varieties?

Professor Maynard — With us the buds of a great many Euro-
pean varieties are injured this winter, and the cherry-buds in
many cases are injured, but in case of the domestic or European
plum, where several flower-buds are enclosed within the same
bud- scales, we find only one or two injured ; there are probably
enough live buds for a crop.

Mr. J. A. Allen of Worcester — I have about 400 peach trees.
Last time I examined them I found ninety per cent, of the buds
killed. They are on the top of a hill. I had strawberries under
them last year, and it was so late when I got the sti-awberries off
that I did not plow the land. I thought they might start a new
growth of wood ; they looked tine. I would like to know what
I can fertilize with. The trees are set about ten feet each way ;
they are most too thick and large to get a plow in.

Mr. Ethelbert Bliss of Wilbraham — I think that these gentle-
men ought to feel very fortunate and very happy that they have
made such a showing of live peach-buds, especially the gentle-
men showing these twigs here with so many live buds. In our
section in the vicinity of Springfield I have been able to find
hardly a live bud. About the 1st of January in my orchard I
think every bud was killed. In the past two weeks I have been
through the state of New Jersey and talked with several men
from Connecticut, and I have not been able to find one branch
showing buds like those here. While I have not seen very many
orchards, I have talked with several fruit men and they tell me

36

their buds are pretty much all killed, and I think these gentlemen
ought to feel that they are very fortunate.

Mr. Hinds — Mr. President, I wish I could report as good pros-
pects for my crop of peaches as Brother Morse can, but I cannot.
A good many of those present visited my orchards last fall, and
they may remember on the side of the hill we have some trees
considerably higher than the other orchards. I cut a couple of
limbs and set them in a glass of water. I got twenty-five blos-
soms from them. Those were almost every one of them upon
the little short twigs. Ten days ago I cut some more buds far-
ther down, and I was looking them over yesterday and did not
see any that were coming out. Not only that, but a great share
of the twigs were killed back from six inches to a foot. I think
my orchard is going to look badly. I had felt confident we were
going to have a crop of peaches this year.

Mr. How cold did you have it?

Mr. Hinds — It went to twelve degrees below zero at my place
and at one of my neighbors' fourteen below. I do not think it
was the extreme cold ; it was the coming of a sudden cold after
a thaw. I think those extremes coming so suddenly do the mis-
chief. In some places it did not go so low, like Brother Morse's,
and I congratulate him and hope he will give us all a peach.

Mr. How are your plums?

Mr. Hinds — The plums I have not examined. I put some
away for testing. Nearly all the peach-buds I brought in the
other day were Crawfords.

Mr. What fertilizer do you use?

Mr. Hinds — I now use largely bone and ashes, and muriate or
sulphate of potash in the spring. Last fall I used wood ashes.
I thought I would try this.

Mr. How much do you put on to the acre of ashes?

Mr. Hinds — On the four orchards I should say from half a
bushel to three pecks a tree — three or four good shovelfuls to a
tree, and potash, say five or six or eight hundred pounds in the
spring.

Mr. Any nitrate of soda?

Mr. Hinds — My father used some last year by accident —
bought it for potash. He put it on old trees that had the yel-

37

lows. Quite a number had died out, and he put this on and the
trees made a very handsome growth.

Mr. Do you consider the peach-bud more tender than

the plum?

Mr. Hinds — I think it is as a general thing; that is my idea
of it. I have not tested the Japanese plums largely, only a few
trees six years old. They have blossomed every year since they
were three years old, I think.

Mr. Have they been killed by spring frosts'?

Mr. Hinds — They never have with me. I have escaped very
well.

Mr. Do I understand the buds of the Crosby have been

killed?

Mr. Hinds — Yes, sir; they are about all gone — not only the
buds, but the vigorous growth of wood, which is now shriveling
up.

Mr. Sanderson — I have tried, but cannot succeed in raising
plums to my perfect satisfaction. When they do not rot the
curculio stings them or the frost injures them, and I do not con-
sider there is any profit whatever in the setting out or cultivating
the European variety of plums. I never would set out a tree
unless I wanted some particular variety for my own use. 1 have
had better success with the Japanese. I have examined three
orchards, and find nearly half the buds of the Japanese variety
that are alive. The Burbank that we thought was perfection in
many ways I find the fruit rots badly. They cannot stand wet
weather, and will take on the black knot also. But I am now
satisfied, after all this experience, that the best plum for Massa-
chusetts people to use and set out is the native plum. I don't
know of any plum nicer to make jelly of and plum-butter. I got
the trees from the northern part of Minnesota, wild.
Mr. Do they sell on the market?

Mr. Sanderson — I cannot get enough. You can send them
into Boston, and you can sell them before the Japanese and for
$1.50 a bushel, and then make more money than the other kind
for $4 a bushel. I can tell you of a man that has made $600 on
one acre of native plums, and they will sell when the others go
begging, for canning and making plum-butter, and if you let
them get entirely ripe they are good eating.

38

Mr. Griggs — Did you say the native plums had the black
knot?

Mr. Sanderson — No, sir; the black knot was on the Burbank,
and I felt ashamed of them.

Mr. Pratt — Have not you had it on any natives'?

Mr. Sanderson — No black knot. I do not know of any in any
year. We have a wet climate. We had 8.^ inches of raiu in
October, and that is what is the matter with the peaches now.
Some say it is cultivation, and some say it is the cold below zero.
It is the condition of the trees in the winter. We had 8^ inches
in October, and the trees did not ripen up, and when the Novem-
ber blizzard came the peach- buds were not ripened up.

Mr. J. A. Mien of Worcester — What kind of plums did you
have!

Mr. Sanderson — The Washington was the meanest one I had.
The next was the General Hand, Yellow Egg. I have had black
Bradshaws for my own use, and Lombard, but the Burbank is
ahead of them.

Mr. Pratt — Have you cultivated any of the Japanese except
the Burbank?

Mr. Sanderson — Yes ; the Abundance and Satsuma.

Mr. Pratt — How is the Satsuma?

Mr. Sanderson — It bore some fruit, but it has the same rela-
tion to these plums that the Shropshire Damson has to the Euro-
pean variety ; it is sour and is not made to eat ; good only for can-
ning. Mr. Burbank gave his own name to the best plum. Do you
not remember last year that Mr. Willard said, " Don't plant the
Willard plum?" The Burbank is the best of the Japanese plums,
but I am thoroughly convinced that the native plums are the best.

Mr. Hinds — I want to ask Brother Sanderson whether he has
ever seen a Satsuma that was good eating?

Mr. Sanderson — Yes ; if you have no other you can smack
your lips over that.

Mr. Hinds — I notice Mr. Rogers in New York state is very
cautious in putting out Satsuma plums. He wants to get hold
of the best variety to propagate it. I never supposed the Sat-
suma was going to be an eating plum. You remember I had two
rows of them. They did not rot much, and I never saw any-
thing equal the Satsuma plum on my farm. They are red from

39

the skin to the pit, and when you cut it it is as red as a blood
beet, and seems to be solid until late in the season.

Mr. Pratt — Have you found any difficulty about their bearings?
Mr. Hinds — They did not bear so much the first year, but last
year they bore twice as much.

Professor Maynard — I would like to ask if Mr. Hinds has the
Abundance, the Burbank and other Japanese varieties planted
near the Satsuma.

Mr. Hinds — Yes, I set twenty trees of each variety.
Professor Maynard — Did you notice any black knot on these
Japanese varieties 1

Mr. Hinds — Two or three little twigs of the Burbank had the
black knot, but the old trees have the most, and my neighbors, I
think, are accountable for that.

Professor Maynard — Do you have it very much on the Euro-
pean sorts ?

Mr. Hinds — Yes. What the future will develop I cannot say.
I grew the Europeans very successfully. I expect the black
knot will increase as they exhaust themselves in bearing. My
mind has been that this Satsuma is the best one of the Japanese
I have seen — good to eat and to can. Last fall I sold all I had
for 75 cents a peck.

Mr. Pratt — Is it a vigorous grower !

Mr. Hinds — Yes ; it does not spread as much as the Burbank,
but more than the Abundance.

Mr. Griggs — Do they grow as large as the Abundance ?
Mr. Hinds — Yes, sir, nearly as large.

Mr. J. L. Harrington— When people have finished their gen-
eral canning, they would not be as salable, would they ?

Mr. Hinds — Possibly they would be that if grown in large

quantities. In my experience I have had a large call for them.

Mr. Harrington — Supposing the market was filled up with

the Abundance and the Burbank earlier in the season, do you

think there would be a call for the Satsuma f

Mr. Hinds — I should say if the Burbank rotted as it did with
me the market never would be filled. I did not get two quarts
out of fifteen quarts of fruit. Mine rotted worse than the
Satsuma.

Mr, Morse — Is the Abundance plum good for canning !

40

Mr. Hinds — Very fair, but it does not begin to equal the Sat-
suma. I should not call it anywhere near up with the Satsuma
for canning. If anyone has seen any difficulty with the Satsuma
I would like to know,

Mr. Avery — In December I attended the National Farmeis'
Congress in Texas. The citizens of Texas gave the delegation
an excursion of six days, and among the places visited was
Houston, Texas, where a fair of fruit, flowers and vegetables
was being held in a building expressly for it, and I saw men
there with canned fruit, and I questioned them about the Bur-
bank and Satsuma, and one gentleman said he had a large or-
chard of about 1000 trees of Burbank and Satsuma. He had
samples canned which looked very beautiful, and I asked about
their rotting, and he said they had no trouble with that plum in
that section, and that was the prevailing plum throughout the
gulf section of Texas, and this gentleman I spoke with was the
president of the association. Peaches grew there in great
abundance, but the Burbank and Satsuma were the leading
plums, he said, of Texas, and were grown in great abundance.
That was the only place I visited where I saw anything of the
kind. They had green vegetables there, and one gentleman had
an exhibit of tobacco ; the product of one-half an acre he sold
for $362, and it was raised under cover. That is, he put down
posts and covered it with thin cloth, and the leaves which I saw
there were as fine as silk.

Mr. Manning — I think Mr. Sanderson's plum must be the
Canada plum. The wild native plum he has I think comes all
along from Canada west and away from Michigan and Minne-
sota.

Professor Maynard — It is more likely to be the Wild Goose
plum or its varieties.

Mr. Manning — They vary in size and color, and when ripe are
very good, and they are a native plum, as you say, but we used
to call them the Canada plum.

The President — Referring to the report of the field meeting at
Fitchburg, when we visited Dr. Fisher's and Messrs. Andrews'
and Marshall's, we found Mr. T. J. Sanderson had the most re-
markable show of plums on a limited area, and gave promise of
a good crop of fruit. It would be interesting to know if these

41

trees did carry out the promise of a good crop that year and the
succeeding years till last fall, when he sold his place. As I
understand, there was no black knot then, and we want to know
if there is now or not.

Mr. Sanderson — I think the European variety is played out.
That year the gentlemen were there I sold 142 pecks off that
spot, and got $142. My neighbors did not have any plums, and
there were few around Lunenburg and that vicinity, and next
year they blossomed full ; it was a dami) year, and more than
half the fruit rotted on the tree in spite of all I could do. I
picked them off so one would not touch the other, and those
left on would be rotted the next day, and last year they rotted
still worse. But very few were sold from my orchard last year.
I sold the place before they were ripe; they were then looking
splendidly, but the rain kept coming week after week, and the
plums began to rot, and kept on rotting, and the parties who
bought the place sold some, but did know enough to thin them
out, and the orchard was unprofitable, and all the European
varieties were unprofitable, and will be every year when very
wet weather prevails. I had the Washington and General Hand
and Bradshaw, and a shower would set them to rotting and
they would begin to turn brown. I sold the place, and now I
am going to try another spot; am going to try native plums,
and I know what I can do with them, and others may have bet-
ter skill than I have. Prof. Maynard told you he has native
plums. All native plums are not poor. Some equal the Jap-
anese variety to eat, and keep two weeks after picking. I know
there are native plums on the market now, and were last year,
that defied the black knot and curculio, and you can raise them
in abundance, and get them so cheap you can undersell all the
other kinds. The native plum is divided into groups. Some
come from Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Kansas, and
then we have the Wild Goose variety. Some are found in the
northern part of Ohio. Each one of these groups has many
varieties, and I should like to see every gentleman here try the
native plums, and if you do not set out any more than half a
dozen it will be the beginning of your success in plum culture.

The President — In my experience the plum is not exempt
from borers when peaches are budded on it. I suppose there is

42

some danger from baviog the borers on the peach when put on
plum stock. From some fifty trees I found two or three trees
with the borers in the plum — so that falls to the ground. It is
not hearsay from anybody. So far as working the peach on the
plum, there is a decided disfavor. It is not as strong a grower ;
it ripens its wood up quicker.

Mr. Sanderson — The plum-tree would have the borer if not
budded.

Mr. Bliss — I attended a meeting of the Connecticut Porao-
logical Society in Hartford this winter, and this question of bud-
ding the jjeach on the plum was discussed there, and it was a
large meeting. It was the general oi)inion that it was not a
success to bud the peach on the i3lum.

Mr. Morse — On the subject of the borers, I think I spoke last
year when I was here, and told my practice. I can report one
more year's experience with it. Last year there was not a sin-
gle trace of a borer in my orchard. The year before I found
three or four. They have been less and less.

By a Member — What was your preventive ?

Mr. Morse — I used lime slaked to the consistency of paint,
and to every pailful of two gallons I used 1 to li pints of linseed
oil, and stirred it up, and painted the trunks with that early in
June. First scrape the tree, and it stays on all the season, and
it is a perfect success.

Adjourned at 4.30 P. m.

SECOND DAY.

Thursday, March 9th, 1899.
Morning Session — 10 o'clock.

President Cruickshanks in the chair.

The Chair — The first business this morning is a paper on the
peach, "Peach Growing in Massachusetts," by Mr. Ethelbert
Bliss of Wilbraham.

3Ir. President and Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Frnit Grow-
ers' Association :
I was very much surprised that your president should ask me
to come before the association to give a talk or read a pai»er on

43

" Peach Culture," or in other words, *' How We Grow Tbem on
Our Farm," I know there are many here who have had much
more experience than I in this line. But I came here to learn,
and possibly we may be able to exchange thoughts and get some
good practical lessons from coming in contact with each other.
The time has surely come when we, as farmers and fruit grow-
ers, must put more thought and brain power into our business ;
anyone who now begins the culture of fruits without a careful
study of the special fruit, or line of fruits, he wishes to grow, and
is not willing to spend some time seeking information from prac-
tical and successful fruit growers, will be pretty sure to graduate
in the primary grade ; a two or three years' course will convince
him that something is wrong. I think one of the very best ways
to get this information is to attend the meetings of the State
Board of Agriculture, Fruit Growers' Association, farmers' insti-
tutes, etc. It is time and money well spent. Fruit growers are
the most unselfish men you can find ; as a rule, the most willing
to give instruction. If they have got on to some method that
proves a success they usually give you the benefit of it.

But the greatest factor entering into the growing of fruit is the
man himself. I think it requires adaptability in fruit growing
the same as in teaching, or as in any other special line of business.
The successful fruit grower must be inspired with the fullest
appreciation of that special fruit he wishes to produce. He must
know by instinct, have a fondness for the work in hand, study the
whole line and history of the growing and handling, or in other
words, how to best grow and to place on the market. He must
make a study of the soil, location, varieties, whether it is best
to plant large, medium, or small trees, of the qualities and quan-
tity of different plant foods or fertilizers, learning all that he can
of the business from beginning to finish. The moment the man
comes into the spirit of the work and loves it, that moment he
learns to appreciate the condition of doing it and of carrying it
forward to success.

In choosing the location of a peach orchard frost and drainage
should be carefully considered. The climatic condition of New
England is somewhat trying, especially to the peach grower, and
it is well to study those of our farms in relation to growing this
fruit. It has been perfectly astonishing at times to note the
variations of temperature on some of the hilltops and in the low
lands at the foot of these hills. Take the thermometer early
some cold, frosty morning on to some of these high hills and mark
the degrees registered, then as you come down to the lower levels
it may be anywhere from three to six degrees colder ; so we see
frost will run down hill the same as water. This is a very im-
portant thing to know, especially in planting the tender fruits.

44

A sloping hillside, or an elevation where there is low ground or
a ravine running close by, is favorable for peach growing. The
ravine will drain the frost and it will work wondrous results in
saving the peach-buds.

Our peach-orchard is on an elevation of 100 to 150 feet above
the low lands ; it is a hill running northeast and southwest and
slopes to the northwest with a small portion of it sloping to the
southeast. A little water course runs the whole length of the
southeast side, making a very good frost drainage. The larger
part of the orchard is an old stony pasture. With the exception
of the largest ones we have taken off most of the rocks, but by
continual cultivation the ground is covered with small stone.
After plowing and harrowing the field the best we could, we
checked it off in rows as straight as possible, thirteen feet apart
each way.

When planting the trees we cut off all broken roots, also about
half the length of the long ones. We cut off all the limbs and
about one-third of the top of the small trees (Fig. 1, a, aa, a, repre-
sents trees as received from the nursery), so when we have them
set'out they look like so many sticks stuck in the ground (Fig.

Pig. 1 Fig. -■

1, &, at right of figure). If the trees start well and throw out
plenty of little limbs, we pinch off those we do not wish, and so
are able to grow the tree very near vase shape (Figs. 5 and 6),
with open top, so plenty of sunshine can get in. Fig. 2 shows a
tree with a bad fork (&); a shows the same pruned to correct
this condition. Fig. 3 shows a two-year-old tree. Fig. 4, the
same trimmed. Fig. 5, a three-year-old tree. Fig. 6, the same
pruned. Fig. 7 shows trees three years old of good form. Fig.
8, a tree of four years' growth, with a bad fork at a.

45

Pig- r,.

Fin. 6.

Fig. 7.

Fig. 8.

46

For plant-food we use chemical fertilizers solely. The phos-
phoric acid we supply with fine-ground bone, with potash in some
form, usually from high-grade muriates. Canada ashes are
excellent for the peach-orchard. All the nitrogen we use comes
from the bone and what clover is plowed under. In setting the
trees we use two or three handfuls of fine-ground bone mixed
with the soil, and after the roots are covered we put on a few
ashes, then finish filling. After the first year we sow broadcast
over the land bone and potash separately.

Cultivation. I believe that one word means a large part of
the success that will come to us as fruit growers ; or if we will
take the two words, intense cultivation, and follow thoroughly
on this line, we will be able to secure an excellent growth of
wood and foliage of large, long leaves, of the darkest green color.
If we are so fortunate as to have a good set of fruit, and it has
been properly thinned, we shall have every reason to expect
beautifal and luscious peaches. But to get them we must keep
up this intense cultivation until the very last of August or first
of September. We always find our best fruit grows on the same
trees that we obtain the large, healthy foliage.

Right here I would like to tell you what Mr. Roland Morrill
of Benton Harbor, Michigan, told us at the Connecticut Pomo-
logical Society held at Hartford this winter. I do not remember
the year, but he said one season it did not rain enough from
May until into October to lay the dust for one hour's time. He
has 100 acres in peaches, and went over the ground with weed-
ers or harrows every day, or at least every other day, all that
season. Now, what was the result? The trees made excellent
growth, foliage and fruit, all that could be asked for; fruit and
wood ripened into perfect condition, while right over the fence,
cultivated in the usual way, the fruit shriveled and foliage fell
off. This is what J.H.Hale calls *' horse-leg irrigation.'' If
we, as fruit growers, used a larger amount of this kind of irri-
gation, we should meet with greater success than many of us do
at present.

If the buds are not killed by the cold winter or late frosts, we
get a full bloom and the peaches will set very thick, especially
with some varieties. Then we have no small job on our hands
thinning the little peaches. We do not thin the fruit very much
until after the pit is formed in the peach, because there is what
is called the June dropping, and so it would be rather unwise to
do the thinning until nature has done her share. But we like to
get them off before the pit gets very hard, as it takes a large
supply of plant-food to grow them. We aim to thin so there
will be no two peaches within four inches of each other — or six
inches is better; but we find it requires the closest attention to

47

get the men to thin them. We must see to it ourselves or have
some one that is especially interested right with the men all the
time, or we cannot get them to take off enough, and if they are
not thinned properly the fruit will be small, the trees will break
badly, besides, a large part of the vitality of the tree needed for
the next season's work will be used.

The best varieties with us are Elberta, Mountain Rose and
Crosby. The Elberta is a large yellow, with red cheek, juicy,
and high-flavored, flesh yellow. This is truly a fine peach,
noted for its large size and fine appearance. The tree is an ex-
cellent grower, strong, healthy and very productive. Mountain
Rose is a most beautiful peach. Its high color and general ap-
pearance make it very attractive, and it will always find a ready
market. The Crosby, as it grows with us, has done nicely.
Superb quality, always inclined to overbear, of good market-
able size, very high color, and a delicious peach to eat. But we
do not hear good reports of it in some localities. I think it is
liable ro rot badly some seasons. Our aim is to grow the larg-
est, best fruit we possibly can. We will have poor fruit enough
anyway.

Now, after a very busy season, with plenty of hard work, fer-
tilizers, and many other things, we have come to the marketing
end of the business. The very best markets for our fruit in
the United States are at our doors, and we wish to study care-
fully how best to place it on the market in the most attractive
manner. Aim to put on the highest quality, the most attractive
fruit, better than anyone else, if possible; also aim to build up
a good reputation, for there is a wonderful deal of profit in a
good name. We try to pack in a most businesslike manner, in
clean-looking baskets or packages, making them honest from
top to bottom, and yet making the top look as pretty and attract-
ive as possible.

People buy fruit to eat and we must try to please their taste,
not the taste of their mouths only, but the taste of their eyes.
We try to make it honest, then to give it as showy and attract-
ive an appearance as possible. Then we can get money for our
fruit. When we get this fruit all ready for market we wish the
people to know who grew it, so we do a little advertising. We
have a label printed, giving name of our farm, the way we pack
the fruit, and our name, town, state, etc., which we put on all of
our No. 1 packages. This we think is business, for if we have
been successful in growing this quality of fruit, we are willing
to have people know who we are and where we live.

So from the very beginning we must have an everlasting faith
in our business, and we must be willing to jiut an everlasting
amount of energy into it. I wish to say once more, if we expect

48

to meet with success we must not forget to feed and cidfivate
the soil. As a fruit grower, I believe as we feed and cultivate
our orchards and pack our fruits, so will be our success as
good, reliable fruit growers.

Mr. Hinds — I would like to ask you if you have had any ex-
perience in pruning where you leave the branches at planting,
about their splitting down.

Mr. Bliss — I have not had very much experience with this.
I buy wholly the small tree and take off all the limbs.

Mr. Hinds — Last year I had some two or three hundred trees,
and I pruned them according to your illustration, leaving little
spurs, and got but one bud to grow on each spur.

Mr. Bliss — You take trees with limbs and cut the tree off to
spurs? I tell you what Mr. Morrill said in Hartford. He said
he had set out the trees of large size with the limbs all taken off,
and they remained dormant all summer and would not throw a
bud.

Mr. Hinds — My experience has been, in pruning in this way
we get the branches too high, too high to suit my taste, or they
branch too near the ground.

Mr. Bliss — I had a tree in my orchard, and I allowed three
branches to grow about three feet from the ground. Now if that
tree grows and is laden with fruit, very likely it will split. Well,
now, there are two ways to correct that. I think the better way
is to take some little rings (screw-eyes) such as are put in pic-
ture frames, and as the tree grows up screw one inside of each
limb. Take some galvanized wire and wind around the inside
through the ring, and there you have it pretty strong — galvan-
ized wire that will not rust. You can do any small tree like
that, but in a larger tree where there are branches of fruit put
in more screw-eyes, and wind the wire around.

Professor Maynard — No. 14 wire?

Mr. Bliss — I do not know just the size. Probably about No.
14 or No. 16.

Mr. O. Stock well of Fitchburg — Supposing that tree should
branch out a foot from the ground, why not let it branch as low
as that?

Mr. Bliss — I expect to be criticised ; my trees are so low. My
trees branch out from eighteen inches on an average to two feet.

49

This tree, Fig. 5, would be about two to two and a half feet to
that lower branch, which is not very bad. If you let a limb
grow higher the chances are it will split later.

Mr. Johnson of Northboro — The chances are the limb would
not start at all between the three feet and the ground, are they
not!

Mr. Bliss — They do, frequently. I had a little tree put out in
1897. That tree a year ago did not seem to have any shape to
the top. I did not know what to do with it. I took off all the
branches again, and it was simply a stick again. That made a
good growth last season.

Mr. Young — The diameter of the tree is about how many
inches'?

Mr. Bliss — About one and one-half inches, twenty-four inches
up to the first limb. That tree is now a very fair-shaped tree
for a young tree. It was a great deal better than I could have
produced by leaving the branches on. That has got two
years' growth of trunk, but only one year's growth at the top.

Mr. C. F. Haywood of Ashby — I would like to ask when to do
the pruning.

Mr. Bliss — Do it any time before the growth. I have a tree
the same age with the top left on last season. On that I left
three main branches. It is pretty hard to put these onto paper
with pencil or crayon and get the shading.

Mr. Parker — I was going to ask the speaker when he prunes.
I query about his getting the three limbs starting where they
are wanted, if they did not make a sufficient top.

Mr. Bliss — It is easy if you have more limbs to take off than
you wish, but it is hard to put them on if you do not have
enough. Pinch off those you do not want, and leave them where
you want them.

Mr. Griggs — How much of last year's growth?
Mr. Bliss — There is the same tree as I pruned it. You, per-
haps, can get a better idea of how I pruned them from the cut,
Fig. 2, a and b.

Mr. Pratt — You say that was pruned from one straight stick
last year?

Mr. Bliss — No, sir ; year before last, but the top was grown
last season.

4

50

l*[r. Stock well — Would you not get peaches quicker by not
trimming it down?

Mr. Bliss — I do not think it will bear any quicker. It would
have a larger top, and will stand perhai)s a few more peaches
this year. Another year and the severely pruned tree will catch
up with it.

Mr. Stockwell — Then it is not the age of the tree that deter-
mines when it shall fruit?

Mr. Bliss — Well, yes, I think it is, practically speaking, but
there is a good deal of difference how fast you hurry them along.
You can't grow them too fast the first season, if you let them
ripen so that the wood becomes hard in the fall.

Mr. Moore — If you cut it back you would delay it just one
year, would you not? I had some broken down last year, and
I cut them back the same way. Those that did not get broken
down bore first, and those that did break down would bear the
next year.

Mr. Bliss — You mean if they are broken clear down?

Mr. Moore — So you have to rely for new wood for growth. I
think you will find that you will be just one year behind if you
trim back to the stick.

Mr. Eaton — In our section it is pretty cold. Would it make
any difference about the cold injuring the trees about the growth?
— whether they would stand as many degrees as if the growth
were less rapid.

Mr. Bliss — I think it would stand as much the way we grow
them. In the first season we keep them growing, and try to
ripen up the wood and shed the leaves quickly before the snow.

Mr. Eaton — I find that I do not raise many peaches on account
of the cold. I watch them a good deal. When you get down to
sixteen or seventeen degrees you are not going to get any peaches.
Some say they will stand eighteen, but I think there is a great
deal of difference about what a tree will stand.

Mr. Bliss — It depends considerably on circumstances. I
think Prof. Maynard could answer that question better than I.

Mr. Pratt — No matter how much you cut them back, about
one-third or one-half — it depends on the growth. I have to
wait, if in doubt, till I know that the wood is all right, and then
trim them as I wish.

51

Mr. Grigg — We have to wait till the buds start. I think as
soon as the warm days come on we can tell, if the wood is fresh
and bright.

Mr. Sessions — What do you depend on to ripen up the wood I

Mr. Bliss — I cultivate thoroughly, or thought I did. Since
going to Hartford to listen to Mr. Morrill of Michigan, I think
I did not. I cultivate pretty thoroughly until about the last of
August or first of September, and then I stop.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Westboro — Do you cut back some en-
tirely to the main shoots ?

Mr. Bliss — We thin them out. If they are pretty thick we
thin out the top branches. Some we thin out so that they are
not too dense.

Mr. Warren — Clear down to the main shoots ?

Mr. Bliss — Yes, sir, some of them, if too thick. Mr. Morrill,
as I told you, cultivates very thoroughly. He is what I should
call an intense cultivator, and he takes his orchard about the
time I speak of and sows oats, the last of August or the first of
September — I do not remember how many bushels to the acre.
They take up the moisture away from the trees, and that hastens
ripening of the wood, and also makes a little protection. When
the leaves fall the winds do not blow them away, and the oats
die down and do not amount to anything. He did not claim he
had done that for fertilization, but principally to help hastening
ripening of the wood, and it struck me favorably.

Mr. E. A. Abbott of Worcester— Do you ever cut back the
top to throw the sap into the buds?

Mr. Bliss — No, sir, it does not amount to anything.

Mr. Eaton — When do you calculate is the best time to trim?

Mr. Bliss— I have been told to trim when the knife is sharp.
They heal a little better if you trim in the spring.

Mr. Eaton — I have trimmed a good many years, but I find
there is a difference of mind as to trimming trees.

Mr. Bliss — Our secretary here can answer that question better
than I.

Mr. Stockwell — I bought a book last year when here, advocat-
ing that if we wished to raise peaches every year, even on low
land, be sure you cut back in the fall to hasten the ripening of
the buds, and a crop would be warranted. Some one here says,
don't do it. I would like to know what to do.

52

Prof. Mayuard — I have been unable to learn of anyone who
has practiced this pruning in the fall with any success, and I do
not know any reason why we should prune our trees back at
this time. The effect of cutting off the foliage during the grow-
ing season is to weaken the tree, while the effect of cutting off
in August will be to lengthen the time of growth. The buds
will actually be less perfectly developed than if you let them
alone. Let them ripen up thoroughly about the last of August
or first of September — that would be my idea.

Mr. Griggs — I have a small orchard of trees on the northeast
side of a hill, and I noticed last fall that the foliage hung on a
great deal longer than I expected it would, long after the frost,
and long after the foliage in another orchard with a southern
exposure had dropped. Is that hanging on of the foliage a good
thing for the trees ! Are buds harder, or is it better for the
tree to shed its foliage earlier ?

Prof. Maynard — I do not believe we can tell.

Mr. Griggs — You think the location accounted for the differ-
ence ?

Prof. Maynard — I think there may be, under some conditions,
an early maturity that would be objectionable. If the branches
mature too early and they are exposed to the drying of the
winds, the buds would become soft and be more easily injured
by the cold, while another year the growth might continue into
September with a good autumn to ripen up, and be in better
condition to stand the cold.

Mr. Griggs — The growth continues later some seasons than
others '?

Prof. Maynard — Yes, sir. In some seasons we find the foliage
on at Thanksgiving time. I have never been able to determine
positively that the buds of those trees that grew late were more
injured than those that ripened earlier. I know the exposure
of the branches a long time after the leaves have dropped in the
fall is injurious to the currant bushes, and the growth will be
much more weak the next spring. The same thing might apply
to the peach.

Mr, Johnson — Any of you who have got blossoms this year
will find they are all the smallest and immature buds that are
found around the axils of the spurs. Now, what was the con-

53

dition of those peach-buds in the fall? Were they not the
smallest ones that developed ?

Mr. Bliss — I will say further to what Prof. Maynard says that
with the experience that 1 have had with the peach, I do culti-
vate now to just about the first of September, and then stop and
have the wood ripen up.

Mr. Morse — Referring to form of trees, isn't the leverage on
those limbs branching low much greater and the tree more likely
to split than if branches are from two and a half to three feet
from the ground 1

Mr. Bliss — I hardly think so.

Mr. Morse — The branches get up to a certain height before
they are inclined to spread out and begin to send out smaller
branches for bearing. If you run it up higher it will branch up
quicker. The jjoint I wish to make is whether the tree is
not more likely to break down when branching so low down.

Mr. Pliss — I think if the branches come at intervals along the
main or central growth it does not make much difference.

Mr. Morse — I have thought the longer the leverage the more
likely would it be to break.

Mr. Bliss — Th8 higher you have to go to pick the fruit, the
more it costs to get it.

Mr. Griggs — If the fruit is thinned to six inches is there a
probability that the tree would split ?

Mr. Bliss — If thinned down to six inches there would not be
much chance. The trouble is to get it thinned to that. That is
one of the great difficulties — we do not thin enough. Where the
peaches grow to good size it is pretty hard on the trees, unless
well thinned. On the Elberta, Fig. 8, I have made a mistake.
The tree was set amongst my Crosby trees. In 1894 I set the
orchard. One of the trees died in 1895, and I put the Elberta
in. That branched pretty low. It has not split off, but has
cracked down two inches. That tree bore about five baskets of
large Elberta peaches, a dozen or so very large, and at the same
time it has spread ten feet across. I think if one limb, at a,
Fig. 8, had been taken off when small, it would have been a
great help to that tree. If you had seen that tree you would
have said it was a pretty sight.

Mr. Stockwell — How near were the limbs to the ground ?

54

Mr. Bliss — About eighteen inches.

Mr. P. E. Batchelder of Lawrence — I would like to ask Mr.
Bliss, if his tree is ten feet diameter in the branches, how he
manages to cultivate if they are set apart thirteen feet ■?

Mr. Bliss — That is a question well taken. Of course, they
interlock. The horse walks between, and the hames are hit a
little, and we cannot cultivate as close to the tree as I would
like. I would rather set them farther apart.

Prof. Maynard — How far ?

Mr. Bliss — Eighteen feet is a pretty good distance. Mr. Mor-
rill said that twenty feet was as close as he wanted them.

A Member — Could you not get nearer with the cultivator if
the branches were not so low ?

Mr. Bliss — I asked Mr. Hale about that, and he said he did
not think it made much difference. He was in my orchard last
fall, and surprised me by saying he liked the shape of the trees.

Prof. Maynard — The speaker has referred to cultivation of
orchards with branches low. When at South Haven, Mich., in
1897, I visited the peach-growing section there. The finest
trees I think I ever saw were those trained by T. T. Lyon at the
experiment station. The branches started within a foot of the
ground, and the lateral branches were low. He cultivated with
a spring-toothed harrow, and cultivated almost the whole surface.
This is one of our best tools for orchard cultivation. By hitch-
ing to one side, the harrow was drawn in under the branches
close up to the trunk, while the horses walked outside the
branches.

Mr. Morse — I cultivated my orchard a year or two with the
same method that the professor has mentioned, and it was very
satisfactory. I put a spreader on, so the two parts were nearly
in line with the width of the trees. The horse can go right in
the middle of the row, and the harrow can be made to run with-
in a few inches of the trunk. I can cultivate so there won't be
more than one square foot uncultivated.

Mr. Young — I am much interested in this, although I am not
very extensively engaged in peach culture. I got rather dis-
couraged in my locality, but some two years ago 1 had about
three or four hundred peach-trees, expecting to set them in an-
other place, and when I got in Franklin county I did not find a

55

suitable place. So I set them out in what you would call a
nursery-row. The next season I set out forty or fifty of them in
a favorable locality, and the balance of these trees stand in that
nursery now. I never had, in my early education, the privilege
many others have had to get a college education, but I do claim
that I learn a great deal from observation. I found that the
closer the trees stand the more apt they are to shoot toward the
sky. The more we let the white pine branch to the ground for
lumber purposes, the less useful they are for ornament. I be-
lieve that with any tree you cannot butt against nature suc-
cessfully. We all know the tree must have God's daylight, and
must not be too close to the ground. It has been my experience
with apples — and I have been very successful in cultivating them
— that with any trees branching to the ground, with intense culti-
vation, the better fruit you can get. I believe the spring-
toothed harrow can be arranged so that you can cultivate
within fifteen inches of the trunk. You can keep down the
weeds and undergrowth. A low-headed tree would almost be
my beau-ideal, if the branches did not meet the other row.

Mr. M. W. Longley of Shirley — I would like to inquire of the
lecturer as regards the quality of the fruit that grows on the low
limbs as compared with that grown high on the tree. In my
experience, peaches growing on the lower limbs were practically
worthless.

Mr. Bliss — The peaches growing right in on those limbs do
not get the color that they do up higher, and if they do not get
the color they do not get the flavor. They do color up pretty
good peaches, but are not to be compared with the peaches in
the sunlight.

Mr. Sage of Brookfield — I would like to ask if commercial
fertilizing bone is the best thing for peach-trees. I am having
manure from 150 head of cattle, and it is a pretty strong tempta-
tion to use it on my peach- orchard. I want to know if I am
making a mistake to do it. I am very careful to do it in the
fall or early in the spring.

Mr. Bliss — I should certainly advise the man to resist the
temptation to use it.

Prof. Maynard — Mr. President, I believe in commercial fer-
tilizers generally, but in a visit through the peach-growing sec-

56

tion of South Haven, Mich., I asked almost every grower whom
I met there what he used for fertilizing, and, as a rule, he said
he didn't use anything until the trees were coming into bear-
ing, and then stable manure. And when properly treated you
can do that. Up to the time of fruiting cultivate once a week,
or every three days during a dry time.

Mr. Sage — My trees are set twenty or more feet apart one
way, and twelve feet the other, and I have up to this time
grown a crop of corn, not too near. The trees have made thrifty
growth and have ripened their wood fairly well.

Mr. F. E. Batchelder of Lawrence — Mr. President, I should
like to ask if peach-trees should be fertilized with both bone and
potash when set out, and every succeeding year before they be-
gin to bear, and, if so, if the quantity should be more or less
previous to the time of bearing.

Mr. Bliss — No, sir, I do not fertilize them near as heavily
until they begin to bear. AVhen beginning to bear they need more
plant- food, making growth and carrying the burden of the fruit.

Mr. Pratt — What is the quantity ?

Mr. Bliss — I used on my bearing orchard last year between
300 and 400 pounds of muriate of potash and 800 pounds of fine-
ground bone per acre.

Mr. Pratt — You do not use it at all till bearing ?

Mr. Bliss — Some ; when I set out a tree I put on bone or
ashes, if I have them, and next season throw it in broadcast,
but not as heavy,

Mr. Batchelder — How much ?

Mr. Bliss — About two or three large handfuls of fine-ground
bone per tree.

Mr. Batchelder — And increase the amount every year ?

Mr. Bliss — Yes, sir.

Mr. Warren — If it is true, as the gentleman has said, that the
fruit that does not get the sunlight has not got the quality, why
does it not apply to all kinds of fruits Isn't there something
in the soil, something in the fertilizer, or do we get all the
quality from God's sun !

Mr. Eaton — My experience tells me that if you set out trees
in the spring of the year that grow too rapidly, it is rather a
narrow chance if that tree lives, unless you protect it.

57

Mr. Eaton reported planting a row of pear-trees in rich soil,
all of which died except one planted near a large barberry bnsh,
where the land was somewhat exhausted by the roots of the bar-
berry bush.

Mr. Young — I do not want you to get the idea in your head
that I am going to do all the talking, but 1 am always ready to
help a man out of a difficulty. I want to go back to this ques-
tion of manuring peach orchards. When in the market garden-
ing business, I put out 150 trees. I never picked a good
specimen of fruit ; it was fertilized too much. It has been a
query with me whether it was caused by nitrogenous manures
or not. The trees were good for nothing, for the growth was
too quick. I had the privilege of talking here before I was a
member, and finally I walked up like a good little boy and paid
my dollar and joined the society. I have never been sorry. If
a man is in difficulty let him come right up and join the society.
Professor Maynard — I want to refer to the experience of the
gentleman — Mr. Eaton's experience — in growing the pear-tree
and a barberry side by side, and illustrating at the same time
the result of growing corn among peach-trees. To my mind, the
cause of the death of the other pear-trees was an overgrowth.
The barberry took up the surplus plant- food, so that the one
nearest it did not make an overgrowth. In all cases where
stable-manure is used, care must be exercised or a too heavy
growth will be produced. Corn is one of the best crops for an
orchard if you apply only enough manure or other fertilizer
for both crops.

Mr. Hadwen — I have had some experience in growing peach-
trees, apple-irees, ornamental trees, and every kind of tree 1 can
think of. The gentleman raised one point in relation to losing
his trees from the effects of the sun. Of course, many trees are
liable to injury from the extreme heat and cold, and especially
when one follows the other closely. A very simple and cheap
protection for a small tree is to take a barrel- stave and drive it
down on the south side, and you avoid that difficulty. It is very
cheap, very easily and quickly done, and you have no trouble
from the extreme heat or concentrated rays of the sun along
toward spring. Perhaps the month of March is the worst month
for trees to withstand that exposure. I find that a good protec-

58

tion, not only for fruit-trees, but for ornamental trees, deciduous
trees especially, and people frequently ask me why I drive down
a barrel-stave on the south side of a tree. I have found it of
great benefit for a good many years, and freely recommend it as
a cheap remedy to prevent injury from extremes of heat and
cold.

Mr. Stock well — I would like to have it cleared up in regard to .
manuring with barn-yard manure. I understand the professor
has found in his travels that it is almost universally used with
good results.

Professor Maynard — On light land after the trees begin to
bear.

Mr. Mead — When a man has a peach-orchard he wants to be
careful on very rich land to keep manure off. What you want
is to fit your own condition. What may fit the speaker may not
fit you. In regard to the chemicals, the potash, putting it on
small trees is practically money thrown away if the land is fairly
good. I have three peach-orchards on different land, and I find
it takes different treatment to care for them. What will suit one
will kill another; what will do on sandy land is death on rich,
heavy, clayey land.

Mr. Bliss — Manure contains nitrogen, and we are liable to get
too much tender growth from it.

Mr. Sanderson — My experience is that three or four quarts of
oyster- shell lime, if ground very fine and sown on the peach-tree,
causes the wood to ripen up and the buds to mature, and if any
of you have not tried it I recommend it. You will see little
spots of white on the bark. The little rootlets will take the lime
up. It ripens up the wood, and I find it a valuable fertilizer to
use after you have applied your other materials. Use this as a
sort of dessert.

Mr. Young — I have found one man who agrees with me that car-
bonate of lime, if you can get it anywhere within the bounds of
reason as to price, is the stuff. There is potash in Canada
hard- wood ashes. I bought a carload that analyzed almost
seven per cent, of potash. We will admit our potash costs us
more money in carbonate form, but does it in the end!

Mr. Griggs — What did you pay?

Mr. Young — $12.50, delivered within two miles of Springfield.

59

Mr. Gregory — I remember when raising seedlings that we ex-
perimented on them to see what we could do, and it may be an
interesting fact to present here that to plant seeds of peaches
such as we get in the market, produces about one good one out
of about 300 — what might bo called a good peach. Nothing
has been said this morning about the age of the peach-tree.
Fifty years ago I took a section of a peach-tree from which my
uncle told me when a boy he used to get peaches. He said it was
fifty years old. I counted forty rings, and I could not go beyond
that. It grew by itself in a field among a pile of stones. The
finest trees I ever saw were growing on the high land near Deer-
field. They were fine and nice, and the soil nearly pure sand.
I was told the people in the valley below Deerfield came to get
peach-trees to plant, but they do not exceed elsewhere. They
like the sandy soil in preference to the soil of our gardens. I
should like to ask the lecturer about the diameter of the holes
for these little trees.

Mr. Bliss — For these small trees about a foot and a half deep.

Mr. Gregory — A.nd the diameter across?

Mr. Bliss — About the same.

Mr. Gregory — You prune off the little lateral roots?

Mr. Bliss — If they throw out roots longer than eighteen or
twenty inches, I cut them back.

Mr. Gregory — The small, fibrous roots?

Mr. Bliss — No, sir.

Mr. Griggs — Last year I noticed a little leaf-curl, but for the
most part the foliage was healthy. Whether it was caused by
fungus or not I do not know. I found on the inside of the leaf
would be little brown lice. Will it do any good to spray the
trees this spring to prevent that before they grow"?

Professor Maynard — I will try and answer Mr. Griggs' ques-
tion, first in regard to the curl, which is a fungous growth, and
which we have had as long as peaches have been grown, more or
less, and especially in wet seasons when there are great extremes
of heat and cold. Last year the leaf-curl was more or less abund-
ant all over the country, and especially the Elberta, I think, was
reported most afflicted, and that was due to the extreme changes
of temperature during the early season's growth. If the curl is
not very abundant no injury will result. The curled leaves will

60

fall off and new leaves take their place, and it has been found
spraying with Bordeaux mixture will reduce the amount, but not
prevent it wholly. The fact that aphides are found there will
account for some of the curling, and later in the season the
peach, cherry and apple leaves and many other trees were also
curled up in a mass, and if you open them you find the lice,
or aphides, which cause the mischief. In the case of the cherry
they are black ; in the apple, peach and plum they are green.
These may be destroyed by kerosene. Mr. Marshall of Fitchburg
has an orchard of 3000 trees. I had last summer sent to me for
trial a pump that would distribute kerosene and water. The
pump was arranged so you could distribute different amounts of
kerosene by changing the length of the piston. Mr. Marshall
sprayed his entire orchard with the pump satisfactorily. I have
a pump here to-day, and while we do not care especially to ad-
vertise anybody's goods, will say that it is a good thing. A
great deal of injury has resulted in the use of kerosene emulsion,
probably from the fact that the emulsion is not thoroughly made.
Clear kerosene, if sprayed on the tree in fine Diist, will not burn
the foliage on a dry day. The evaporation will be so quick that
there is no injury. We cannot kill the aphides with anything
else. As to the nature of the soil for peaches the matter has
been discussed at some length, and I want to call your attention
to a report of the peach-growing lands in Pennsylvania and Mary-
land. The orchards in this region are largely on very high land
in the mountains, and after a few rains it would seem as if there
is no soil at all, the stones are so numerous. It is a shale soil.
In Michigan I went to the top of one of the largest houses in the
South Haven peach-growing district, and from that I could see the
peach orchards scattered all over the country; the soil is rather
thin and we find the most healthy trees, and those that stand
the cold the best, are on the elevated ridges in rather light soil.

By a Member — Will whale-oil soap do as well as kerosene?

Professor Maynard — It is more expensive.

Mr. Hinds — I recently received a circular advertising an air-
pump, and by pumping one minute you could spray half a tree.
I would like to ask if that is practical!

Professor Maynard — Professor Taft a few years ago thought
when perfected it would be a good thing, but I should be afraid

61

the mechanism would be so complicated that the ordinary farmer,
who is only an ordinary mechanic, would not be able to use it.
One of the great difficulties in spraying is that the farmers do
not properly take care of their pumps. They may spend more
time in spraying a tree than the fruit is worth by not being sys-
tematic in the work. There are a great many good pumps. I
do not speak of this one on exhibition as the best pump. We
are using six or eight different kinds of pumps. We use the
Douglass, the Gould, the Field and the Deming pumps, and all
are doing good work. I think on account of the agitator attach-
ment of the Deming that it is rather more satisfactory for a sim-
ple pump. I think one or two other companies are manufacturing
pumps with the kerosene attachment.

Mr. Parker — I would like to ask whether the speaker would
recommend planting any crops between the rows when he first
sets out an orchard. He is simply growing sticks the first year,
and would he plant anything between for a year or two till the
tree gets large enough to bear fruit? Has he a very large acreage?
And in case he has, whether he finds anything of that famous
disease called the yellows, and whether he does anything to
prevent it.

Mr. Bliss — I have about 3,000 trees. I did plant between when
the trees were first set out. If I can set out the ground to peach-
trees, and have them do well, and get a good crop of fruit, I am
satisfied. Other crops can be grown, and I do not know as it
would do any harm the first year. If you take as much of
the plant-food as the crop takes out of the land and put it back
in some way, it may not do harm. In regard to peach-yellows,
I did find in one spot about three years ago, where I had half a
dozen trees, that the bark cracked, and I did not think of the
yellows, and those trees in the spring did not start very thriftily,
and last year when they started out again they had not recovered,
and they did not show the yellows, but they lacked vitality and
showed premature fruit. Last fall I did find they had the yel.
lows, and my remedy was to cut the top off and take my horse
and pull out root and branch and burn them, and I found trees
near them, thrifty trees, that showed perhaps one little sprig of
two or three inches. It took some courage, but if only a little
sprig was seen near them they came out and were cremated.

62

Mr. Griggs — Would you plant a new tree in the hole?

Mr. Bliss — I have not. Some say it is not safe to do so. I
am not an authority on that.

Mr. Gregory — There is one point about gravelly soil we ought
to keep in mind, and that is that there are two different kinds
of soil. One acts merely mechanically, and the other in a fer-
tilizing way. The particles of rock which most of our soil in New
England is made up of act mechanically, and tend to keep the
soil waim. By decomposition they furnish food. In examining
into these cases the question comes whether the ordinary soil
by decomposition furnishing potash is not better than the prim-
itive soil that does not contain so much potash; this is a matter I
have to determine.

Mr. A. B. Caswell of Fitchburg — There has been considerable
said about planting peach trees on high land for many years.
Now, is the highest land in town, for instance, exposed to the
winds from every quarter, other things being equal, the most
favorable place? I have noticed two or three orchards last year
which were considerably sheltered, and some fruit growers have
spoken of that as being an important factor in the growth of
large crops. Other things being equal, would you consider very
high lands exposed to the winds from every direction one of the
most favorable localities for peaches?

Mr, Bliss — I prefer, with my little experience, high elevation.
It may be too high. You may get so high that every storm you
have may cause the trees to freeze and break them. But aside
from that, I would prefer a high elevation, on the northwest or
west slope.

Mr. In trimming the trees, is it allowable to trim off the

large limbs ?

Mr. Bliss — After the tree becomes large I do not think it
would hurt it to cut off the large limbs. If these limbs hang
down I cut them off, and see no bad effects whatever.

Mr. Hinds — Those who visited my orchards remember par-
ticularly the orchard which had the wind-break. I thought I
had a fine location — away from the winds. When the orchard
was three years old I had fine blossoms. On the 20th of May
we had a frost, and I never got a basket of peaches from that
orchard, while the other orchards, where there was a circulation

63

of air from the northwest, escaped. So the next year I opened
a draft through, and I have had two crops of peaches since. I
like the wind.

Mr. Sage — I have my ideas of trimming, but I do not know
everything about it, although I have had some fifty years' ex-
perience. I would like to know these gentlemen's ideas as to
when is the best time to cut off limbs from large trees-
Mr. Bliss— I presume this gentleman has reference to peach-
trees. I have neglected the apple-trees, and I have not trimmed
them so much. If I want to cut a limb off a peach-tree I do it.
I do the general pruning of peaches in the spring, but if any
limb is in the way I cut it off with a saw or pruner at any
time.

Mr. Sage — On the hilltops in our region the soil is of a heavy
nature very unsuitable for peaches — too heavy, according to my
idea. If it is rich, heavy land, I should not want a peach-
orchard. I hatve a peach-orchard on an elevated slope on the
northwest, where it gets the full benefit of the wind, and I have
put 2000 trees there this spring.

Prof. Maynard — Theie have been successful peach-orchards
in heavy, clayey land, and the older members of the association
may remember the Bigelow orchard on Marlboro hill, noted for
grapes and jjeaches. This orchard was on the northwest side
of the hill ; the soil was a rather heavy clay and produced re-
markable crops, but the trees did not last a great while.

The President — I think every member of this association and
our friends who attend this meeting must be convinced of the
earnest and honest work that Mr. Bliss has put into this paper
he has read to us and the descriptions and illustrations he has
given us, and while we have no doubt of its truth in every par-
ticular, Mr. Sessions, who is with us, knows all about him. 1
would invite Mr. Sessions to just stand up and substantiate
what our friend has told us, so that there will be no misun-
derstanding!

Mr. Sessions — I do not think he needs this backing. If you
go to Springfield they will tell you, because he has supplied that
market. His place is three-quarters of a mile from my place,
and I have seen the whole thing grow up. I think this is an
example of the fruits of intelligence procured through the regu-

64

lar channels of information. Mr, Bliss is everything he indi-
cates by his experience. He is a modest young man and never
boasted of his experience, and I was surprised to hear that the
fruit growers had induced him to come here.

Mr. Hinds — What is the condition of the buds at the present
time?

Mr. Bliss — I have not been able to find a live bud since the
first of January.

Professor Maynard — I will report upon the peach-buds that
have been passed in to me. Those Mr. Monroe Morse passed
in I find about all alive. Mr. Moore has passed in some peach-
buds, and as near as I can separate them, there are two kinds,
the Mountain Eose and the Crosby. I find the Crosby buds are
perhaps half alive, Mountain Rose all dead. On the Japanese
plums I do not find any buds killed. The temperature on the hill
where grown was about 8 degrees below. At the college the
mercury went down to 22^ below, the lowest that ever was
recorded, and we do not find a live peach-bud. Japanese plum-
buds are badly injured, and cherries somewhat injured. The
apples and pears were not hurt so much.

Mr. Avery — I move that a vote of thanks be given to Mr.
Bliss for answering all the questions. (Carried.)

Mr. Parker — I would like to ask Prof. Maynard whether when
he reports half the buds killed, there would not still be
enough on the peach-tree for a large crop.

Prof. Maynard — If there are 10 per cent, of buds on a tree in
vigorous condition it would produce a full crop.

Mr. Mead — In my peach-buds I did not find more than two or
three in all that were good.

Mr. Woolridge of Lunenberg — What is the percentage?
Prof. Maynard — In regard to the Japanese plums, if 99 per
cent, of the buds are killed and 1 per cent, good, we would
have all the plums the tree could carry.

Mr, Hinds— As far as I can judge, I have very few, if any,
alive, and the wood is also killed considerably.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — Is thekillingof the buds wholly
due to the low temperature! Isn't it sometimes due to there
being more moisture in the air at the time 1 Under those cir-

65

cumstances, would not the buds be more likely to be killed than
if the atmosphere were dry and the mercury still went lower?

Prof. Maynard — There is a theory in regard to the injury of
peach-buds advanced by some of the weather-bureau people
that the amount of moisture in the atmosphere does affect the
buds, but experiments that have been made have not led to any-
thing definite. In sudden changes there is always a large
amount of moisture in the atmosphere. The theory is: "The
greater the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the more cer-
tain the buds to be injured."

Adjourned to 1.30 p. m.

Afternoon Session — 1.30 o"* Clock.

The President — I will invite the vice-president, Mr. Herbert
O. Mead of Lunenburg, to preside till the lecture at 2.30
o'clock.

The Chair — I am informed that you have discussed the first
two questions, and our president suggests that we take up
where we left off yesterday, and if no objection we will take
up question No. 3 : "Are apple and pear buds injuredf" Is
there anyone ready to make any report in regard to this —has
anyone examined the buds to find out about them 1 If there is
nothing to be said on question No. 3 we will take up question
No. 4 : " Has any injury been detected to the canes of the grape,
blackberry or raspberry °? " Discussion to be opened by A. A.
Marshall and C. F. Watts. I think neither of these gentlemen is
present. Will some other gentleman report in regard to his
vines %

Mr. Morse — I cut off some canes on my raspberry, the Cuth-
bert, and put them in the house a week or two ago, and as far
as I can see, those cut off are all dead.

The Chair — Has any other member a report to make % Any
blackberry growers to report % If Mr. Sharp is in the audience,
will he reply i

Mr. A. G. Sharp — I looked over my Cuthberts two or three
days ago. I practice laying them down and burying them,
covering them in the fall, but of course many canes between the
I'ows were left standing, and I thought they were pretty

66

seriously injured. I do not know as they are all dead. I also
heard from a friend of mine in the southern part of the county
at North Adams. He laid down an acre of his, and left half an
acre standing, and wrote last week that those left standing with-
out protection are all dead. Those covered were frozen under-
ground, and it is impossible to tell about them, although I con-
sider them to have pretty good endurance. I do not see that
the blackberry canes of the Agawam are injured to any extent.

Mr. Cruickshanks — How is the covering done 1

Mr. Sharp — The raspberries are planted five feet by six feet,
and we cover what we can of the ends of the canes. The tops
only are covered, so that the canes are held down.

Mr. 1 would like to know Mr. Sharp's experience with

the Loudon.

Mr. Sharp — I hardly know how to answer this question, even
satisfactorily to myself. I have not fruited the Loudon, but I
have studied the reports some from experiment stations, and
also made inquiries of friends, and have visited some plantations,
seeing them growing side by side with the Cuthbert. As far as
I can learn, except in places where the Cuthbert seems well
adapted to the soil, in which case it is a much stronger grower
than the Loudon, the Loudon is hardier, but I find that many
are loth to give up the Cuthbert, where it does well, in exchange
for the Loudon, although the Loudon is acknowledged to be
much more hardy. They tell me it has wintered well, and is in
good condition now. One man in Connecticut has something
over an acre, and says his are all alive. Another man in the
eastern part of the state reports favorably. It has a stronger
foliage, and although it does not grow as tall as the Cuthbert,
yet it seems to have the peculiarity of sending out fruit-bearing
branches, more of them on the same length of cane. Possibly
it is not necessary to have them grow so tall to get so much
bearing- wood. I made some inquiries last fall, while in Boston,
among the fruit dealers in and about Faneuil Hall Market, and
I asked one man, who had been there in one of the best stands
over forty years, as I had asked him the year before — is there a
red raspberry shipped to Boston that is any better than the
Cuthbert in any way ! He said there is nothing that is equal
to the Cuthbert that I raised the last season — nothing in the

67

Boston market to equal it. This is about all I can say in this
line, unless some one has a question to ask further.

Professor Maynard — Mr. President, I think perhaps I should
report upon Mr. A. A. Marshall's experience with the Loudon
raspberry. Mr. Marshall started with the Loudon and planted
three acres in two years, and they were making very fine growth,
and were as perfect as anything Mr. Marshall grows. In the early
part of the summer it seemed that it was going to take a good
place, but just at fruiting time there came upon the blossom,
upon the fruit and upon the new growth of cane, a mildew, and
the crop was almost a total failure, and notwithstanding he had
paid !f 10*0 for the plants he pulled them all up and planted Cuth-
bert. The berries of the Loudon are of a good size, fine quality,
and a good color, but there are these problems — whether we can
carry them over this difficulty, whether the mildew is going to
strike them every year, whether we can prevent it if it comes,
or whether they will yield as much as the Cuthbert. The ques-
tion of profit must be determined by the grower.

Mr. Cruickshanks — I met Mr. Marshall last week, and in ac-
cordance with the programme of this meeting I inquired the con-
dition of his raspberries. As Prof. Maynard has said, he pulled
out all his Loudons for the reasons given, and the Cuthberts, he
thought, were in good condition then.

Mr. Stockwell — I am glad to hear about the. Loudon raspberry,
from the fact that I have a few set out, and my neighbor has
pulled up all of his. I understand Dr. Fisher did the same.

Professor Maynard — Yes, sir.

Mr. Stockwell — And as these men all had experience right at
my door, I did not know but I was a very foolish piece of hu-
manity to try to go on and raise them. Another friend says :
''You go home now and pull up some of your Loudon raspber-
ries, and you will see a bunch growing on them, and you will
see why they are pulling them up." I pulled up several vines
and I found on every one these hard, knotty bunches on the
roots. Whether it is natural for them to be affected thus I do
not know, but I know every Loudon I pulled up was so affected,
and I am anxious to know the experience of those here, because
I thought I had found something fine. I would like to know if

68

it is anything harmful to the roots to have these bunches grow-
ing on them.

Mr, Moore — We set out some Loudons last year, and the first
year they are usually large and nice, and we think we have
something ahead of anything else, but a little more experience
may change our mind. We thought them excellent for quality —
large, nice berries. I wanted to ask if it is a fact that the
Loudon brier is hardier than the Cuthbert. We were in hopes
if it is a fact that the Loudon brier is found to be more hardy it
would take the place of the Cuthbert. I do not think it a better
berry than the Cuthbert.

Mr. Warren — Mr. Chairman, I wish to say to the gentleman
on the right that that bunch found on the roots of the Loudon
raspberry is not confined to the Loudon by any means. The
great difficulty and the only fault I have found or heard of with
the Cuthbert is that it has not done so well of late years as it had
formerly, and the reason the Cuthbert has not done well is on
account of that fungous growth on the roots,

Mr. Sharp — Mr. President, I find those galls on the Cuth-
bert and Loudon and several of the other raspberries more or
less. I laid down four acres this fall of fine Cuthberts, and have
been growing them for nineteen years.

Mr. Warren — I would like to ask the gentleman if he has the
same trouble with the Cuthbert root. I think where they have
the galls on the root they will not do well.

Mr. Sharp — Set the plants on new ground that has not had
blackberries or raspberries on lately and be sure your plants are
free from that gall ; it will be some years before a new plantation
becomes infested with it enough to injure it. But when you find
the canes are deteriorating and fertilization does not bring them
up to strength, pull them out and send where you can get good
plants, and set the new plants on new ground. That is my ex-
perience. The only way is to watch the plantation and see that
you have a good growth of cane, good, healthy foliage, and as
long as you can do that you are pretty sure of good fruit. Where
the ground is ridged up I can get on the ground two weeks earlier
in the spring, loosen it up and cultivate it, and get ready to
catch and hold the spring rains. Whereas, if the ground is not
ridged up at all on heavy clay soil, it is i:)retty hard work to get
the cultivator to do anything. [Mr. Sharp's land is heavy loam.]

69

Professor Maynard — I would like to ask Mr. Sharp how long
he can profitably grow Cuthberts on one piece of ground.

Mr. Sharp — If I do not discover any galls on the roots, from
seven to nine years. I kept one plantation eleven years. The
last two years it was unprofitable. Some I kei)t longer than I
should have done, thinking perhaps the plants were winter-
killed, and I thought perhaps I might get them renewed again
by higher fertilization, but found it was time thrown away. In
seven or eight years it is better to cultivate a new piece.

Mr. Young — This is the first I ever heard about the mildew
striking the Loudon raspberry. I would like to ask if any other
grower has had that experience. It occurs to me it might be
the climatic conditions.

Professor Maynard — There is one point, perhaps, we might
consider at this stage. Mr. Marshall's and Dr. Fisher's raspber-
ries are on the southern slope. We know the blackberry and the
raspberry like a cool soil, and it is possible the exposure would
account for the mildew ; it is almost in appearance like the mil-
dew on the grape-vine. There is no difficulty in preventing a
mildew of that kind.

Mr. Warren — I would like to ask the professor if he thinks
the presence of mildew has anything to do with gall on the roots.

Professor Maynard — No, sir. The root-gall is a development
caused possibly by two conditions. It may be an insect, or it
may be a fungous growth, or it may be something else, but where
there is an injury of that kind there will be a development of
woody matter heal over the injury, and I think we can over-
come the difficulty by better cultivation. I am very sure we
have improved a plantation badly infested by a larger applica-
tion of fertilizer. Kotation, as practiced by Mr. Sharp, is the
best remedy.

Mr. Stockwell — I would like to inquire if it makes any differ-
ence with the raspberry dying in what kind of soil it grows.
Our friend here speaks of laying down plants in heavy soil. I
thought I would beat my neighbors one year, and laid down
nearly an acre. Just over the wall I did not lay them down.
Almost the entire acre covered died. Those I did not lay down
were good, and I got doubly as large a crop, and since then I
have never had the courage to lay down the plants. This last

70

season my raspberry bushes have made an enormous growth.
They are a sight to behold, and I have broken off and looked at
the canes a good deal the past two weeks. I think they are
badly injured, and I would like to know if it was because of the
lighter soil, or what the trouble was.

Professor Maynard — Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask Mr.
Stockwell in regard to his soil. Do I understand the plants are
grown on light soil?

Mr. Stockwell — Not light, but not heavy — good loam soil.

Professor Maynard — If the plants you have covered lie on
the ground too long, they will often start early. Growth
will take place more quickly on the ground than in the air. If
they lie too long they get a start, and will be injured and not be
as good as those not covered. In regard to the soil those plan-
tations that last the longest are on heavy land. I can instance
a number. In Westford there are plantations grown in a heavy
clay soil; Mr. Clark's plantations of blackberries on ]!*[t. Warner
— and the conditions required for the raspberries are about the
same — are at the foot of the orchard where it is very moist, and
he grows the Snyder blackberry, and produces a crop that can-
not be produced on light land. The blackberry and raspberry
require cool soil. They require the cool condition you get in
clay soil. In a hot season in light soil they are liable to run out
very quickly and be attacked by the gall, and the growth the
next year is very weak indeed.

Mr. Cruickshanks — Inasmuch as Mr. Sharp has cultivated sev-
eral acres of raspberries and blackberries, we would like to know
what the cost per acre would be. The imaginary cost of culti-
vating raspberries and blackberries may stand in the way with
a good many.

Mr. Sharp — Take one year with another, it is hard to tel^ex-
actly. You cannot always get the same help, and there is a
difference in men. If your soil is wet it will take longer than if
dry, but I think it is safe to say, in counting my labor, it cost
me 116 an acre. I always lay them down myself, and have four
men to cover. We have covered half an ticre a day, five of us,
in that way, taking two rows at a time. I prefer to lay them
down myself, because I am more likely to find the canes in bet-
ter condition.

71

By a Member — Does it cost you as much more to take
them up ?

Mr. Sharp — No, the cost of taking up is not more than one-
third as much.

Mr. Warren — I have had considerable experience in cultiva-
tion of blackberries and raspberries. When I cultivated them
by the acre I used to plow the ground. Then I used something
similar to a snow-plow to go between the rows and throw the
earth each way, with two men on each side with shovels, and
after you get your earth shoveled one side they very quickly
cover. About the canes dying after being uncovered in the
spring, it makes a difference what kind of day you uncover
them. If the season is dry they are more apt to dry up and die
than if you have a moist day, so they do not feel the sudden
change from the moisture in the earth into the hot air. But
when you raise them up take a foggy day or when the air is
more moist, and you will not lose so many.

Mr. Sharp — The expense of covering depends on the strength
of the canes you have to cover.

Mr. Young — A matter yesterday was represented very strongly
by Professor Fernald which I hope will receive some attention,
and the attention I believe it should receive from this associa-
tion, and that is, and I move you, sir, to that effect, that a com-
mittee of three be appointed by the chair to draw up a set of
resolutions, to be presented before this audience for adoption,
on the matter of the San Jose scale, that may be brought before
our Legislature.

Mr. Manning — That is in the state and has come to stay, and
it is no worse than in others, and it is easily subdued by an
emulsion of kerosene oil. If you follow it up you will kill it.

Mr. Probably the rest of us do not want to fight it.

Mr. Sessions — There has been a hearing before the Agricul-
tural Committee on this subject. I do not know what they are
going to report, and I think the motion presented is for the reso-
lution to influence the legislative committee and the Legislature.
The plan advocated was the appointment of an inspector, who
should inspect nurseries and give notice to the owner as to
whether they are infested or not, and to examine also private
property at the request of the owner, and give him instructions,

72

and also provide that no nursery stock should be allowed to come
into the state without an examination, and if found infested,
either to destroy or fumigate them before being put on the
market. That, in a general way, is the trend of the law that
was asked for. Another one subsequently put in was simply to
provide that if a nurseryman knew he had it and had such in-
spection, nothing could prevent his selling.

Mr. Manning — The object was so the nurseryman could sell.
Unless he has a label showing that his stock has been examined
by an entomologist and was free from the insect, he could not
sell. That was the object, and I had my grounds examined last
year, but his testimonial was used on the tags. Mr. Fernald
brought another man last year. He said you are receiving
infested stock, and we fumigated, and the cost was more than
$500.

Mr. Sessions — I hope no one will get the impression that
Mr. Manning is afraid of this law, because all our ex-
perience with him has proved that he is able to face the music and
do the right thing. We have found, in looking over his prem-
ises, that he is ready to do anything recommended.

The Chair— Is there anything more to be said on the ques-
tionf Are all in favor of the motion that a committee of three
be appointed? (Carried.) I think the time has come for Mr.
Cruickshanks to occupy the chair.

The President — On the committee called for I appoint Wm.
E. Sessions, W. D. Hinds and E. S. Young. (All declined.) We
will appoint Mr. Ethan Brooks in place of Mr. Sessions. The
committee is filled — go to work ! Mr. Sessions has a commu-
nication which I am sure will be of some interest.

Mr. Sessions — This letter I received some days ago in reply
o mine stating that the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Associa-
tion was to meet in a few days. It is from the United States
consul in England :

]7 Leman Street, London, Feb. 13th, 1899.

To the Secretary Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture,
Boston, Mass.

Dear Sir — It is possible that through your mediumship I may
be able to interest some enterprising fruit and vegetable grow-

73

ers of good apples and tomatoes in this great market. I write
advisedly when I say " good apples," fori refer only to qnaJih/,
not quantity, for there are enough already engaged in this latter
unsatisfactory and unprofitable part of the business. The
chances for good fruit, say Baldwins, Newtown Pippins, and
possibly Greenings, properly packed, are practically unlimited.
The apples should be hand-picked, carefully inspected, dried
and assorted, and packed in thin paper or other like substance,
in new boxes containing the equivalent in pounds (for apples
are so sold here) of one bushel each. Such fruit should always
command a ready sale in this great market at a good profit,
whereas the greater part of our surplus is simply dumped here
to be sold for what it will bring. If I am correctly informed, it
has been reserved to shippers in far-away Oregon to reap the
first benefits and profits of sending good apples, 'properly
packed^ to this market, and surely Massachusetts or New Eng-
land growers would do well to at least follow this example.

The foregoing would apply equally well to other New England
green fruit, particularly pears, and for carefully prepared
evaporated apples, pears, etc., there is always a good sale here.
For tomatoes I am not so sure, but I think it would well pay
some of our enterprising people to try some experiments at the
time when this vegetable is so abundant with us — say, to ship
by the fast mail steamers from New York, commencing with the
tomatoes as they ripen, say as far south as Virginia, and going
north as the season progresses.

Four years' consular experience brought to my attention the
vast business which is being done between London (or Great
Britain) and the continent, and a large part of this could, I
think, be diverted to the United States, if the present conditions
of quick transportation were supplemented by intelligent and
prompt action on the part of our New England people. As a
native and always having lived in iMassachusetts until taking
up my consular residence abroad, it is but natural that I should
be interested in everything that might benefit the old Bay State,
and I am in position to develop this matter through tlie best of
connections in London or on the Continent, and I send this
communication to you, hoping you can turn it in the direction
of some party who will at least look carefully into the matter.
My services are at the disposal of any intelligent, up-to-date
man who might like to take up the matter.

I await the jjleasure of your reply with interest.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed), CHARLES W. SHEPARD,

P. T. O.

P. S. — I have this day happened to see a box of Oregon apples

74

and find them to be well packed. Every apple seems to be sound,
and the salesman reports them most satisfactory and salable.
(Signed), . C. W. S.

The Chair — You hear this communication. What is your
mind to do with it!

Professor Maynard — I would like to ask what Mr. Sessions
would suggest we might do in regard to it.

Mr. Sessions — The letter looks to some communication from
the person who proposes to send fruit abroad. Unless there is
some one who wishes to take up the matter and correspond with
him, I would suggest an acknowledgment of the receipt of the
letter, and thanks to him for his interest, might be well for the
association to take. It is gratifying to me, for he has done it
without anticipation of any advantage to himself.

The Chair — This seems to be a matter that properly, as Sec-
retary Sessions says, ought to come before this association. This
is a part of the work that the association is trying to do for the
good of the fruit growers of Massachusetts, and it seems that
this association should take some action in the matter.

Mr. Parker — Mr. President, since the secretary has the com-
munication in his hands, I move you, as he is one of us, that a
vote be passed expressing the thanks of our association for the
interest taken, and ask him to voice that much to the writer, and
let him make satisfactory reply on that line. I do not see that
any of us have goods to ship. Perhaps later we might act on the
suggestion, but for the present I think that is all we can do. I
would move that Secretary Sessions be appointed to answer this
communication as he thinks best.

Carried.

Mr. Ware — Mr. President, I think the proper disposition of
this paper before the association has been made, but Mr. Ses-
sions has suggested that unless some person is ready to take
hold and enter into this business he did not know what could
properly be done. I would suggest that the Boston Market Gar-
dening Association, among whom there are men engaged in
exporting all sorts cf fruit, and extensively engaged in handling
large quantities of tomatoes and other products, is an organiza-
tion where, if anywhere, would be found men who would be
likely to take hold of this business of exporting what is de-

75

scribed here. I think a very proper disposition has been made
of it before this association, but as I understand there are no
members of this association who are very much engaged in ex-
porting products, and the Boston Market Gardening Association
is filled up with that class of men.

Mr. Parker — T suggested to Mr. Sessions that this letter should
be given to the stenographer, and we could then have a copy of
it on which we could act later if anyone desires, and it would be
in our records. Now that this letter goes in our records, it
seems to me a good disposition would be to pass it over to the
market gardeners' association.

Mr. Sessions — I should be happy to do it, as the writer ex-
presses himself as being willing to give the matter attention and
correspond with anyone.

The President — The hour has come for the lecture of the after-
noon, the closing lecture of this series of meetings. This is a
joint session with the Worcester Horticultural Society. The
topic is, " New Methods in Horticulture." It gives me great
pleasure to introduce Mr. Abel F. Stevens of Wellesley, who
will now address you.

[Mr. Stevens' lecture is one of a series delivered under the
auspices of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, and will
be printed in their report.]

The President — If no one has a question, we will hear the re-
port of the committee.

Mr. Young — Your committee has asked me to bring in the
following resolution :

" The Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association in convention
at Worcester urges upon our Legislature the enactment of such
law as will prevent the introduction into our state of trees and
nursery stock which may be infested with dangerous insects,
pests, also for provision for such inspection of such trees and
nursery stock grown in Massachusetts as will permit our own
nurserymen to send their stock into other states."

Carried.

The President — There are a few items of business we had
better attend to now, as we shall have to adjourn in less than an
hour. There is the matter in regard to the field- meetings. I
think it is proper, as we have representatives here from all sec-

76

tions of the state, that we hear what the wishes and desires and
opportunities of the different sections are for a profitable inves-
tigation and inspection for the June and fall meetings. I wait
to hear from the members what course you propose to have
us take. We do not feel that it is advisable to call the directors
together during the season for that special purpose while we can
settle this matter here to some extent.

Mr. Stevens — Mr. President, allow me, as I see so many of our
worthy brothers are returning to their homes, to offer a resolu-
tion at this time. It is well known to you and all of our mem-
bers that our association has been the guest of the Worcester
County Horticultural Society for several years. They have
opened this beautiful hall, and they have opened their doors and
welcomed us here year after year, and I move you, sir, in behalf
of our Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association, that we return
to the Worcester County Horticultural Society our heartfelt
thanks for their generous hospitality in providing these beautiful
accommodations for us, and that we take that motion by a rising
vote.

Carried.

Mr. Parker — On another subject, I would move you that the
secretary be directed to send the resolutions recently adopted to
Mr. O. E. Patch, the chairman of the committee.

Carried.

Mr. Sanderson — I feel that I would like to have some expres-
sion from the society in regard to the next field-meetings.

Mr. Sessions — I move that it be left in the hands of the
president and secretary.

Carried.

Mr. Parker — I never enjoyed myself any better than when we
visited the college's plantation of strawberries at Amherst. I
know one other gentleman in this hall said he never had any to
eat before, and he greatly enjoyed tasting so many varieties.
For June meeting, considering the location, and that Amherst
contains the institution interesting to the farmers of Massa-
chusetts, it seems to me that it is the Mecca for them to visit,
and I do not know a better time than June, and I will go to two
field- meetings if I have my health, because the June fruit never
matures in September, and that of September we do not find in

77

June. I believe there is much education in a visit like the one
we made last fall to Townsend. To see the methods of other
people, the location, their management, is more to me than all I
can read from papers from one year's end to the other. I hope
the officers ar.e perfectly willing to have it left in their hands,
and will see the way clear, provided our secretary desires to ask
us, to visit Amherst once and some other location perhaps.

Professor Maynard^ — Mr. President, I think there is nothing
like variety to keep up an interest in any line of work. At our
field-meetings we have had very enjoyable times, and they have
been very profitable. How would it do to vary the practice a
little and have a x>icnic, and all the members bring their choicest
fruits? For the June meeting we would be very glad to have
the members meet at Amherst. We have a great many varieties
of strawberries, and have a beautiful place.

Mr. Hadwen — I fully agree in leaving this matter with the
president and secretary, and I would like also to vary the enter-
tainments as far as possible. It would seem to me if we should
visit Mr. HunnewelPs in the month of June, I regard it as
one of the greatest object lessons that can be found in the Com-
monwealth. Then, Mr. President, in the month of September
I fully agree with the suggestion of the secretary that we should
have a picnic, and bring our fruits and flowers to one spot and
enjoy ourselves as best we can, and I would merely throw out
the suggestion that Worcester would not be a bad place, and in
this hall, to have it! (Applause.)

Motion to leave the matter in hands of officers was carried.

The President — Here is a question that has been handed in,
and the only one we have had handed in : "Is it possible for
a variety of strawberry grown in Massachusetts to be so
changed in appearance in New Jersey as not to be recognized as
the same variety? "

Mr. Mead — I believe you can change it very much under a
different system of cultivation, but I doubt if the changed con-
dition or climate would change the plant so much that it would
constitute a new variety of it. It is simply ray opinion. I have
seen many plants under different conditions, but never saw so
much change that you could not tell the distinct variety.

Mr. Johnson — I would like to change the subject for a mo-

78

raent, and ask if any member knows whether the Michel's Early
Strawberry and the Early Sunrise are one and the same thing?
Last year I threw out Michel's Early and planted Early Sunrise,
and it appears to be the same thing. No answers.

Mr. Warren — Mr. President, I put that question in the box
myself. I put it in to see what kind of an answer I should get.
Perhaps some of you may have bought the Henry strawberry,
so called. It was introduced by Mr. Henry Jarolaman. As I
got up a club of 10 I received 150 plants. As soon as I received
the first plants I wrote to the originator and asked him if he did
not think he had made some mistake, and if he did not think they
were the same thing as the Marshall. Anyone continually cultiva-
ting one variety can almost always tell by the general appearance
of the plant what the variety is. Last spring Mr. Pierce of Lin-
coln and myself went to New Jersey to see the new berry. Mr.
Pierce says that no doubt the Henry is a distinct variety. I have
tried to get what information I could from various people, and have
corresponded with quite a number in New Jersey that have seen it
growing and got it growing themselves, and they say they cannot
see any difference. Mr. Jarolaman sent me some to test, and after
they fruited in the greenhouse I thought I could see a difference
between those and the Marshall, but most say there is no differ-
ence, and I thought perhaps there may be a difference in the
locality in which they were grown. They did not seem to be the
same color or shape. Those sent me might have been the Henry
and perhaps the others were not.

Mr. Stockwell — I have not anything to say specially on that
point, but I have a question I would like to ask in the strawberry
line. I would like to ask if the members have found a straw-
berry with a perfect blossom that gives them as much satisfaction
as one with imperfect blossom. I would like to ask how the
members in general like the Clyde.

Mr. Warren — With me it has been the best paying strawberry
I ever had on my land. On virgin soil that has never grown
strawberries at all, a wood-lot that has been cleared up, I have
always found that it has done remarkably well, and it is so with
any crop. I found that the Clyde on ground that had been grown
to strawberries year after year was almost sure to fail, but on
new soil it has been one of the best paying berries I ever had.

79

Mr. Morse — How are the eating qualities?

M. Warren — They are the best.

Mr. Have you fruited the Nick Ohmer?

Mr. Warren — My neighbors have a few in the green-house.

Mr. Stoekwell — When the Clyde began to fruit last year I had
the land under a high state of cultivation. I said to myself that
I had got what I had been working for for years, it was so
heavily loaded and the berries so large; but before I got through
the season I thought it was the worst berry I ever had. The first
picking was large, but it did not grow any more and simply
ripened up. How about the imperfect berry?

Mr. Warren — I think there is nothing like the pistillate varie-
ties to produce the most fruit. The Ridgeway is one of the best
berries, I think, that I ever had. It is a staminate variety. The
quality is the best, and for quantity I think I get as much fruit
from it as from any I ever had, but they run down in size more
than some other varieties. For the home garden there is noth-
ing I would recommend sooner than the Ridgeway. It is perfect
in shape, and with extra cultivation perhaps it would run large
for the season.

By a Member — What do you think of the Glen Mary?

Mr. Warren — It has never done very well with me. The
greatest trouble seemed to be from its imperfect shape. An im-
perfect shaped berry means that it is not perfectly fertilized with
the staminate variety. It does not fertilize its blossoms as well
as it ought to. I think perhaps if it were mixed with some other
strong staminate varieties the result would be better. It is one
of the best looking plants I ever had on the farm.

Mr. Moore — Last year I grew the Clyde in an old pasture,
where there never had been a crop except potatoes, or perhaps a
crop of oats in the fall, and I never saw, in all my strawberry-
growing, anything to equal the strip, perhaps four rods long, of
the Clyde berry. They simply coshered the ground red. These
would not keep by two days as long as the Marshall. They be-
come soft at the end of four or five days. There were hardly
any small berries, but I was disappointed in their keeping and
shipping qualities. We have spoken about the Glen Mary. Is
that distinct, as I understand it, from the Mary?

80

Mr. Warren — Yes. The Glen Mary is much better, as far as
dollars and cents is concerned, than the Mary.

Mr. Moore — I would like to ask if he has fruited No. 24.

Mr. Warren — I have heard excellent reports from it.

Mr. Mead — I move that we take up question No. 5.

The President — Question No. 5: "What new and highly
praised varieties of fruit have been tested, and what show de-
cided merit! " Discussion opened by H. W. Moore and A. M.
Stowe.

Mr. Record — Have not we practically discussed this same
question?

The President — This means new varieties of all fruits, and is
not confined to strawberries.

Mr. Sanderson — I would like to ask if anyone present has had
experience with the Lucretia Dewberry.

Mr. Morse — Some years ago I bought fifty plants and paid $5
for them. They got winter-killed and would not bear much,
and it was too much work for me to take care of them on the
ground.

Mr. Sanderson — Did you let them run on the ground?

Mr. Morse — Yes.

Mr. Sanderson — The largest fruit growers in Maryland say
anybody that raises the Dewberry on the ground is not fit to raise
them. I know the fruit is exceedingly nice. It is one of the
best blackberries that grows in Massachusetts, and I feel anxious
to make trial of them on account of their good quality. Mr.
Anderson of Maryland says, drive down stakes two and a half
feet above the ground and run a wire along, and tie as many
vines to that wire as you want to grow, and the fruit is then
raised from the ground. Only let as many vines grow as you
want to fruit, and Mr. Anderson says they are going to super-
sede all other blackberries, because they are so easy to raise and
so exceedingly nice.

Mr. Morse — My vines always winter-killed. Their want of
hardiness would prevent their profitable cultivation here; the
Lucretia is large and handsome, but I do not like the eating qual-
ity. Others thought it nice. The berry is very large and showy,
but th3 vine is not hardy with me.

Professor Maynard — Mr. President, in regard to the variety

81

mentioned it is a very delicious berry, but the difficulty is in
carrying it through the winter. The wild Dewberry winter- kills
by the roadside. It is possible that we can make a success of
raising the Dewberry by covering a little in the fall, and in the
spring putting the covering under the vines, but when brought
up into the air on a frame they do not grow as large, and we
have never succeeded in getting a profitable crop. We have had
a fair quantity of fruit, but not a quantity that would be profit-
able.

Mr. Batchelder — The professor tells about the Dewberry grow-
ing wild. I would like to ask where it is wild.

Professor Maynard — Everywhere; it is a variety of the road-
side blackberry.

Mr. Mead — T would like to ask about the Wickson plum.

Professor Maynard — The trees in the station orchard grow
finely. I believe there were some specimens of fruit, but somehow
they disappeared (laughter), as they are often liable to where the
boys are running about. I have tasted the fruit and it is very
fine in quality. We have twenty-two trees only one year old, and
some older, and they are not perfectly hardy. I would say that
I had an opportunity to taste the fruit of the Hale and October
Purple and they are both very fine in quality. The Hale is not
of good color. Whether it will improve as the trees grow larger
is a question. The October Purple is much like our purple do-
mestic plum in color, and of very fine quality, although the
specimens I tested were not fully ripe. They ripen about the
middle to last of September. We do not know anything about
the keeping qualities. The Grand Duke is- one of the purple
plums. I do not know as it is an improvement on many others.

The President — The time has come when we must close, and I
think we can safely say that we have had a very interesting
series of meetings, and as good as the association has ever had.

Adjourned at 4 p. m.

LIST OF MEMBERS.

Abbott, R. A., Worcester.
Adams, Erastus, Grafton.
Adams, H. J., Fitchburg.
Adams, J. F., Medway.
Albee, L. C, Fitchburg.
Allen, J. A., Worcester.
Alderman, E. K., Middlefleld.
Andrews, H. J., Fitchburg.
Averj', John G., Spencer.
Bannister, H. L., Grafton.
Barber, H. J., Athol.
Barker, John, North Andover.
Barrett, Wm. M., Westboro.
Batchelder, F. E., Lawrence.
Bates, Edwin, Lynn.
Blake, C L., Ashby.
Blake, F. A., Rochdale.
Bliss, Ethelbert, Wilbraham.
Bolan, George, Gleasondale.
Bolles, C. P., Wilbraham.
Boutwell, F. M., Groton.
Bowker, J. B , Worcester.
Brooks, Ansel, Ashby.
Brooks, Ethan, West Springfield.
Brown, C. H., Fitchburg.
Brown, N. Porter, Westboro.
Bruce, E. M., Leominster.
Burgess, Silas A., Worcester.
Burnap, E. S., Fitchburg.
Burnap, C. E., Fitchburg.
Burpee, W. H., Leominster.
Buss, Charles S., Leominster.
Butterick, G. F., So. Lancaster.
Capen, A., Spencer.
Carter, H. W., Milbury.
Caswell, A. B., Fitchburg.
Chamberlain, A. M., Worcester.
Clark, J. W., North Hadley.
Clement, George F., Sherborn.
Coggshall, H. F., Fitchburg.
Cole, Warren M., North Boxford.

Chase, J. L., Maiden.
Cook, H. A., Shrewsbury.
Cooledge, Lowell, Sherborn.
Cooledge, Sumner, Watertown.
Cruickshanks, George, Fitchburg.
Damon, S. C, Lancaster.
Daniels, F. H., Sherborn.
Dearth, H. A., Sherborn,
Derby, Alden, Leominster.
Draper, James, Worcester.
Dresser, C. L., Gardner.
Eames, J., Sherborn.
Eames, L. R., Worcester.
Eaton, C. B., Worcester.
Ellsworth, C. H., Worcester.
Ellsworth, J. C, Worcester.
Emerson, E. A., Haverhill.
Farquhar, Robert, N. Cambridge.
Farrar, E. R., So. Lincoln.
Fisk, D. L., Grafton.
Fletcher, E. S., Thompson, Conn.
Fletcher, R. R., Ayer.
FHnt, E. R., Lincoln.
Fowler, N. J., Boston.
Fuller, H. C, Leominster.
Giffard, J. E., Sutton.
Oilman, R. L., Haverhill.
Gilson, E. Farland, Groton.
Gleason, C. A., Worcester.
Graham, C. S., Westboro.
Green, Charles H., Spencer.
Green, Elton, Spencer.
Greenleaf, F. A., Townsend.
Gregory, J. J. H., Marblehead.
Gregory, Edgar, Marblehead.
Goodell, Dr. J. W., Lynn.
Goodell, L. W., Belchertown.
Griggs, Charles V., Westboro,
Grubb, John G., Fitchburg.
Hadwen, O. B., Worcester.
Hall, Walton, Marshfleld.

83

Hammond, F. M., Worcester.
Harlow, H. J., W. Boylston.
Harlow, Thomas, N. Boylston.
Harrington, H. A., Peabody.
Harrington, J. B., Lunenburg.
Hartshorn, C. L., Worcester.
Hartwell, Samuel, Lincoln.
Hawkins, A. C, Lancaster.
Hayes, W. H., N. Andover.
Haywood, C. F., Ashby.
Haywood, Mary A., Natick.
Haywood, M. W., Natick.
Hersey, E. A , Worcester.
Hersey, Edmund, Hingham.
Hittinger, Richard, Belmont.
Hinds, A. J., Townsend.
Hinds, W. D., Townsend.
Hixon, A. A., Worcester.
Hodges, H. H., Sherborn.
Holden, A. B., Westminster.
Holden, S. R., Sherborn.
Houghton, G. B., Lunenburg.
Houghton, H. R., Lunenburg.
Howe, E. D., Marlboro.
Howe, F. N., Northboro.
Hoxie, D. E., Leeds.
Hoyt, Edwin, New Canaan, Conn.
Hunt, W. H., Concord.
Hutchinson, G. H., S. Middlefield.
James, George B., Boston.
Jefts, C. M., Ashby.
Jewett, W. C, Worcester.
Johnson, W. H., Northboro.
Johnson, F. H. , Westboro.
Johnson, Frank, N. Grafton.
Jones, N. R., Billerica.
Kilbourn, William, So. Lancaster.
Kingsbury, H. W., Spencer.
Kinney, F. J., Worcester.
Kinney, L F., Kingston, R. I.
Knight, C. B., Worcester.
Leavens, George B., Grafton.
Longley, M, W., Shirley.
Manning, J. W., Reading.
Marshall, A. A., Fitchburg.
Maynard, Samuel T., Amherst.

Maynard, L. W., So. Berlin.
Mead, H. O., Lunenburg.
Minott, C. W., Maiden.
Moore, Elliott, Worcester.
Moore, H. W., Worcester.
Moore, Plinny, Worcester.
Morse, Monroe, Medway.
Murphy, Jacob, Billerica.
Nason, J. Henry, West Boxford.
Overend, Walter, Worcester.
O'Connel, William, Worcester.
O'Hara, Eugene, Worcester.
Page, J. N., Leominster.
Palmer, Moses P., Groton.
Parker, Charles E., Worcester.
Parker, Henry L., Worcester.
Perry, A. D., Worcester.
Perry, Joseph S., Worcester.
Perry, O. H. J., Providence, R. I.
Pierce, J. W., West Milbury.
Phelps, A. D., Northboro.
Pond, W. F., Worcester.
Priest, G. S., Littleton.
Prescott, C. W., Concord.
Pratt, Augustus, N. Middleboro.
Pratt, C. S., Reading.
Pratt, Henry S., Worcester.
Prouty, Thomas A., Spencer.
Putnam, D. O., W. Sutton.
Putnam, Henry, Worcester.
Putnam, J. H., Litchfield, Conn.
Race, R. H., No. Egremont.
Record, S. H., Worcester.
Rice, George C, Worcester.
Rice, L. W., Wilbraham.
Robbins, O. R., Weston.
Ross, W. D., Worcester.

Russell, , .

Sanderson, T, J., Fitchburg.
Sawtell, John M., Fitchburg.
Seaver, J. A., Townsend.
Sessions, William R., Boston.
Sharp, A. G., Richmond.
Simonds, T. P., Ashby.
Smith, L. B., Bridgewater,

84

Smith, George N., Newton Lower. Ware, Benjamin P., Marblehead.

Falls. Warren, S. H., Weston.

Stevens, H. S., Wellesley. Watts, C. F., Littleton. ^

Stockwell, H. S., Sutton. Wheeler, Caleb H., Lincoln.

Stockwell, O, Fitchburg. Wheeler, George F., Concord.

Stone, George E., Shrewsbury. Wheeler, Frank, Concord

Stone, Charles N., N. Leominster. Whitcomb, N. H., Littleton.

Stone, H. J., Shrewsbury. Whitcomb, George S., Townsend.

Stowe, A. M., Hudson. White, John, Fitchburg.

Titcomb, W. H., West Acton. Whitney, N. C, Upton.

Townsend, J. R., Green Lawn, N.Y. Williams, W. E., Townsend.

Turtelotte, E. F., Worcester. Wilson, A. H., Mason, N. H.

Twitchel, S., Fitchburg. Wood, C. M., Upton.

Vincent, M. H., Conway. Wood, E. W., West Newion.

Walker, S. R., No. Leominster. Woolridge, , Lunenburg.

Walsh, Almon, No. Leominster. Wyman, O. B., Shrewsbury.

Ward, Asa M., Worcester. Young, E. S., Orange.

POMOLOGY imm

Report of the Sixth Annual . . .
Meeting of the Massachusetts
Fruit Grow V Association . . .

V

Organised i^arcl) 31, 1^9 J.

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(Organized March 21, 1S95.)

REPORT

SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,
March 14 and 15, 1900.

llClorccstcr: /TOass.:

Press of f. S. Blanchard & Co.
1900.

\

SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

Massacliusetts Fruit Growers' Association

HELD AT

WORCESTER, March 14 and i ^, 1900.

OPENING SESSION,

Wednesday Morning, March 14(h, at 10.15 0'' Clock.

President George Criiickshanks called the meeting to order,
and the following address of welcome was then delivered by
Mr. O. B. Hadwen, president of the Worcester Horticultural
Society:

Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Society : In
behalf of the \Yorcester County Horticultural Society, I am
pleased to tender you a most cordial and hearty welcome. I
regard it a propitious day when we have the pleasure of your
company, and aid in the dissemination of valuable practical
information concerning the progress of fruit-growing. We can
scarcely overestimate the importance of fruit-culture as a civil-
izing, educating and refining influence upon those engaged in
the calling. The increase in the quantity has kept even pace
with the quality and flavor, and you know better than I can tell
you the rapid progress made during this generation. Further-
more, you have by your increased skill in gathering and pack-
ing and storing fruits, greatly lengthened the period which we
can enjoy its luxury and health-giving properties. And, still
more, who can estimate the refining infiuence that the process
of fruit- growing in its broader scope exerts on our people, both
growers and consumers'? For in fruit-growing you truly culti-
vate both a science and an art. By what mysterious power does
each fruit seek out its distinctive color, its texture, its flavor,

its form, its size, its early as well as its late keeping properties,
and with their wonderful nurabei- of varieties — no two are found
alike — does nature endow each with a natural period of life, the
old decay and the new fill its place? And while your society is
comparatively new, its advancement has been conspicuous by
your enthusiasm, by your discussions and j)ublished reports,
and your beneficent influence has been felt throughout the Com-
monwealth.

You know that fruit-growing is rapidly becoming one of the
principal agricultural and horticultural industries of the state.
And, while I must not further intrude upon your valuable time,
permit me to thank you for the honor you do us by meeting in
this our Horticultural hall, and I hope it will prove a con
genial place for your discussions.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

I am here to extend to you a hearty welcome in behalf of the
Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association. According to the
by-laws we are required to hold two field meetings during the
season. In compliance with that rule, we held two meetings
last year, one at Amherst, which is a place where any one might
go every year and still find something new; and to Wellesley,
where we visited the Wellesley College grounds and Mr. F. W.
Hunnewell's estate. Having served you in this capacity for
three years, I wish to be relieved from further service.

The secretary's report was read and accepted.

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : The report of the
meetings of the association, and of all the business, has been
printed in the annual report, which you have already, and per-
haps I should not take the time to read the minutes, as I have
them in the record books. The president has referred to the
field meetings, of which I have also a record in the secretary's
book, to which I need not further refer.

The work of the secretary has been very great through all
the years of our work. The work consists in collecting fees
and dues, in answering correspondence, in making programs
and sending them out, and a large amount of work which I find
that my time will not warrant me continuing any longer, and
thanking you for having your confidence so long, [ wish to ask
to be relieved at this time. Of course I am glad to do anything
I can for the association, and would be glad to continue the work
if I thought it were necessary.

Report of the treasurer was then read, accepted and adopted.

1899.
March 8.

1899.

March 8

10.

13.

June

26.

Oct.

10.

12.

1900.
March 12.

March 14.

TREASURER'S REPORT.
DR.

Balance in treasury, $87 69

Received during year membership dues, 113 00

Received interest on savings bank deposits, 1 63

$202 32

CR.

Paid Geo. Craickshanks, postage, etc., $2 75
Mary AT. Park, stenographer, 25 00

Sentinel Printing Co., 12 00

Ethelbert Bliss, lecture and expenses, 14 04
Sentinel Printing Co., 18 35

Professor Fernald, lecture and ex-
penses, 13 25
Telegrams (by secretary), 82
Printing posters. 70
Postage, 5 60
F. S. Blanchard &Co., printing annu-
al reports (bill), 104 70

Postage and revenue stamps, by the

treasurer, 60

Balance in treasury, 4 51

$202 32
ETHAK BROOKS, Treasurer.

The report of the auditor, which was then read, reported the
accounts correct and accompanied by the proper vouchers, and
was accepted.

The chair suggested that a committee be appointed to nomi-
nate a list of ofiBcers for the ensuing year, the election to take
place at the afternoon session.

It was then moved by Mr. E. D. Howe of Marlboro that
a committee of five be appointed by the chair to prepare a
list of officers for the ensuing year, to be presented at the after-
noon session for election.

Carried.

The chair appointed the following Committee on Nominations:
E. D. Howe of Marlboro, C. L. Hartshorn of Worcester, C. L.

Blake of Ashby, Jonathan Eames of Sherborn, Monroe Morse of
Medway.

The president then introduced Mr. Jonathan Eames of Sher-
born, who read the following essay upon

HANDLING THE APPLE-CROP ON A MASSACHUSETTS FARM.

Handling the apple-crop must depend on one's location. I
am some distance from town, and do not send a team daily to
market. Our varieties are Baldwins and Russets, and we grow
the fruit for the late winter or spring market. You have
all heard the advice of Marshall P. Wilder. When asked
by a young man for a list of varieties for an orchard of
100 trees, he replied, "Set 90 Baldwins," and after a moment's
reflection, he added, "Set nine more Baldwins," and when
reminded there was still room for one tree, he said, "Set another
Baldwin." We set at Highland Fruit Farm last year 200 young
trees. Whoever lives to see them come into bearing may ex-
pect to find them all Baldwins, for friend Hoyt's trees are
always true to name. We find two other things besides the or-
chard necessary to enable us to handle our crop to advantage —
a fruit-cellar and a cider-mill.

We have made it a practice for many years to let hogs have
the run of the orchards till the first week in September. We
find this the cheapest way the premature fruit can be gathered
up, and the insects which caused the fruit to fall disposed
of in such a way that we are sure they will be destroyed.

All apples on the giound September 20th are gathered
and taken to the mill for vinegar stock. This also enables us
to get rid of more insects while still in the eg^ or larva stage.
The apples on scattering trees or those at a distance are gath-
ered soon after the 20th of September, so the larger part of the
crop can be taken from the trees in a few days, as soon after Sep-
tember 2.5th as possible, in an average year.

A crew of six men, five beside the foreman, makes a good
number for apple picking. I have usually been my own fore-
man, and set the ladders and empty the baskets. The barrels,
which have been thoroughly cleaned, are brought to the orchard
and placed in a single row between the trees. We use light
ladders, free from knots, with ash or white oak rounds. The
ladders have been given two coats of paint. We find the centre
of gravity of each and paint a black band around one side. If
you pick up the ladder at this point it will balance in your
hand. We buy ladders up to 24 feet in length; above that we
prefer an extension ladder. A 20-foot and a 15-foot ladder are
best for this purpose; either can be used alone on the low trees,

and when put together they reach anywhere between 20 and 32
feet. Such a ladder can be used in many ijlaces where a 30-foot
ladder could not, as the lower part can be set first and the
shorter one run up as the picker ascends the ladder. We use
the loose- bail one-half bushel basket, so they can be turned in
the barrel. The less apples the men have ever picked the sooner
will they handle the apples to suit us, for they must be handled
carefully, and an old picker, who has picked apples for the
average farmer, always says we are too fussy about it, but the
most careless man in the lot will be your best picker next year,
if he can help you pack the apples for market next April or
May. He will then see whether it pays to handle apples care-
fully or not. Two ladders are set to a tree, far enough ajjart so
the pickers can reach the apples between them. One ladder is
moved around the tree in one direction and the other opposite.
Two rows of trees are gathered at the same time. Extra ladders
are used, so there is always one ready when a man sets his full
basket down and finds an empty bisket at his next one. After
the ladders have been round the tree let the lightest man, wear-
ing a pair of tennis shoes, go about inside the tree and gather
the remainder of the apples, using a wire apple-picker at last
for the scattering apples on the higher branches which were be-
yond his reach. These are the best apples on the tree and will
well repay the extra trouble in securing them. When you are
picking very high trees it is a good plan for this man to have a
cord or light rope hung to his belt to lower the full baskets and
draw up the empty ones. I have had men lower twenty
baskets in this way without coming down. When the bas-
kets are emptied I throw out everything I do not want in the
barrel. When the orchard is finished you will notice the lad-
ders have not been moved one-half as many times as an inex-
perienced man would have moved them. Every tree is picked
clean, and I know every apple that is in the barrel at the close
of the day's picking is all right. A one-horse stone drag is
driven close to the row of barrels and they are transferred to
the drag, by a single half turn, no barrel being rolled at all.
Three barrels are taken at a load, and the drag is driven to the
fruit-cellar.

The fruit-cellar is all below ground on east and west ends and
north side. It will hold 500 barrels of apples. A 20-inch stone
wall separates it from the outer cellar, which will hold as many
more, but the temperature cannot be regulated as it can be in
the inner cellar, which has a window at each end, in a box, with
a wooden shutter outside. Overhead, through the middle of
the cellar, there is an iron track, such as is used in the beef-
houses. The barrels as brought from the orchard are picked up
by depressing the long arm of a five-foot lever which hangs to the

8

trolley, while on the track at the other end of the lever there is
a grapple, on the same principle as a pair of ice-tongs, which
holds the barrel as it runs along the track till it reaches its place
in the cellar. Not an apple need be Jarred from the barrel after
a little practice, no matter how full they were. A narrow pass-
age is left under the track, so that the apples first put in can be
taken out first as easily as any of the other barrels. The bar-
rels on either side are placed one upon another; they are not
headed up, nor will they be picked over or touched until wanted
for packing. The wooden shutters are kept closed by day, but
windows and shutters are opened at night if the temperature is
below that in the cellar. The temperature is lowered to 40 de-
grees as soon as possible, and to 32 as soon as cold weather
allows it. It is at this point, after the cellar is filled, a fan or
blower is used to advantage. We always have cold nights in
early October, and two or three weeks of warm weather after-
ward. A- blower would cool the cellar down, so that by keeping
it closed it could be kept cool. I have a two-foot blower which,
owing to a short crop last year was not put in position, but I
hope to have it in order this coming season. A neighbor re-
ports very favorably the work of a fan or blower which he has
used for several years to cool his cranberry cellar. He blows
the cold air into the cellar. I think I shall set mine the other
way and exhaust the warm air from the cellar and let the cold
air flow in from the other end of the cellar. The place where it
is to be set is within 30 feet of the engine, so it can be run at
high speed as long as is necessary. I have kept the thermome-
ter at 32 degrees after cold weather for a month at a time, and the
cellar is always in total darkness, so the apples will not ripen
or sweat. • If apples are allowed to go through the sweating pro-
cess, they have advanced a long way towards ripeness, and the
next step to ripeness is decay. So if we can keep the apples from
getting ripe we expect they are keeping well, but there is a great
difference in the apples keeping in different seasons, even if
handled in the same way.

If one cares to try the experiment of picking over the apples
at Thanksgiving time, he will find as many decayed apples will
have to come out of these barrels the middle of April as from
the other barrels that were not picked over. So for several
years we have allowed the barrels to remain until sold without
disturbing them at all.

All the apples on the ground after the hand-picked ones are
taken from the trees should be gathered as soon as possible.
The best windfall apples can be used to advantage in several
ways, if used at once, as it is folly to try to keep them. Ped-
dlers will often take them to sell in the neighboring villages,
or they can be used for evaporating, or for canning. Last year

was our first attempt at canning apples. I think there will be
some seasons when the No. 2 apples can be used in this way to
very good advantage. The balance of the apples on the ground
can be taken to the cider-mill, the product to be disposed of as
crude or refined cider, boiled cider, cider jelly, or cider vinegar;
thus not only giving the advantage of selling apples in several
different forms, but also to lengthen the season, or even to keep
over to another season, as could be easily done with canned
apples and cider vinegar. After the cider is pressed out, the
apple pomace will find ready sale, as the dairy farmers have
learned it is an excellent feed for cattle through the winter, if
packed in a silo, so that it can be properly kept. There are
many other ways in which apple pomace can be used to advan-
tage. With a mixture of one bushel of soft coal, two bushels of
screenings, and six bushels of apple pomace. We can keep up
60 pounds of steam in our 16 horse-power steam boiler all day
and in the evening.

When packing the apples for market have the barrel thor-
oughly cleaned, and place a layer of apples, stems downward, in
the bottom of the barrel. Then fill, shaking several times, and
press in the head with a screw press. Put nothing in the bar-
rel but good, sound fruit, and have the quality as good in one
part of the barrel as another. Dealers soon learn to depend
on a shipper's fruit. I have customers whom I have supplied
for thirty years, and it is a pleasure to know that my efforts to
put up a good article are appreciated.

The time to sell the apples is when they are wanted. It does
not pay to keep apples till the first or middle of January. They
are usually lower then than in the fall, when the buyers are
looking for them to use or to ship. I never knew but one
year when it did not pay to keep apples till March. We used
to keep apples much later than that, but times are changing.
It cost me 50c. per barrel to learn that it did not pay to keep
apples till rhubarb became cheap in the market. Last year we
sent oui last Russets to New York city April 14, and made our
last pressing of cider April 15. I have got through sending
apples to Liverpool. I have had very good luck and very bad
luck in sending them there, but in the way the business is now
transacted, it is so risky I prefer to know what I am to get for
them. I think more depends on the place in the steamer in
which the fruit is packed than anything else. I had a car-load
of apples on the Catalonia that was packed in the bows clear
forward. There were 8000 barrels on board, and my fruit brought
the highest quotation in the lot. Another car-load I sent by
the Warren line. I did not see these packed on the vessel, but
should judge they were placed on the boiler, for they were
almost cooked when they arrived. They were a fine lot when

10

they left my place, yet the price I received was anything but
satisfactory. A farmer is badly handicapped in selling a crop
of apples ; he never has two full crops in succession, which is
not so bad in itself, as a half crop will often bring more money
than a full one. Apples are seldom wanted in the same market
on two succeeding years. Only a few years ago I sent my
apples to Chicago ; the year before that and the year after,
apples came from the West this way ; so it keeps one looking
about to learn which section has the apple-crop, the particular
year he has fruit to sell. This is a big country, and there are
apples somewhere every year, and the railroads will deliver the
crop where it is wanted. You will notice it is ray object to
handle the apple-crop as I should try to any crop if I grew it,
without calling upon the middle-man, the auctioneer, or the
commission merchant. With some other crops like grapes,
peaches, or strawberries, we have sometimes to call on the
commission dealer, as these perishable fruits must be handled
quickly, and we are often busy at home. But if apples are
handled as I have mentioned, the season is much lengthened, and
I have ample time to find the best markets or to supply our
customers as they may need any of our specialties at any time
of the year. This, Mr. Chairman, would be my idea of hand-
ling the apple-crop to advantage.

Prof. S. T. Maynard of Amherst — Mr. President, I should
like to ask the speaker if he is troubled with the Baldwin spot
or brown spot under the skin of the Baldwin ?

Mr. Eames — That is a trouble that seems to be increasing.
It has appeared the last year or two more than ever before. I
think it is a question as to what we are going to about it.

Prof. Maynard— What is the cause of it?

Mr. Eames — That is what I do not know. I think it has in-
creased it in the cellar.

Prof. Maynard — It is found on the apples before they are
packed, in many cases.

Mr. Eames — I know it ; but it seems to increase after they
are put into the cellar.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend— Mr. President, I would ask
whether the fruit getting over-ripe increases this brown spot,
and whether it can be avoided somewhat by picking a little
earlier than we have been in the habit of doing ?

Mr. Eames — I should say the spot would be worse with over-
ripe apples.

11

Mr. Elliott Moore of Worcester — I picked mine earlier last
year than ever before, and had more brown spots than ever
before.

Prof. Maynard — I would like to ask Mr. Moore if bis apples
did not ripen earlier than ever before.

Mr. Moore — They did.

Mr. A.. B. Holden of Westminster — I would like to ask Mr.
Eames how he prevents the swine from injuring the trees. As
I understand him, he has been having them in his orchard from
time immemorial, and T should think he would have a good
chance to know whether they injured the trees or not.

Mr. Eames — 1 think it depends entirely on the hogs. We find
some hogs that we would not trust in an orchard at all. The
Berkshire I do not think would ever trouble the trees, nor the
Yorkshire. If we have trouble with any of them we take them
to the butcher at once.

Prof. Maynard — Will Mr. Eames tell us of the fertilizers he
uses'?

Mr. Eames — We use dressing we make during the winter
from these hogs, and we raise no other crops but fruit. We
give a two-horse load to two or three large fruiting trees, and
have for several years. I don't know why any manure is not
good for trees. I think potash would be a good thing to add to
this compost.

By a Member — Do you use any commercial fertilizers'?

Mr. Eames — Not on apple-orchards, but we do on peaches.

By a Member — Do you thin the fruit!

Mr. Eames — We do not. I think we get better specimens if
eight or ten barrels are on a tree than if reduced to two or
three. There are about so many insects for each tree, and if
they have a large number of apples to work on they cannot do
as much mischief as if they have one apiece.

By a Member— Are your apples small?

Mr. Eames — No ; the best specimens you always get on the
tree with the most fruit. If I were going to get specimens for
an agricultural show, I would get them from trees that had the
most fruit on them.

By a Member — Do you spray'?

Mr. Eames — Yes, sir ; we use paris green and Bordeaux mix-
ture at the same time.

12

Mr. D. L. Fiske of Grafton — At what time of the year do
you spray?

Mr. Barnes— Once in the spring before the blossoms form,
and once later if we have time, but the one before the blossoms
form is necessary to protect them from the canker-worm. We
have a good deal of trouble with the canker-worm.

Mr. Fiske — Do you ever spray before the buds start!

Mr. Eames — I do not. The canker-worm is what we spray

for.

Mr. E. D. Howe of Marlboro — Is there any advantage in

scraping the trunks of trees?

Mr. Eames — I think there is ; I think many insects' eggs are
killed. We scraped our orchard last week.

Mr. Howe — Does that destroy the eggs"?

Mr. Eames — I think so. If not, I expect the hogs to look
after them a little later on. There is one thing about the hogs
that has not been told. Every two or three years you have to
change the whole lot. Our fences are stone walls, and the hogs
get educated so that they stand on their hind feet and throw off
the top stones.

Mr. T. J. Sanderson of Fitchburg — Do your trees bear the
odd year?

Mr. Eames — The question of apples bearing the odd 3 ear has
been solved in our town by two men. In 1895 they allowed the
whole orchard to be defoliated by the canker-worm, and they
now get a full crop of apples the odd year.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend — Some of us had better not
spray, and change the bearing season of half the trees at least.

Mr. Eames — These two men made a thousand dollars apiece
by not spraying.

The Chair — The next topic is, " The Importance of Fruit Cul-
ture in Massachusetts." The paper is to be read by a gentle-
man who needs no introduction to a Worcester audience at
least. Professor A. A. Brigham of the Kingston Agricultural
College will now address you on this topic.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRUIT CULTURE IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Mr. President, Gentlemen of Massachusetts, and Members of
the Fruit Growers' Association : The topic given to me was,

13

"The Importance of Fruit Culture in New England," and I
think that is about the same, for Massachusetts and her sister
states ai-e practically one, her interests are one, her objects are
one. I am given a subject you will notice that will allow me to
say almost anything and not come to the point, and so if in
what T say I do not give you pointed instructions as to spray-
ing, etc., I will say as a preface it was not expected, and if you
wish to ask pointed questions you can ask them after I am
through with my short address, and I will answer them if I can.

For over two hundred years the fertile valleys and rocky
hillsides of Yankeeland have been producing men and money
to be sent beyond its own borders for the subduing of the west-
ern wilds and developing of the resources of our great land.
One of the results of this sustained sacrifice of the best
products of New England's thrift is to-day' an agriculture in
many of its districts which is represented by depleted fields,
bushgiown pastures, neglected buildings and abandoned farms.
The next twenty years will decide whether the farming people
of the New England commonwealths shall here develop the
highest state of intensive agriculture, of rural homes and Saxon
manhood, or yield up their costly heritage to ignorant alien
peasants fiom foreign lands.

The brains, the brawn — yea, the heart and soul — of our New
England farm-homes have very freely and very fully con-
tributed to the building up of our nation. Now has come a
time when our best men and women must turn themselves to
their own farms, their own homes, their own life conditions,
and solve the problem of successful farming under circum-
stances which demand the best thought, the strongest effort,
and the shrewdest application of new methods for their suc-
cessful solution.

The present crisis in New England farming calls for three
strong factors : courage, capital, and co-operation. Here is
where the importance of fruit-culture comes in as one of four
branches of intensive farming which may be developed to ad-
vantage under the changed conditions. The other three are
dairying, poultry-keeping and gardening.

First. Courage should be a leading characteristic of the new
farmer. He must have courage to enable him to break away
from antiquated customs where they hamper and hinder his
progress, and adopt new and helpful methods conducive to
success ; courage to buy land and not to buy too much ; cour-
age to sell land if he has a surplus ; courage to till his remain-
ing acres well and to keep them in splendid tilth ; courage to
plant fruit-trees and to supply plant-food in abundance to his
well- cultivated orchards ; courage to furnish his fruit-fields
with every right condition for their best growth ; courage to

14

thin the fruit when it hangs too thickly in the branches ; cour-
age to spray and fight plant-diseases and injurious insects to
the death, or, better, prevent their presence on his farm ; courage
to study hard the special demands of his market and to perse-
vere until he hits them ; courage to work hard, to use capital
and to co-operate with his fellow fruit-producers to secure suc-
cess.

Second. Capital is absolutely essential to the development
of farming, and especially fruit-growing on the new basis.
Every successful, progressive business demands capital. This
factor must be wisely studied and carefully applied. Every-
thing depends upon the proper balance of the financial invest-
ment. Sink enough in the land and fixtures to make the
foundation firm, but keep enough money as floating capital to
meet the annual necessities by purchases made to the best ad-
vantage. It pays in fruit-culture to buy the best, and every
dollar should be put where it will pay. The proper investment
of capital in fruit-growing calls for the hardest study of every
condition that bears upon the problem, and the keenest utiliza-
tion of the experience and experiments of the investor himself
and of his contemporaries.

Business sagacity and the keeping of necessary accounts are
essential in fruit-growing as in every other branch of modern
farming.

Third. Co-operation must be applied to cheapen the cost of
investment ; to reduce the expenses and enhance the receipts of
the business. In these days of great corporate undertakings,
of syndicate operations and trust companies, there is nothing
left the independent farmer but to join forces with his fellow
farmers and unitedly push the business of farming to a suc-
cessful issue.

The speaker enlarged upon this phase of modern farming,
and fully illustrated the means to be taken in the pur-
chase of supplies, the sale of fruit, the securing of needed
legislation, and the maintenance of conditions favorable to the
success of the fruit-producer.

He then emphasized the need of proper training for the call-
ing, and spoke of the mission of tlie agricultural colleges and
experiment stations in this connection. He called attention to
the matter of irrigation as applied to orchards and small fruits,
urged the necessity of applying th'i principles of plant- breeding
to the selection and improvement of varieties of fruits adapted
to special locations and conditions. He spoke, in closing, of the
blessing that might be worked out of the present curse of adul-
terations so universally prevalent in food- supplies if the fruit-
growers would unite in an effort to displace them by the
healthful products of the fruit-farm and garden, supplied in
attractive packages at popular prices.

15

Mr. E. A. Abbott of Worcester — I should like to ask the
speaker if he has the San Jose scale, and what he does for it;
what he would advise to do for it.

Prof. Brijjjham — It is in Ehode Island, and it has been over-
come by spraying.

Mr. Abbott — What do you use?

Prof. Brigham — I cannot tell you.

Mr. James Draper of Worcester — I think Prof. Maynard can
answer the question.

Mr. Abbott — If anything new is to be advocated we should like
to find it out.

Prof. Maynard— Mr. President, in California this scale ap-
peared some 15 or 20 years ago, and was thought to be the most
serious thing that had ever been introduced. I found this
summer when there that they did not fear it at all, as they had
it entirely under control. It is stated by Prof. Smith of New
Jersey, one of the leading jiractical entomologists of the country,
that kerosene will destroy it. In Massachusetts we have not
made experiments that will prove the matter. But that is good
authority for believing that clear kerosene applied upon the
trees in the winter in a fine mist and on a bright day, will not
injure the trees, and will kill the San Jose scale, and in the
summer, when hatching out, it may be killed with equal
certainty. When the young first hatch out they move almost
as rapidly as any insect. If the tree is sprayed at this time with
kerosene, the young scales will be destroyed, and the kerosene
may be applied to the trees in the summer, if you take the above
precaution and apply in a mist form, but will be injured if it
runs down the branches. In a bright day it will evaporate very
quickly. To prevent this pest being spread by nurseries, all
stock sold by them should be fumigated with hydrocyanic gas,
as is done in New York and Maryland. This should be com-
pulsory by state laws.

Mr. F. J. Kinney of Worcester — I should like to ask the pro-
fessor if he does not understand that crude petroleum is a good
deal better than kerosene.

Prof. Maynard — Yes, sir, it is claimed so by one or two good
authorities.

Mr. Kinney — It is said to be a good deal safer; it is thicker
and does not evaporate so rapidly.

16

Prof. Maynard — If kerosene is allowed to remain on the
branch or leaf a long time, it will kill the trees. Crude petro-
leum may not evaporate quickly enough. We have made no
test in Massachusetts, but the tests made last year in New
York state would leave the impiession that crude petroleum
is better. It is difficult to obtain unless you get it by the
barrel.

By a Member — What is crude petroleum?

Prof. Maynard — It is kerosene as jit comes from the well,
with more or less coloring matter in it, but liquid enough to be
sprayed.

By a Member — Have farmers been protected by tariff as much
as the manufacturing industries have?

Prof. Brigham — I think they never have been protected, and
never will be protected until they protect themselves. Look
at the discussion going on to- day. The sugar-growers are afraid
of the tariff or lack of tariff that would be applied to our new
colonies. The steel industry was protected. Every great in-
dustry that is great to-day was protected until it could stand
upon its own feet. Why not protect the fruit-growers and
other soil industries until they can stand on their feet? If it is
policy for the government to protect industries until they stand
on their feet, and then spread out until they are like New York
aldermen and become top-heavy with wealth, I say it is at least
proper that the government should protect farm products until
the farmer can live as well as the manufacturers.

Mr. Howe — You divide the subject into four kinds of inten-
sive agriculture — vegetable gardening, the dairy industry, fruit-
growing, and poultry. I should like to have some one answer
under what conditions of location and value of land can a person
afford to engage, we will say, in the fruit-growing industry?
You do not find many of the market gardeners around Arling-
ton or Belmont growing fruit; the land is worth too much.

Prof. Brigham — I think that depends on the market, the
question of labor. Every farmer in New England has got to
study his advantages and work that problem out himself. I
spoke of these four branches, but I would not confine farming
in New England to those four. I would say to every farmer, if
he has already purchased his farm, study your conditions. If

17

you are free and have capital enough to pick out a place, con-
sult your own wishes and desires, and find a spot in New Eng-
land which tits your plan, and go to work as a business man
does, and study the detail of that problem, and if the study of
the problem decides that you shall raise dairy cattle and supply
fresh milk, and can run a route and bring the consumer and the
producer close together, and collect your bills like any other
business man, go into dairying. If you choose in connection to
grow a little fruit, I don't think anybody will find fault with
you: but I believe every farmer should have a specialty, and
every part of the farm should contribute to making it a success.
It is done in other kinds of business, and is done by farmers
who have the best and highest success, and so each man must
study his own problem. Some may go to geese raising and some
to raising goats. I believe there is something in even the latter
industry. Many in New England can go into the chicken busi-
ness and make a success, and some make a failure. It takes a
peculiar kind of a man to go into poultry raising. 1 don't care
what your training is, I don't care what the conditions are; I
say you have got to study it out yourself, work it out on a
financial basis; answer that question that Brother Howe has
asked me yourself, under the conditions of the market, soil,
climate, labor and brain capacity, yourself and your wife, and
after you have decided, and having begun on a plan, stick to it
until it succeeds or you die.

Mr. Elliott Moore of Worcester — I should like to ask what
your standard is of success.

Prof. Brigham — My standard is a happy home first.

Mr. Moore — I wanted to know whether it is that or financial
success. If the ideas put forth here were carried out in any
other business besides farming, it would make a millionaire of
a man, but being in farming he will get a happy home, and that
is all, but there he has success enough for one's life.

Prof. Brigham — I think so, and I think you cannot have the
very best home without money. It takes money to make home
happy and cultivated in these times, and I should like the farm-
er to get a happy home and also a little extra money, and I
think it is to be had. If a farmer has a farm worth five thou-
sand dollars, or as much more as you please, or even less, and

18

he has five thousand dollars more in the bank he can use for
capital, I say I think that farmer is fixed well enough, and he
had better not try to be worth a million.

The President — There is one other gentleman prepared to
address you this forenoon, and that is Mr. Henry E. Rich of
Worcester.

BEST VARIETIES OF APPLES FOR LOCAL MARKETS AND

EXPORT.

Mr. President, Ladies and Fruit Growers of Massachusetts:
This is a very hard question assigned to me. I was born in
this city fifty-five years ago. I can remember when it contained
one hundred thousand less inhabitants than it has to-day. I
can remember as well as I can remember what I had for break-
fast this morning, of coming to this city with fruit. Things
have changed in these last forty-five years. Varieties of apples
brought to market at that time, it is now about impossible for
us to raise. And now, in mentioning the different varieties of
apples for the local market, I want to impress upon your minds
one thing. I want you to throw aside every question of quality.
You may think that is strange. Everything I say to you this
morning is from practical experience. I don't propose to say
one word to you about the apple but what I have learned from
practical experience.

What do we want"? We want in the first place color. Now
to illustrate that, I took a great interest last fall in this matter,
as apples were selling rapidly in this market. There was a
great call and sale for them, especially in the second quality of
apples that come to this market. Second quality apples never
sold so well in Worcester as they did last fall. The hucksters
sold the most of them. I know a huckster who averaged sixty
to seventy-five barrels of apples every week, sold in wagons
holding from six to ten barrels. One morning I said to one
of them who had ten barrels on his load, "How long will it
take you to sell them^" "Two hours," he said. They were
second-quality Baldwin apples. And what I want to impress
upon your minds is that color instead of quality is what at-
tracts. To illustrate that again. At the market on Mechanic
street, Brigham & Dodge averaged 100 to 130 barrels every day,
and 90 jier cent, of them were sold to hucksters. Many of
these were Rhode Island Greenings, second quality, and Pippins,
second quality. The quality of these green ai)ples was better
than the second quality Baldwins, and of all other red apples in
the market, but they could not sell them. Whyf On account
of the color, and that is where the great change has come in

19

thirty or forty years. In those times people knew what apples
were. This city was full of orchards right here where we now
have brick blocks five to seven stories high. Those people are
dead and gone. Now we have a population in this city of
thousands that do not know one apple from another, and that is
why the apple with good color sells so much quicker, and is of
more profit to the grower than the green apple.

Summer apples, Astrachan, Early Wilbams and Sour Bough.
The Astrachan in this market is a good selling apple; showy,
but not a long keeper. It is a fair eating apple and a very good
cooking apple. The Williams is an apple for the table, is at-
tractive, but not a good cooking apple. But this market is
ready to receive all the well-grown Williams apples that can be
bought. I believe the Williams apples should never be picked
from the tree. You notice on a tree of Early Williams they do
not all color at the same time. I think the best way is to pro-
tect the ground, if uneven or rough, with straw or something of
that kind, and let the apples fall as they color. If they are not
colored when you pick them, they never will color. Sour Bough
is a better apple than any of the above list, but it will sell only
to those who know the apple. A certain amount of those apples
will fetch a good price.

September apples, the Wealthy, Mcintosh, Gravenstein and
Hubbardston. The Wealthy is an attractive apple, and will
bring a good price if well grown. There are lots of apples on
our farms that we all like if well grown, but the trouble is to
grow them well. Of the Mcintosh, this city does not receive
ten per cent, of this apple it should. It is a very nice eating ap-
ple, fine grain, showy, and is first-class. We have an apple in
the Gravenstein of a flavor we do not get in any other apple,
but with a great many of us it is not satisfactory, and in the last
two or three years it has dropped badly. I have a fine Graven-
stein tree standing in a rich place, but I do not get good returns
from it; the apples drop off before fully grown. I have a Graven-
stein in the pasture; it is the first tree the cows stop at when
coming through the gate, and I get good apples from it. Mr.
Kinney has got $1.50 for his Gravenstein apples when I could
get only seventy-five cents. The Hubbardston is not doing
well with us under all conditions. It is an apple that has a
limited demand. The market is often flooded with Hubbardston
Nonesuch.

For winter apples we have the Baldwin, Sutton Beauty, Bell-
flower, Rhode Island Greening, Palmer, Fallawater and Peck's
Pleasant.

I shall start with the Baldwin. There is no use for me to occu-
py one moment of time on the Baldwin apple. It is the apple
of this country. Mr. President, my friend, David Fiske of

20

Grafton, made a statement in Shrewsbury a few weeks ago that
if he could have but one tree, that tree would be the Sutton
Beauty, I don't agree with him. If I could have but one
tree, I would graft one-half Sutton Beauty and the other half the
Baldwin. (Handing to audience specimens of Sutton Beauty.)
Those were raised by Calvin Hartshorn of Worcester, and not
kept in cold storage. This is an apple that would hang on the
tree after your Baldwins have nearly all fallen off. There is not
one barrel of Sutton Beauty that comes into this market of
Worcester where we could sell twenty. The Bellflower is
a very nice apple. I have noticed the last two years out of
twenty-five varieties in the Massachusetts Horticultural Society
exhibition, the premium, which is a large one, where the call is
for "any other variety," goes to the Bellflower. It is delicate
to handle, and will almost show finger-marks on it as you pick
it. It is of fine quality, but must be handled very carefully, and
always sells well in this market. Mr. Brigham said to me one
morning : "If a man comes up with a load of apples, eight of
Baldwins and two of Greenings, the Baldwins will be sold inside
of twenty minutes, and the Greenings will hang around for four
or five days." I asked him the price, and he said $1.25 for the
Baldwins, and Greenings sell for less than $1, just on account
of the color. The Tompkins King with me has not been satis-
factory. I have one jrood crop in six or seven years. The
Palmer Greening is in my opinion one of the finest apples grown
— I won't except the Sutton Beauty — for flavor, but the trouble
is the color. Fruit-growers of Massachusetts, you must educate
the people to a green apple, or they will buy none other but
red apples. I believe the city is different from the town or
places of four to ten thousand inhabitants. Why? Because the
small towns are populated with American people who know
varieties of fruit. They are not prejudiced against the color; it
is not for the color that they buy them, while in large cities the
color sells the apple. The Greening apple has a better flavor
than a great many red apples.

Peck's Pleasant is a nice apple when well grown, and I never
saw brrt one place where it was not well grown. The Fallawater
is a nice apple, something we have to learn more about, sells
well and brings a high price.

The Astrachan, Oldenburg, Sour Bough and Williams for
early August; for September the Wealthy, Gravenstein, Mcin-
tosh, Hubbardston, and one apple that I will speak of, the
Washington Strawberry; this brings a high price, a large apple
and a good bearer, and it is one of the best ; and the winter ap-
ples, the Palmer Greening, Baldwin, Sutton Beauty, Bellflower,
and Fallawater for our late winter apples.

I have had some experience in putting up apples for export,

21

commencing twenty-two years ago. It was on a farm twenty
miles from Worcester, and I put them up all alone. I packed
500 barrels of Baldwins as my first experience, yet I believe the
Sutton Beauty would be another good apple for export.

Now in regard to barrels. I think I have used as many new
as old ones. I never would advise anyone to use old
barrels for export. The price has been about seven or
eight cents more for the new barrels. Now they tell about
throwing in water and washing the flour barrels out clean.
If you take the old barrels as they run, they cannot be
made perfectly clean in this way. Another important thing
against old barrels is the heads. In old barrels the heads do
not fit. In heading they use a hatchet and trim the parts off,
and it is pound and slash and bang, and that is what is the mat-
ter with slack apples. Any one who has had experience in
using old barrels knows there is not one barrel-head in one hun-
dred that fits. Where the head does not fit the chimbs are open
many inches down, and I have seen barrels go on cars and
steamers where you could see the fruit inside. That is what I
call slack — slack before they start, slack all the way through.
Now I believe there were 1,487,000 barrels of apples exported
from this country this year up to the fourth day of March, and
bringing, on an estimate, somewhere near the vicinity of $3,680,-
000, and the reports came back that one-tenth of all of these are
slack, and so a great many of them brought only about what it
cost to pack them.

Mr. Kinney — I would like to ask the speaker why he entirely
ignored sweet apples. I think he must have turned sour re-
cently.

Mr. Rich — Mr. Kinney, you distinctly understood me to say
that I should state my practical experience, and I have had
no experience with sweet apples.

Mr. Kinney — I should like to ask what the cost is of new bar-
rels.

Mr. Rich — Two years ago they were brought into Worcester
in car-lots, about 300 in a car, delivered at twenty-seven cents.
At that time you could not buy a second-hand barrel in Worces-
ter short of twenty to twenty-five cents. You could not select
them, and had to send and get heads for many of them.

Mr. Eames — About the size of these barrels, in New York
state they have a standard as to size.

Mr. Rich — These I used were standard size ; they were not
straights, as we call them. Lots of short barrels go into

22

the markets, and the fruit brings fifty cents less than in stand-
ard barrels.

Mr. M. P. Palmer of Groton — I should like to ask if apples
put up in flour-barrels would not bring twenty-five cents more
than in new barrels.

Mr. Rich — Yes, sir, I have heard that same thing, and no
doubt they would if the new barrels were not of standard size.

Mr. Palmer — A commission man told me that apples put up in
clean flour-barrels would fetch 25 cents more in the Liverpool
market than if in new barrels.

Mr. Rich — That is right ; they would bring that more if put
up in flour-barrels on account of the size, because at one time
the new barrels used were the pony or short barrels.

Mr. Palmer — He told me that all new barrels were called
Canada barrels, and I told him we would make in the town a
barrel as large, and he said, "It does not make any difference.
You can't convince the men on our side of the water but what
they are the same old Canada barrel, which will not hold as
much by a peck as the flour- barrel."

Mr. Palmer — You would not consider it advisable for a farm-
er raising apples as a business to set out all these varieties
you have named !

Mr. Rich — No, sir.

Mr. Palmer — Would not you consider the Baldw^in the best
one for a man to set ?

Mr. Rich — Yes, sir.

Mr. Palmer — Wouldn't you consider for early fruit that the
Early Williams were the best ?

Mr. Rich — Yes, and the Astrachan next.

Mr. Palmer — The Williams bear every year, and I have
shipped them to Liverpool and got $5 per barrel for them.

Mr. Rich — Why should we get so many reports of slack ap-
ples? This gentleman got $5 for the Williams in Liverpool,
which certainly has no comparison for keeping to the Baldwin
or Sutton Beauty. I cannot understand why there are so many
reports of slack apples. I believe the slack is all on this side.

Mr. Hinds — I have an idea that in putting apples into holds
of vessels, perhaps the under barrels sustaining the weight are
the ones that get sprung, and the motion of the water in carry-

23

ing them across springs the staves enough to start the Juice,
and makes soft apples. It seems to me hardly fair to accuse
the commission men of fraud. I have had some experience
right through in shipping apples, and I have thought possibly
that this association might take steps that would help in future
by appointing a committee to inspect the vessels during ship-
ping time, and see if the apples are packed near the boilers and
get extra heat, and if so, protect ourselves in that direction.

Mr. Rich — This idea is valuable. Many people are sending
fruit to Europe and you can see the amount of money involved.
The first I exported from Worcester cost II for freight. It
then went down to eighty and seventy- five cents, and now
I think it is thirty-eight or forty cents.

Mr. Hinds — It seems to me if the trouble was caused by over-
heating in the steamships, they should be compelled to provide
a cooling apparatus, and that this organization might have some
influence in this direction, I would suggest that a com-
mittee be appointed which shall investigate the matter and re-
port to us in future what we are to expect.

Mr. Rich — These Baldwin apples which I have in my hands,
raised by Mr. Hartshorn, are not cold storage apples at all ; the
apples have kept finely. The color is exceptionally good. I
think that is done by pruning. The trees are very thick with
leaves. We want to be very careful not to weaken the tree ;
some need more pruning than others.

Mr. Kinney — In my judgment you want a cellar with no
cement on the bottom, and with a little stream of water running
through, which is a good deal better for apples and potatoes. I
know of one cellar in town belonging to one of the richest men,
and one of the wisest in that respect, and he knew better than to
cement his cellar, because that keeps out the moisture, making
it too dry. He paved with brick, and put them a little apart,
near enough together so the rats and mice could not go through
them, and he has one of the most ideal fruit-cellars I ever saw.

Adjourned to 1.30 p. m.

Afternoon Session.

President Cruickshanks in the chair.

Mr. James Draper of Worcester moved that an amendment
to the constitution, notice of which was given at the last annual

24

meeting, be made, changing the hour for the election of officers
from 11 o'clock a. m. to 2 o'clock p. m. on the first day of the
annual meeting.

Carried.

The President — The hour has arrived to hear the report of
the committee that was appointed this morning to prepare a
list of officers for the year ensuing.

Mr. E. D. Howe, Chairman of the Committee on Nomina-
tions— Mr. President and members of the Fruit Growers' Asso-
ciation, the committee appointed to nominate officers for the
ensuing year report as follows :

President — H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.

Vice-President — A. G. Sharp, Richmond.

Secretary — C. A. Whimey, Upton.

Treasurer — Ethan Brooks, West Springfield.

Auditor — Calvin L. Hartshorn, Worcester.

Directors — Essex County — E. A. Emerson, Haverhill.

" " Benjamin P. Ware, Marblehead.

Suffolk " J. W. Stockwell, Boston.

Norfolk " Abel F. Stevens, Wellesley.

" " Monroe Morse, Med way,

Plvmouth " Augustus Pratt, Middleboro.

" " " Walton Hall, Marshfield.

Middlesex " M. P. Palmer, Groton.
'• " W. D. Hinds, Townsend.

" '' C. S. Pratt, Reading.

" " Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln.

Hampshire " John W. Clark, North Hadley.
'' " D. E. Hoxie, Northampton,

" " L. W. Goodell, Belchertown.

Hampden " William R. Sessions, Hampden.

" " L. W. Rice, Wilbraham.

Berkshire " A. G. Sharp, Richmond.

" " R. H. Race, North Egremont.

Franklin " B. S. Young, Orange.

" " M. H. Vincent, Conway.

Worcester " O. B. Hadwen, Worcester.
" '' John G. Avery, Spencer.

" "J. L. Ellsworth, Worcester.

** " James Draper, Worcester.

" " E. A. Hersey, Westboro.

It was then moved by Mr. J. L. Harrington of Lunenburg
that the secretary cast one vote for the officers nominated.
Carried.

25

The secretary cast the vote and the list was declared elected.

President H. O. Mead in the Chair — Mr. President and mem-
bers of the Fruit Growers' Association, I thank you for the
compliment. I can say but this, that I will do all I can to
make our association a success, and I believe every member
will do the same. Is there any other business to come before
the meeting? The first topic on our programme this afternoon
is the paper on " The Proper Sorting and Packing of the Apple
and Other Fruits for Home Markets and Export," by W. H.
Blodget of Worcester.

THE PROPER SORTING AND PACKING OF THE APPLE AND
OTHER FRUITS FOR HOME MARKETS AND EXPORT.

Mr. President and Gentlemen : If I was a minister and was
going to preach you a sermon to-day, I should take for my text
that simple little word, "good." For in this word "good"
and its proper understanding lies the success or failure of the
fruit business as well as many other kinds of business, and un-
less you fully understand the meaning of this word and act
accordingly, you will not make a success of your business

If you do not raise good fruit, then you will not be successful.
If you do not put up your fruit good, then you will make a fail-
ure. If you do not market it good, then you will not get much con-
solation or profit in your line of business ; therefore you can see
plainly that very much depends on the right interpretation of
this word good. A man goes to work and puts up a barrel of
apples, a few good ones on top, down in the centre of the barrel
poor ones, and good ones on the bottom. He heads the barrel
up, turns it over and takes a marking-plate and brands that
barrel of apples good No. 1 Baldwins, Greenings, or whatever
variety it may be. Now he does not know the meaning of that
word good, or else he tells a falsehood, and I do not suppose
that any fruit-man would do that. Now, if he had taken a
marking-plate which reads something like this, " Snide Bald-
wins," and branded that barrel of apples, would not that have
been more fitting and proper for that package of fruit? But I am
afraid that many of our fruit-growers have not one of those
plates ; in fact, I should think from general observation that
most growers have only one marking-plate, and that reads good,
and this one is used altogether too often.

Last fall a farmer drove up in front of our store, came in
and wanted to sell me some apples. I asked him what he had.
He said, " Six barrels of good No. 1 Baldwins." I went out to
his wagon, dug down a little ways in one of the barrels and

26

began to pick out knurly, specked, wormy, inferior apples. I
said to him, ''You do not call these good No. 1 apples?'^
He said, "Yes, sir." Now, this man did not know the mean-
ing of that word good as far as apples are concerned, or else he
was telling me a falsehood. I turned and went back into the
store, leaving this good man with his good apples still unsold.
What is more disgusting than to see a man stand up and tell
you what good fruit he has, when in fact two-thirds of it
ought to go to the cider-mill ; but I suppose this will always be
so for all that I or any one else may say. But I am to give
you to-day my idea of how fruit should be packed for home and
foreign market ; but let me say first that if you fruit-growers, in
this section of the state, at least, do not take more pains in
spraying your trees so as to get better fruit, there will be but
very little need to know how to put up your fruit, for you can
take it to the cider-mill in most any shape, and that will be all
it will be fit for.

We have bought several thousand barrels of apples in this
section for the past few years, but it is getting almost impossi-
ble to find apples that we can pack and honestly brand them
good, and unless there is an improvement we shall be obliged
to go to sections where they take more jjains in growing such
fruit as our market demands.

Now this ought not to be, and it need not be if you each do
your best to improve the quality of your fruit, and I hope an-
other season to see a great improvement in the fruit-crop of
this state.

But I must come to the subject which has been given to me,
namely, " How to Pack Apples and Other Kinds of Fruit for our
Home and Foreign Market." Now here is where that little word
comes in again, and if you fully understood the meaning of it,
I should simply have to say, pack your fruit good, and then I
could sit down ; but for fear some here to-day may not under-
stand I will give you my idea of how it should be put up. We
will start off with apples, which is the main fruit-crop of this
state, and in an orchard which has been sprayed, and therefore
has some good fruit which will make it possible to put up a
good barrel of aj)ples good.

In the first place, the fruit must betaken or picked from the
trees properly. Too much pains cannot be taken in this re-
spect, for if the fruit is bruised it certainly will not keep. Have
handled baskets with swing handles, and of a size that will slip
down inside the barrel, so you can empty them from the basket
carefully. Have hooks on your baskets, and do not hook your
basket on a limb and then throw the fruit three or four feet
into the basket. Keep your basket near enough to you so you
can lay the fruit in carefully, and if you drop an apple on the

27

ground do not go and pick it up when you come down the lad-
der, but let it lie and go in with the windfalls, for it will not
keep after it has dropped from the tree on the ground ; even if
you do not see a bruise on the apple, it is there just the same,
and will show itself sooner or later.

The best way is to get your fruit into the barrels Just as soon
as possible after being picked from the trees. If it is possible to
pack direct from the trees, so much the better; but if you have
to put them in piles, do not leave them long, for the longer you
leave them in a pile on the ground the shorter time they will
keep after putting them in the barrels. Use new barrels by all
means if it is possible to get them without too much extra cost,
for it is very necessary that you have neat, clean, attractive
packages for any kind of fruit, but if you are obliged to use old
barrels, then you should take great pains to see that they are
properly cleaned, and all sharp, protruding nails driven out, for
you cannot drive a nail into an apple and expect to find it sound
a few months afterwards. Put a paper, or what we call a "cap,"
in the bottom of the barrel. And here let me say I have taken
pains to send to New York and get some samples of a new cor-
rugated paper or cap which is gotten up for this purpose, and is
just being put on our markets, and is, I think, one of the best
things I have seen. It saves bruising the fruit in pressing to a
certain extent, and I think will doubly pay the extra cost. We
intend to use them ourselves another season.

After putting one of these in the bottom of the barrel, then
put a layer, or, as we call it, a facing, of the very best apples,
stems down; then put in a second facing, then pick out a basket
of good apples and put in next to the facing, and then put in
another basket of good apples; then shake the barrel carefully;
then fill in a few more good apples, shake again carefully, and
then fill up the barrel with good apples, one to one and a half
inches above the chimb, and this depends somewhat on when
and how you are going to market the fruit. If you intend ship-
ping across the water, then they should be pressed very solid,
but if you are going to market them at home right away, or if
they are going into cold storage, then they should not be pressed
as hard, for a bruised apple will not keep as well. Just press
them hard enough to make them tight in the barrel, then when
they are taken from storage take the bottom out and put in a
few apples, then press head in again. This is what we call
plugging a barrel of apples. Then press the head into its place
carefully, drive on the hoops tight, and then line the heads with
some little strips to make sure that it does not come out when
handling, but do not drive too many nails through the hoops
into the head; only put enough nails through the upper hoop to
make sure it does not come off, for it is very provoking when a

28

man is tryiog to show a barrel of apples to a customer, who
perhaps is in a hurry, to find that the head is nailed in with
large nails or sometimes spikes, and unless the salesman is an
awful good man, quite often bad language is used. Then turn
the barrel over and stencil it just what kind and quality there
is in it, and in this respect use no deception.

You will notice I have had only good apples put in this bar-
rel. We used to think it best to put some small, inferior apples
in the barrel to do the pressing on, but since we opened our store
in Boston I have found that we were wrong in this, especially
for Boston trade, as one of the first things a buyer there will
want you to do is to open the bottom of the barrel; therefore
have good fruit on the bottom as well as the top. I hardly think
they are quite so particular in New York about seeing the bottom
of the barrel. I know they are not in Worcester, and seldom
do we have to take out the lower head, but more often do we
have to empty them out part way, and that makes it necessary
to have them good all through.

In Liverpool and other foreign markets apples are sold at
auction. Three barrels, I think, are taken to the auction-room
from each lot as samples. One barrel is opened on the top or
faced end and left standing; another barrel on the bottom or
pressed end and left standing, and the other is opened and
tipped down into a basket or box so as to allow one-half or two-
thirds of the contents to come out. This shows exactly how the
fruit is put up from bottom to top, and what the quality is all
through the barrel. Therefore you can see it is necessary to
have your fruit good all through the barrel in order to comply
with the requirements of all markets.

To illustrate the different ideas which men have of what
good fruit is, last fall we had several men out putting up ap-
ples. They all came to our store each Saturday night to get
their pay. I was in the habit of asking the different ones
what kind of fruit they were packing, and I noticed that one
would most always say, "Oh, very fail," and only occasionally
would he say good; and another man who was in charge of an-
other gang of men would always say "good." When we came
to sell the different lots of apples this winter, we found that the
apples put up by the man who always said "fair," were good,
and those he called "good" would almost grade "fancy," while
the apples put up by the man who always said "good" were
poor. Now the different idea of good by these two parties was
just this: one man's idea was way uj) high, and the other
man's idea of what good was was way down in the mud, and it
cost us dollars to get it out of the mud, as we had to repack sev-
eral cars of his fruit. We had the man repack them that was
always putting up fair apples, and he took from each twelve

29

barrels one barrel of I^o. 2's and one barrel of rotten and
specked ones before he would call them good No. 1 apples,
therefore you see the necessity of educating yourself up to tJiat
high standard of good so yoi will know what a good pack-
age of fruit is.

We have now put up a barrel of good apples good, and we
will brand them good No. 1 apples, and you can rest assured
you will get full market value for that j^ackage of fruit in what
ever market you put it. Your No. 2 apples want to be put
up in the same way, then you can brand them good No. 2's. I
will not tell you how to put up that other brand ('"snide")
which I spoke of in the first part of my talk, for I am afraid
that too many already know how, and if there are any here who
do not know how, ask your neighbor.

I would like to see the fruit-raisers of this state know how
and then to do that which is necessary to bring the fruit-7'aisiiig
business upon a higher level than it is at the present time

There is no trouble in selling good fruit properly put up;
there are always customers looking for it, and I am more and
more impressed each season with the necessity of getting good
fruit and having it packed well in order to make it possible to
get a iwofit out of the business, and I can assure you that the
fruit-growers must be more particular next season, and each fol-
lowing season, than ever before, in making their selections, and
the man who has good fruit will be sought after, and the person
who raises i)Oor fruit will be looking for a cider- mill. I am go-
ing to say just a few words in reference to packing other kinds
of fruit and then I am done.

There is a bill now before the house at Boston to regulate the
size of strawberry baskets, making it a misdemeanor to use or
offer for sale fruit put up in under-size baskets; or, in other
words, those that do not hold a full quart. Now this is a good
thing and ought to become a law, for I am more and more im-
pressed with the necessity of a regular-sized package, and I hope
the time will come, and I think it certainly is coming, when
regular, even-sized packages will be used for nearly all kinds of
fruit throughout the United States, so a man will know what he
is getting*when he buys a barrel of apples, a box of strawberries
or a package of j^eaches or grapes. Have your small fruit, such
as berries, currants, etc., picked clean and put up in new, full
quart baskets, and do not be afraid of filling your baskets up;
have them rounding full, and then, where it is possible, with
strawberries especially, it pays to face them on top, that is,
take some of the nicest and best colored berries in the basket
and place them on top, with stems down; it makes them look
very nice, and I think will fully pay you for the extra labor.
This is being done more and more each season, and last year I

30

noticed, in some of our cars of southern berries, crates which
were fixed in this way always brought a larger price, and
sometimes several cents more on a quart, than did those that
were not faced.

I hardly know what package to recommend you for grapes,
but if you have only a few nice ones, T think they sell better
here in our local market, in trays holding twenty to twenty- five
pounds; but for shipping baskets are preferable. Now for
plums. If there is any one here who knows the best package
to use, he beats my time. Some use peach-baskets, some the
eight- basket carrier, and some the common six or eight pound
handle basket, and some have tried the California package; but
as far as I know the right kind of a basket has not been found;
or, in other words, one that will please all, and my opinion
now is that the common handle grape basket is the best, all
things considered. Now one thing more and I will stop, and
that is the necessity of branding your fruit. Give it a name,
call it something, build up a reputation on your brand, and upon
the goodness of your brand will depend your success or failure.
If it is good you will find no trouble in creating a demand for
it, and if you get a good demand good prices will certainly
follow.

Now, gentlemen fruit-growers, when spring opens up and you
go out in your orchr^rds and look at your fruit-trees, think of
that word good, and just make up your minds to tskegood care
of those trees this summer, so that in the fall you will be able
to harvest a crop of good fruit, and if you do you will have
plenty of good buyers ?iVO\\n A to see you, and you will get good
results from a financial standpoint.

Mr. Eich — I am very glad to hear this essay. It has con-
firmed one thing which I said this forenoon, and said with em-
phasis, that T always thought when we got reports from England
of slack apples, the "slack" was at this end. He has proved
that on the lot of apples mentioned.

Mr. W. E. Williams of Townsend — I should like to ask if he
faces every box of strawberries in the crate.

Mr. Blodget — Every box in the crate. If you cannot face
every box, face the top layer. It is better to face all if you can,
and they are all right for the retailer to put on the stand. He
will look for the name on the crate, and the next day, if he has
any more of these berries, will pay an extra price for them. I
know it will pay.

Mr. N. P. Brown of Westboro — If you ship plums in baskets

31

it will necessitate a crate to put the baskets in. If you should
ship in new half-bushel boxes, isn't that about as well?

Mr. Blodget — It does not necessitate a crate to ship the bas-
kets in. We have hundreds and thousands of baskets of plums
shipped by express.

Mr. Brown — They have to be covered?

Mr. Blodget — Certainly, covers come with the baskets.

Mr. Williams — How much do the baskets hold?

Mr. Blodget — Six and eight quart baskets, different sizes.

Mr. Moore — I have raised more or less strawberries, and if a
picker in my bed goes to facing them, and puts a little better
berry on top than the bottom, he stops picking for me immedi-
ately. I never was guilty of packing any strawberries looking
better on the surface than when put out on the plate. I do not
advocate any such measure here to-day. If there is a small one
let it be on the top.

Mr. Blodget — You don't understand what I mean. I don't
mean better berries on top, but simply facing those that are on
top as they are brought in by the pickers. What is the differ-
ence whether they are on top or bottom if they are there? That
is my idea.

Mr. Williams — With strawberries we usually turn the berries
on the side, so that the bright side will show and not the stems
and hulls. When shown to a customer they look much more
inviting and bring a higher price.

Mr. Eich — One thing the speaker did not mention in his
essay, and that was the barrels. I never had but one lot of old
barrels that was satisfactory. I put a great many apples in
new barrels, those of the standard size. I found in watching
that in the new barrels the fruit kept better and brought a
higher price than the old barrels. In the country you know
what we find for old barrels, and it is impossible for the best
header in the world to make all good packages, and would not
you recommend fruit-growers of Massachusetts that have good
fruit, to put it in new barrels of standard size, costing from
seven to eight cents more? Last year they cost twenty-seven
or twenty-eight cents, when you could not get old ones short of
twenty or twenty-five cents.

Mr. Blodget — You know I said to use new barrels if you

32

could get them without much extra cost. We always intend to
use new barrels if we can ; it is hard sometimes to get new
barrels On the Hudson river where we were packing they got
scarce ; went up to forty-five cents, and it was almost impossi-
ble to get them even at forty-five cents, and we can buy old
barrels here for fifteen and sixteen cents. I should recommend
new barrels if they do not cost over thirty-five cents apiece.

Mr. Hinds — I should like to inquire if this gentleman had
experience io shipping in round-hoop barrels. Two years ago
I received an order for apples in round-hoop barrels at twenty-
cents a barrel more. I should like to know if the preference was
for that hoop.

Mr. Blodget — The round-hoop barrels are used north and in
Maine a good deal, and the Maine apples are generally very
nice apples, and generally fetch about a shilling more in Liver-
l)Ool than our apples do. They use round-hoop barrels there,
and that is probably one reason why your apples put up in
round-hoop barrels might have gone better, and compared
favorably with apples from the north.

Mr. Charles V. Griggs of Westboro — I should like to ask Mr.
Blodget what he thinks of the Japanese plums. Is there a good
demand for them in the market, and which would sell first, a
basket of Japanese or European plums'?

Mr. Blodget — Aren't there several kinds of Japanese plums?

Mr. Griggs — Several varieties.

Mr. Blodget — They are very nice, most of them, and I am
very favorably impressed with the Jai3anese plum, and should
say they would probably sell in preference to the other plum,
but the plum question has got to be quite a question. A great
many plum-trees are being set out all over the country, and it
is a question in my mind whether they are not going to over-
do the matter. There is a certain demand for plums, and then
the sale is over. You cannot sell the same amount of plums as
strawberries and peaches. In Michigan they have gone into
plums very extensively. Two years ago we sold a car-load in
bushel- baskets that we had come with car-loads of peaches, and
there were more sold than I ever thought we could sell here;
but they sold cheap. If we sell plums at 75c., $1.00 to $1.50
per bushel, people use a great many, but in baskets at twenty-

33

five or forty cents they don't use so many. Any kind of plum
is all right if good quality to a certain extent, but the sale is
limited.

Mr. W. E. Howes of Beverly — I should like to ask what is
the most popular package for raspberries.

Mr. Blodget — That depends on how far you are going to ship
them. If you are going to ship raspberries from here to New
York state, I should advise pint baskets, but being right
here in the local market, it is better to use quart baskets.

President Mead — Before I call up the next speaker, I would
like to say this. I went yesterday twenty miles just for fun,
and I would say I had it. The gentleman who spoke at the
institute in Gardner needs no introduction here, and I refer to
Mr. J. H. Hale of Connecticut. I asked him if he would speak,
and he told me not to call him up, but I did not take no for an
answer. We should like to hear from Mr. Hale.

Mr. J. H. Hale of South Glastonbury, Ct. — Mr. President and
gentlemen, I am certainly glad to be with you, and I ran away
from the institute in Lowell so as to be with you to-day. I did
not hear all of Brother Blodget's talk, but it is one of particular
interest to all of us fruit- growers. We have been studying the
question of production more carefully than the question of
marketing, but the marketing end of it, the end that brings the
final dollar, is an important end. He was just talking about
the packing of apples and marketing of them as I came in, and
I thought it was all right to pack good apples, but we must get
good apples first. Is it a fact that we in New England are
growing many good apples as yet"? Are we making the apple
as good as it is capable of being made here? Are we anywhere
near approaching the possibilities of production of fine fruit?
Isn't it a matter of fact with little or no culture, not thorough
feeding as we ought, fighting the fungus and insects in a very
half-hearted way, perhaps in not fighting them at all, that
probably more than seventy-five per cent, of all the apples we
grow in New England are defective? Isn't that true? They
either have some fungous growth scab or insect defect which
makes them second or third-class apples, and from a business
standpoint are not we making a mistake that we are packing
thirty or forty per cent, of poor goods in the same package with

34

fancy goods! In Mr. Blodget's store of the apples I saw to-day I
would bet ten to one that more than fifty per cent, were un-
sound, and the work of this society is to stimulate the better
production of the apple in its possible perfection, because I
believe, and do know from what I have seen of others, if they
try their utmost finer fruit can be grown. Some of the finest
apples in America can be grown here if we will give them proper
attention, and pack as Brother Blodget suggested. I was sur-
prised that he did not say anything about the box as being
better than the barrel. When you talk about second-hand bar-
rels, that is not up with the times. Does the manufacturer who
makes fine silk goods or fine plate ware or anything else put
them up in second-hand packages and send to the stores all
over the world"? No ; he lays himself out on the neatest pack-
age he can get, and has inside nice wrappers all the way
through. In case he loves to spend his money in that way, he
knows the dear public is paying for the package and the goods
inside of it. And the fruit-growers have got to understand
that. And then there is the barrel itself. We have used it in
the past because it was the best we had. You know in hard-
ware manufactories they take the small castings when they are
rough and put them in a tumbling-barrel. In transporting the
apples in barrels the freight agents won't lift them ; it is easier to
roll them, and they will let them roll. It is a fine tumbling-
barrel for fine horticultural product, and you can't expect the
fruit to come out in first-class shape. We shall probably mar-
ket many of our apples, our low-grade fruit, in barrels, but
new and smaller packages are better. It is our business as
business fruit-growers to study the markets and conditions,
and what do we find? We cannot begin to grow fancy apples
enough. Thousands and thousands of trees are producing the
fruit ; but pack them in bushel boxes, sorting the apples to a
size, and if you have an order for a bushel of apples you can
buy them a guaranteed size, as you do oranges now. When any
one tells Mr. Blodget or any retail dealer that the box he wants
is No. 200, he knows what it is ; or 106, he knows what he is
going to get, and the number tells the size of the fruit. Other
people are packing apples in that same way. In Colorado they
do it in this way, and have been bringing them to New York in

35

a small way, and in a larger way selling them in Europe, get-
ting as much for a bushel as Massachusetts and Connecticut men
get for three bushels in the barrel. The time is coming when
we are going to use a box, because the box will carry the apple
better. The question is how large a package you can tempt
the buyer to take into the house. People buy by the peck and
half-peck because they have no place to put them, and a peck
lasts as long as- they can keep them. If you can get fancy apples
into a bushel or other box, they will buy it, and once the children
get into it they want another box, and you increase the con-
sumption. The package that you can design that will carry the
largest amount of fruit and carry it in an unbroken package to
the family, is the kind we want, because it increases consump-
tion. This question of packages and handling and the market
question of the plum, Mr. Blodget touched on, and we are just
waking up to the use of the native plum. If packed by the
quart we hinder consumption, but if we can get it where they
buy four to eight quarts, we at once increase the consumption,
and the important thing is to study from a business man's
standpoint what we can do to get people to consume more fruit.
While we are trying in foreign lands to sell cotton shirts to
eight or nine million people, let us try how at home we can sell
fruit to fifty million. Find out what the people want, and then
give it to them in any way they will pay the most money for it.
Mr. Draper — I want to introduce a set of resolutions simply
in the line of what was adopted by this association a year ago.
You are aware of the destructive work of the gypsy moth in
the eastern part of the state, and the appropriation asked for
the extermination of the pest. The moth is there, and liable to
do as much injury as ever before. Last year we went on record
as endorsing the Gypsy Moth Committee of the State Board of
Agriculture, and adopted resolutions in the endorsement of the
work done by this committee, and I offer this as a resolution,
and I do not think it requires much discussion :

Resolved, That the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Associa-
tion, in annual session assembled, approves the method adopted
by the Gypsy Moth Commission of the State Board of Agricul-
ture in their efforts to exterminate the insect pest known as the
gypsy moth.

36

Resolved, That we earnestly ask the Massachusetts Legisla-
ture to grant the appropriation asked for by the State Board of
Agriculture for the suppression and extermination of this nox-
ious insect pest.

Mr. John W. Clark of North Hadley, Mass., was then intro-
duced, and delivered the following address upon

CULTIVATION, FERTILIZATION, AND THINNING THE APPLE.

I will say before I begin with my paper that I have heard Mr.
Hale talk once or twice, and I do not know when he told as
much truth as he did to-day. I know we have got to grow
better apples ; we have got to put them up better, and in re-
gard to the present inferior fruits, I think he did not put it too
high. If you look at the apples sent to the market, you will find
that almost every one is imperfect, unless they are a fancy lot.

Cultivation has an important part in the care of an apple-
orchard, and upon it in a great measure depend its health and
productiveness.

An orchard that has been cultivated from the time it was
planted, will be more healthy, come into bearing sooner and be
more productive than one that has been neglected.

The soil is the great storehouse of the elements of plant food,
and it should be the aim of the orchardist to change this crude
material to a condition suited to the use of the trees.

The great agent in converting the crude material of the soil
into plant food is the atmosphere, and to get the greatest benefit
from it the soil must be stirred and kept open, that the air may
penetrate the spaces between its particles and act on their sur-
faces.

That we may have some idea of the quantity of the elements
of plant food nature has given us to draw from, chemical analy-
sis shows that in a single foot in depth of surface soil covering
one acre of ground, there are some 7700 pounds of nitrogen,
5250 pounds of i^hosphoric acid and 1750 pounds of potash.

Another important result from stirring the soil, especially in
a dry season, is that the stirred surface forms a mulch which
prevents rapid evaporation of moisture.

Moisture is of vital importance to the growth of a tree. There
may be a surplus of plant food in a soil, but if there is not
sufficient moisture the tree cannot use it, no matter how abun-
dant it may be, for a tree cannot take its nourishment from the
soil, except in a soluble form.

Chemical fertilizers play an important part in the care of an
orchard, giving to the trees in an available condition the food
they need. Cultivation and fertilization should go hand in hand

37

in caring for an orchard, and to get the best results we should
make a judicious use of both, but from my own experience, if I
was obliged to give up one, I should choose cultivation. For
commercial fertilizers I have used in my apple-orchard South
Carolina rock phosphate and H. G. sulphate of potash, in the
proportion of two pounds of the phosphate to one pound of the
potash, using from four to six pounds to a tree. If I thought
the trees were not making sufficient growth, I mixed a little
nitrate of soda. A barrel of apples contains less than five
ounces of potash; less than one ounce of phosphoric acid. Ajj-
ply all fertilizers broadcast.

There is another kind of fertilization going on in the orchard
which, in my opinion, does not receive the attention it should,
and this is the fertilization of the flowers.

If I were to set another orchard I should not plant large
blocks of any one variety by itself, but should arrange the dif-
ferent kinds so that the flowers of the different varieties might
be cross-fertilized, for I am convinced that more fruit would set
and remain on the trees, and the fruit be more perfect, than
where the flowers are fertilized with pollen of the same variety,
and I believe this would be the case with varieties that are
supposed to be self-fertile. If one will examine an apple-tree a
few days after the bloom has passed, he will find many flowers
have not set fruit, but drop to the ground, and a large per cent,
of the fruit that has set does not remain on the tree. This, as far
as my observation goes, is more marked where trees of the same
variety are planted by themselves.

Cost of gathering a barrel of apples ready for shipping:

Picking, 12ic Drawing to car, 5c

Pacing and sorting, ^c Ft. from Hadley, 13.Jc*

Heading 2^c Cartage, 5c

Barrel, 20c

23^c

40c-f 23Ac= t

Spraying, 2 cents to 3 cents per tree each spraying; 6 cents to
9 cents for three times.

Thinning, 5 cents per barrel for a crop of some 1500 barrels.

The above figures are what it cost me in 1897 to pick, barrel
and deliver my apples in Boston.

Mr. Eames — I should like to ask Mr. Clark what the solution
was he used to test his Bordeaux mixture.

*21 cents if less than carload.

t63.] cents by the carload and 71 cents by less than a carload deliv-
ered in Boston.

38

Mr. Clark — Yellow prussiate of potash is a common name for
it. The crystals are yellow, greasy crystals; dissolve in water
and put it in a bottle and it is ready for use. It will tell you
instantly whether your solution is too strong. I notice about
the country they pile up manure around the tree and think that
fertilizes it. I will use one of Mr. Howe's stories to illustrate
this point. An Irishman went to a dentist's to have a tooth
pulled, and the dentist thought he was going to have a hard
job, so he told his assistant, "When I get ready to pull, you
stick a pin in his leg to attract his attention." When the pull
came Pat felt a sharp pain in his leg, and yelled out, "Faith,
and I didn't know the roots were so long." And so with the
apple-tree, the roots run beyond the limbs, and what fertilizers
you put on should be put all over the ground, and the tree will
take it up. According to the size of the tree, spread it farther
and farther from the body of the tree each year, and when bear-
ing cover the whole of the ground, because it will get it better
if away from the trunk than near. In regard to the spraying so-
lution, Bordeaux mixture, if you use too much blue vitriol or
too little lime, it will spot your leaves; it will do more harm
than good, but it will be safe if you test it with the prussiate of
potash solution.

Mr. Eames — Isn't lime used?

Mr. Clark — Make your copper solution four or six pounds of
copper sulphate in fifty gallons of water; then put in lime until
no reaction takes place, when you drop in the potash solution.

By a Member — I should like to ask Mr. Clark if he uses paris
green.

Mr. Clark — I never did, but think I shall; one pound to 150
gallons of water with the Bordeaux mixture.

Mr. Rich — Don't you think that the sheep eating up the ap-
ples that drop destroys about as many worms as the spraying?

Mr. Clark — Yes, for the next year's crop.

Mr. Rich — Why is it we get such good apples from pastures'?
I put up 100 barrels in Sunderland, and I said to Deacon Cooley,
"For mercy's sake where did you get this lot of apples?" He
said he picked them in the pasture. My Gravenstein is the first
apple-tree my cows come to after passing the gate. They are
nice color, fancy No. 1 apples, and not one poor apple in the lot,

39

and I find it the same in East Douglas, and on to the Rhode
Island line. There we j)ut np twelve carloads.

Mr. Clark — I do not want to have you go away with a wrong
impression in saying the fancy apples are all grown in pastures.

Mr. Rich — Those trees were taken care of the same as in
an orchard; they were trimmed and put in good condition.

Mr. Clark — A piece of ground may be just suited to grow
fruit, and you may get good apples if you do not cultivate, but
on the same piece you get better apples if you cultivate. You
can cultivate too much as well as too little. I take one-half of
my orchard one year and cultivate it; in the fall I sow clover,
and pasture the next year with sheep, just alternating to
stop the ground from getting hard; the clover furnishes some
plant food to the soil, the sheep feeding return much more to
the soil, and the wormy apples the sheep eat are out of the way.
The crop of worms is not as great, and I get the benefit of that.
I am in favor of thorough cultivation to keep the ground from
getting sod-bound and hard. If the ground is loose it will hold
the moisture and not dry up.

Mr. Hinds — I want to inquire if we might not expect that
when the apples thinned out are a quarter grown, the worms
will die for want of the growing apple to feed upon.

Mr. Clark — I think it would, because the fruit will decay, and
won't furnish food for them, so that even if you had nothing to
eat the fruit, the worm could not do further injury.

Mr. Hinds — It strikes me the worm will die with the dying
fruit.

Mr. Clark — It does not draw on your tree nearly as much to
grow a barrel of nice large apples as a barrel of small apples
You are getting better prices and without drawing on the tree
half as much, because a barrel of small apples requires more
nourishment to produce the extra number of seeds. A little
apple contains as much plant food as a large apple.

Mr. 1 know of a good Baldwin apple- tree, a thrifty

tree, isolated from any other tree fifteen rods, and I do not
think it has borne a bushel of apples for ten years. I should
like to ask whether the isolation prevents fertilization of the
blossoms.

Mr. Clark — I think that has something to do with it. Two

40

years ago I think the destruction of the apple-crop occurred
as the apples were blossoming well, and was due to a fungous
growth.

Mr. Moore — Other things being equal, do you favor a wet or
dry season for a good crop of apples?

Mr. Clark — If you keep your ground stirred you can get as
good fruit in a dry season, and with less disease on it. The
fungous diseases are more prevalent in a wet season.

Mr. Moore — Isn't it a fact that in 1893, which was the dryest
year in this locality for a number of years, there was the best
crop of Rhode Island Greenings ever known, unless it was
the last year, which was not quite as dry and the Rhode
Island Greenings were exceedingly large, fair and high colored!

Mr. Clark — If I take my chances between a dry and wet one,
I should take the dry season.

Mr. O. Stockwell — Is it possible to cultivate too much as well
as too little "? What advantage is there in cultivating every
other year 1

Mr. Clark — The reason why it is not best to cultivate too much
is this : as it causes a tree to make an over-growth of wood,
and whether you should cultivate more or less may be deter-
mined by the leaves and the growth the tree is making. I never
saw trees with so many leaves as last year. That may be be-
cause the trees were full of fruit buds. Mine were green and
healthy and made good growth, and are to-day full of buds.
Regulate the cultivation by the amount of growth of the trees.

Mr. Palmer — I suppose you have little experience with trees
in the pasture. I have about two acres, I think, of Baldwins
about thirty years old in the pasture where the cows go in the
summer, and invariably the fruit from these trees is the best I
raise. I had a good crop last year. They are more firm and
higher colored than any in the other orchards I have. That has
not been plowed for thirty-three years, and if it is good to culti-
vate and stir the ground so often, what makes the apples so
good in that pasture ?

Mr. Clark — Because your soil is well suited to the apple, and
if you have grown good apples for thirty years, it is about time
to break it up and grow better apples.

Mr. Palmer — They are the best apples I have, and bring a
higher price.

41

Mr. Clark — Yes ; but that particular spot may be just suited
to the apple ; may be more moist, and so the trees do not suffer,
but I still think if the ground were broken up and stirred you
would get much better apples.

Mr. Palmer — I can't get better.

Mr, Clark — Get larger ones.

Mr. Palmer — Don't believe it.

Mr. Clark — You try it.

Mr. Palmer — Don't wish to try it ; am satisfied as it is now.
I don't believe in stirring the ground ; I don't believe that is
the best way to cultivate apples.

Mr. Clark — There is a difference of opinion.

Mr. Eich — Isn't the feed better in that pasture and more of
it ? There is no spot so green as under the trees. I think this
is important to every man in this hall. It would pay the farmer
of Massachusetts to set apple-trees in pastures if he never
picked an apple from them, and after I went to the Chamberlain
pasture I found it to be a fact. Where the trees were it was
green, and the other places it was all dried up.

Mr. Clark — In regard to this planting apple-trees in the sod,
I have been there myself, and I can speak from experience. I
can get an apple-orchard into bearing nearly as quick again by
cultivation, and I have done it, and if starting in, I should
cultivate from the time they were set out till I got through with
the trees. In regard to setting the orchard in sod, if you will
set them by a stone wall or where the moisture works down the
the hills or in a hollow, the tree will get a sufficient amount of
moisture to feed on. But if you should go ten feet out of this
location, often on a knoll, the trees will not begin to bear
within five years as soon as the ones in the moist land. The
leaves of the apple-trees on the light land turn yellow and drop
off, when in the next field, or the same field after it is culti-
vated, the trees will grow well. I put a movable fence along
the line of trees, and below the fence I cultivated. Above the
fence the sheep ran. Where it was cultivated the trees grew
well. Below the fence the leaves were large and green, and
the trees made a good growth, while the upper side of the same
trees made little or no growth, and not the size they were be-
^ow. If any one wants to try this, and if the season is dry, he

42

will be convinced that a tree will not make the growth or come
into bearing as soon, nor will the fruit be as large as if he stirred
the soil.

Mr. E. A. Abbott — I would like to ask if cultivation does not
injure the keeping quality of the apple ?

Mr. Clark — No, sir, I don't think it does. If you grow ap-
ples in a very rich place they will not keep well. For instance,
by the shed in my orchard where the sheep run and go nights
or when it rains, there are two or three trees that are good for
nothing. So much nitrogenous manure ruins them. The apples
are large, but they won't keep. In cultivating, if you put in too
much nitrogen, look out.

Mr. H. A. Cook of Shrewsbury — I should like to ask Mr.
Clark if thinning makes any difference in the trees bearing
every year !

Mr. Clark — Some varieties of apples will bear every year,
and others do not. A Baldwin will not bear a heavy crop
every year. You can change the bearing year by picking off
all the fruit if you pick early enough. Thinning in my case has
not produced a good crop every year.

Mr. 1 should like to ask Mr. Clark if quite a piece of

his land is not sandy land, with rows of birches a little back.

Mr. Clark — Pretty good birch land, yes, sir.

Mr. Copelaud — I am on a hill where I have good soil, and
I know cultivation that does other land good will spoil mine.
I put on two tons of bone and potash to the acre one year. I
was going to beat the world, and I beat myself.

Mr. 1 should like to ask in how few years you could

get a good orchard into bearing.

Mr. Clark — In some places it will take five to seven years,
but it takes about ten or twelve in New England to amount to
anything. In Missouri, at one of the horticultural meetings I
attended, a man who came from Arkansas said he had
$500 worth of apples, and from the time he had planted the
seed it was seven years. Here it will be twelve years of good,
fair culture. The Rhode Island Greening will bear sooner, and
the Wealthy may, but the Baldwin will take about that time to
come into bearing. In New England an apple-tree will last
seventy-five years. I think I have some on my place over a

43

hundred years old. In Missouri twenty-five years is the life of
an orchard. In regard to pruning the trees I should leave them
a little thick as the tree comes into bearing, but not so thick
that the air and light will not get in. Don't go in and slash a
tree and cut the whole inside out, but have an ideal in your
mind how your tree wants to look, and work to that end. If a
young tree, leave it a little thicker than you think it ought to be.

Mr. What is the best time of the year to prune ?

Mr. Clark — Right away now, as soon as the days are warm
enough to work comfortably, and stop when the bark begins to
drop sap.

Mr. Record — If you trim at this time of the year, won't the
tree exhaust itself? Cut a maple-tree and the sap will run out.

Mr. Clark — A maple is not an apple-tree. An apple-tree
does not flow sap as the maple-tree does. Once in a while it
will drop the sap and turn black, and it will kill the bark at
that point.

President Mead — My method, when the limbs are an inch
or more in diameter, is to cut five or six inches long, and send
some men round about the 5th to the 10th of June with a very
fine saw. I have had good success at this time ; the wounds
will grow over immediately, and they will be quite small. Cut
the limb in the same place now, and the scar would be as big as
the limb itself. I send a man I can trust with a fine saw, but
I should not let a man cut the limbs after the bark starts.
If you cut a limb after the 5th of June, it will heal very quickly.

Mr. Hale — If we must cut large limbs I agree with the presi-
dent that in June is the season that will heal over the quickest.
We have talked of covering over with shellac and grafting-wax,
but my experience of late years has been that we must not cut
anything larger than an inch. Follow along with good, thick
white-lead paint, and you save a good deal of trouble in future.
A remark comes from the gentleman on the right in relation to
grass being better under the apple-trees. Bless your hearts,
gentlemen, that is simple enough. That is true in Massachu-
setts and all over the world. Wherever there are apple-trees
in a pasture, there will the creatures get together, and there the
droppings will be, and it is the richest spot in the pasture.
The grass grows better there, and there they go in their search
for the dropped apples, and there they gather for shade.

44

Mr. of Gardner — In regard to cultivation I have be-
come a little bit skeptical. I have tried to cultivate an orchard
all summer long which has been recommended, and one dry
season I took especial pains to cultivate it often, and the dryer
it got the deeper I tried to cultivate it. I cultivated with a
spring-toothed harrow, and got it so it was substantially like
an ash-pit. We had no rain for a good while, and when a four-
inch rain came, the way that it washed down that land was a
surprise to me. A man had a celery- patch on the lower side,
and that celery-patch was banked up so they had to dig to find
the tops of the celery. It seemed to me the best part of the
orchard was on top of the celery, and it has not fully recovered
from it. Now Mr. Clark has land perhaps as steep as mine.
He calls it a mountain, if I remember right, and how he gets
along when the four-inch rains come without doing any mischief,
is more than I can tell.

Mr. Clark — Why, if you cultivate on a hillside as I do, you
have to look out for the washing, of course, and it is not neces-
sary in an apple- orchard to keej) every weed down or every
spear of grass down. Keep the soil loose and keep it stirred,
if it is dry. After you get into the summer, if your trees have
done well, you do not want to cultivate; let the weeds grow or
seed it to clover, to hold the soil so it will not wash. If you
stir every year on a hillside it will all wash down the hill. Cul-
tivate the first of the season, and the last of the season let it go,
and if too steep sow on something to hold the soil.

Mr. Hinds — Mr. Clark has been engaged in growing a young
orchard which has not matured yet, as I understand it. For us
who have orchards forty or fifty years old, I do not believe
cultivation will improve those old orchards. I had an orchard
with hogs in it, but did not get as good apples as I have for the
last fifteen years. My apples were smooth and fine, with the
exception of last year.

Mr. T. J. Sanderson of Fitchburg — I understood the speaker
to say that he had some experience in keeping sheep.

Mr. Clark — I have kept sheep there for ten years.

Mr. Sanderson — Do you recommend it ?

Mr. Clark — If you can look after them yourself. Once in a
while one will gnaw the tree, and that does it a good deal of

45

harm. They won't gnaw the bark after it gets rough unless
they are hard up for food, but where it is smooth they are liable
to gnaw. Aside from that I think they are the best animals
you can put in an orchard. You can whitewash a tree or put
on lime thinned with tobacco water, and that will stop them.

Mr. Griggs — When it becomes necessary to cut a limb off a
tree, is it best to leave a stub of an inch or two, or to cut it close f
A man in our place says you want to cut it as close to the body
of the tree as you can.

Mr. Clark — I should not cut so close as to make a larger scar
than is necessary.

Mr. Rich — Mr. Hale said he hoped we would not go on record
as favoring apples grown in pastures. I think the majority
want to go on record. I have had experience for twenty years ;
have put up apples in Sunderland and the Connecticut valley,
and I found the best have been brought to me from the pastures.
We have heard the experience of those in different parts of the
state. These were old trees growing in the pasture, pruned and
taken care of. They are the most profitable trees the farmer
has to-day.

Mr. Clark — I am acquainted in the country where you say
you have gathered those nice apples. The orchards are not
sprayed, or anything done to the fruit except around the house.
These apple-trees in the pastures are away from the other
apple-trees. The cattle for years have picked up the wormy
fruit, but around the house it is a regular breeding-bed for in-
sects and fungous growth. If they would thin the trees and cul-
tivate, they would have good apples, but as a rule they are very
poor indeed. This year the Greenings there were good. Mr.
Cooley's were good, but he wanted so much for them I did not
even make an offer for them.

Mr. Rich — I certainly agree with him. They can grow these
apples in the pasture and get some money from them. The
trees were taken care of in the jjasture. The fruit in the valley
that year was the best I ever saw.

Mr. Monroe Morse of Medway — Mr. President, I want to say
a word. 1 am a little acquainted in this section myself. These
are hill pastures, and they cannot grow good apples unless they
get on the hills. Mr. Clark will bear me out. The higher the
land they raise apples on the better the fruit.

46

Mr. Whitney — After listening to the remarks on cultivation,
the idea occurs to me that there may be two sides to the
question. The difference of location and soil may have some-
thing to do with the difference of opinion. The gentleman ad-
vocating cultivation has a soil entirely different from ours here
in the vicinity of Worcester.

The President — My own experience is, I could not raise ap-
ples without cultivating, because my land is light. I think the
most profitable orchard in our town is in grass-land, and the
gentleman said the other day he received $800 from it last year,
six to ten barrels to a tree. That land is very strong, heavy
land, and I think he would ruin it by cultivation. The orchard
must be worth a couple of thousand dollars.

Mr. Palmer — If you will come to my place I will show you
my trees in grass-land that will bear two barrels apiece, and it
never has been plowed or touched since they were set out.
Now I suppose that is on account of the soil, not on account of
the kind of tree or anything else, and that is the cause of all our
disagreement to-day on cultivation of the apple-tree. I do not
believe on my land in cultivating trees any more than I can help.
I don't plow my orchards in the fall more than perhaps once in
eight years, and raise a good crop of hay every year, herd's
grass, and I got the best crop this year I had on the whole
farm. I don't believe in trimming the Baldwin trees. I always
get apples. I have an orchard of eight or ten acres, and I don't
think there has been a saw or axe in it. I don't believe in hack-
ing and murdering a tree any more than I believe in pulling off
a lobster's claw to make him grow another. I believe we trim
our Baldwin trees too much. I believe if you don't trim the
tree you get better apples and more of them. If you cut the
tree it begins to fight you, and suckers pome out, because there
is not enough wood to take the sap, and has to grow something
new, same as a lobster has to grow a new claw, and it shows
the intelligence of the tree. I believe lots of trees know more
than some men. (Laughter.) I had a neighbor, and he could
not do much else and so used to trim the apple-trees. If he
could trim a good lot and have a good pile of brush around,
he was satisfied. The orchard is almost dead to-day, and will
be gone in a year or two. There are two sides to this ques-

47

tion of cultivation, and I think it is a question of soil in most
cases.

The President — I don't believe a man can raise a first-class
Baldwin and cultivate very highly. I have one tree from which
I can raise Baldwins as large as Kings, and they may keep till
the middle of January, but all have the black spots. Are there
any questions in regard to insects, fungous pests, etc., that you
would like to ask?

Mr. W. E. Williams of Townsend — We have a pear-orchard,
part under cultivation and part not. Both grow jjears about
the same size. Why does the part we cultivate have so much
of the disease we call fire-blight?

Prof. Maynard — The branches turn black, do they not? That
is the true fire-blight. The effect of cultivation, if carried on
late, is to produce a late growth, and a late immature growth is
very sure to be more or less injured by the action of freezing
and thawing in winter, and when it comes on hot and moist
weather in summer, the cells, more or less injured, are in con-
dition to support the fire-blight bacteria. Fire-blight is alwajs
more abundant when we have moist, warm weather in August
and September the year preceding.

Mr. Williams — Our cultivation does not come later than the
middle of June in a large orchard, from forty to sixty
years old, with a young orchard adjoining, and the land is black
loam with clay sub- soil very hard.

Pi^of. Maynard — The late growth might result from the
fertilizer in the soil not being available until late in the season.

Mr. E. C. Burnap of Fitchburg — What is the best treatment
for curculio as it works on the apple?

Prof. Maynard — It has been found where apples and plums
have been sprayed with paris green the number of curculios is
much reduced. I do not know as we can wholly destroy them.
The mature plum curculio feeds upon the foliage of the plum,
cherry, peach and apple, and we are sure to destroy large num-
bers by spraying with paris green, which we use with the Bor-
deaux mixture.

Mr. Moore — What is the disease known as the plum pocket?

Prof. Maynard — It attacks the leaf, causing swelling the same
as the leaf-curl. We very often see it on the entire branches of
the American plum as well as on the fruit.

48

Mr. Moore — Is it a new disease?

Prof. Maynard — No, sir. It is very similar to the leaf curl
on the peach, and has been known a long time.

Mr. 1 saw in a neighbor's plum orchard where he

dug up a tree, and on the roots were large balls the size of
a horse chestnut, which, he claims, caused the death of the
tree.

Prof. Maynard — In some cases the root- galls destroy peach,
apple and plum trees. The cause is not fully understood. In
some cases a very minute worm may cause it; in other cases it
maybe caused by a fungous growth, and anything which injures
the tissues might develop a similar growth, as does the plum-
tree the black knot from the irritation of a fungous growth.

Mr. Is there any remedy for it?

Prof. Maynard — I don't know any but to keep up a healthy
growth of the tree. If the conditions of the soil are such that
the tree is not growing well, as from too much water, have the
land under-drained. Make it grow by better cultivation. Keep
the tree in vigorous growth. That is the only reasonable reme-
dy that any one has suggested.

Mr. Moore — What is the cherry insect?

Prof. Maynard — The plum curculio, the cherry maggot, and
in some cases the plant louse or the black aphis, which causes
a curling of the leaves.

The President — What time does the maggot come?

Prof. Maynard — The ordinary cherry worm comes from the
plum curculio, and the cherry maggot has appeared in some
sections, causing serious injury. Little is known as to what
will kill the cherry maggot-fly, but the plum curculio can be
reduced largely by spraying the plum and cheiry. We have
cherries and plums every other year. The curculios are kept
down by paris green spraying. (See Spraying Calendar Bulle-
tin, 52 and 60.)

Mr. 1 should like to ask the cause of the bark dying

in spots in a young apple orchard.

Prof. Maynard — There is a fungous growth, sometimes causing
the death of the bark, which is the same as the black rot of the
apple. You often see apples when decayed that are very black;
this is called the black rot of the apple. Sometimes this fungus

49

attacks the branches. Sometimes you find it on old apple-trees
toward the end of the branches. This dying of the ends of the
branches may sometimes be due to the woolly aphis. If the
injury is due to the black rot, the ordinary spraying will keep
it down.

Mr. E. A. Emerson of Haverhill — Do you recommend arsenate
of lead in place of paris green?

Prof. Maynard — In the case of the cherry and peach, I think
so. In the plum, apple and pear paris green will act more
quickly, and without injury to the foliage, if used with Bordeaux
mixture or lime, in suificient quantities to neutralize the arseni-
ous acid. If you would use four pounds of copper and six
pounds of lime, and your lime is fresh so that it will slack with
a great deal of heat, there will be no difficulty. It is poor lime
often that causes the injury; it does not neutralize the acid
of the paris green.

Mr. Isn't jarring a safer way to get rid of the curculio

than spraying?

Prof. Maynard — It is practiced in many large orchards. We
do not need to do it at the college. We have to pick off three-
quarters of the plums. There is hardly a variety that does not
bear all the plums the tree can possibly carry every other year,
and jarring is an expensive process, although practiced by Mr.
S. D. Willard and a great many others. I do not see any neces-
sity for it when we must spray for other things, the black knot
and leaf- blight, etc., and this accomplishes the work.

Mr. Morse — You thin the plums'?

Prof. Maynard — We take off three-quarters in some cases.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston — How often do you spray for the
black knot?

Prof. Maynard — As near as 1 can remember the spraying is
done before the leaves come out, either with a strong solution
of copper sulphate or with strong Bordeaux (and it is a good
idea to cover all the branches with Bordeaux). Just before the
blossoms open, perhaps, you can get in a spraying, but the
buds often come on so quickly you may not be able to spray again
until the petals fall. Spray thoroughly as soon as petals have
fallen (Bordeaux and paris green), and in a week or ten days
spray again, then leave it for two weeks or twenty days and

50

spray with Bordeaux. Two sprayings of paris green after the
leaves come out will generally keep the curculio down. I think
we do not put on material enough to have it cover the entire
surface of the leaf and branches. It can only be put on suc-
cessfully in the form of a fine spray.

Mr. Fisk — I set out in the spring over 100 apple-trees of one
variety, and got them the fall before, and instead of heeling
them in I buried them entirely. Snow came in November and
we were not ready to set them, and I buried them. I dug them
out in the spring, and they were apparently in fine shape. I
thought there was nothing wrong when I set them out, but pretty
soon I found on some of them a circle in the bark of two inches
in length right around the tree that would be dead perhaps six
inches to two feet from the ground. Now when I found they were
entirely girdled, I cut them off, and they sprouted, but not very
vigorously, and if they were not entirely girdled I let them stay.
Now the question is what the trouble could be, and whether it is
liable to appear any more, and whether it is worth while to let
the trees grow or dig them up and plant new ones.

Prof. Maynard — I don't know as I can explain the cause.
Possibly after being entirely covered and before they were taken
out, the temperature ran pretty high in the soil, and fermentation
took place in the bark. I think if you had cut through the bark
a.t the time, you would have found a brown ring next the wood,
that would not show itself until after being planted. As to
whether it is best to dig them out or not, would say that if not
making pretty good growth, the better way would be to put in
new trees, but a tree that has made a foot or two of growth can
be very quickly brought up to good form. The growth will
probably be larger this year than last.

Mr. 1 should like to ask if the gentleman examined the

trees to see if there was any insect. I know of a similar case,
and on examination we found a little white worm.

Mr. Fisk — We did examine them as thoroughly as you could
with the naked eye, and saw no insect.

Mr. Moore — Perhaps the time may be opportune to offer
thanks to our retiring officers; to our secretary, who has served
so many years. Look at the amount of labor he has done for
the organization. You can realize something of the amount.

51

Now our president has retired and we have a new one, a younger
man, but the good old stand-by has served us well for three
years. I think a vote of thanks is due them, and therefore I
move that a vote of thanks be extended to our retiring officers
for their services. (Carried.)

The President — I hope our retiring officers will be amply re-
paid, especially for the experience they have received.

The meeting was then adjourned at 4.30 p. m.

SECOND DAY.

Thursday^ March 15th, 1900.

Morning Session — 10 o' Clock.

President Mead in the chair.

The Chair — I think so many members have been at my place
and seen me before that I need no introduction, but there may
be some here who are not acquainted with the secretary, and I
have the pleasure of introducing to you our new secretary, Mr.
C. A. Whitney. Please remember him when you come to pay
your dues.

Mr. C. A. Whitney — Mr. President and Members of the Fruit
Growers' Association: I feel that it is an honor to serve you
in this capacity, and I thank you all for the election. If there
is anything I can do to promote the interests of this organiza-
tion, I am at your service. I realize that a great amount of work
is necessary, and I feel hardly competent to take it up after
such work has been done by the secretary of the organization
since it was started. However, I can but feel that it is an
honor to succeed the one who has so worthily performed the
task. I thank you all for your confidence, and hope you will
remember me when the dollar becomes due.

The Chair — The first topic will be "The Best Soil, Exposure,
Cultivation and Fertilization for the Peach in Massachusetts."

Mr. Monroe Morse of Medway —

52

THE BEST SOIL, EXPOSURE, CULTIVATION AND FERTILIZA-
TION FOR THE PEACH IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Mr. President, Members of this Association and Others :

A few weeks ago I received an invitation from your secretary
to prepare a paper for this occasion, giving some of ray experi-
ence in peach-growing. As I come to these meetings to learn
as much as I can from the experience of others made known
here, I feel that others have a right to know my experience if
they so desire. I suppose your secretary's attention was directed
to me by learning that I secured a crop of peaches last year
when so many others failed to do so. This success I attributed
more to favorable location than to any work of mine. But that
you may judge for yourselves, I will relate my attempts at
peach-growing, and give a history of my orchard from the be-
ginning. If you can point out wherein my work has been a
factor in securing this success, I shall feel amply repaid for this
endeavor.

Before I set my present orchard, I had, at different times, set
a few trees near my house, hoping to get fruit for family use.
My first setting proved partially successful, and I followed with
more. In one season I set as many as 100 trees, and, as there
was not room in the first place chosen, I put some on higher
ground. When they came into bearing, I found those on this
higher ground escaped damage by winter better than those on
lower ground. This success was so encouraging that in 1890 I
decided to plant an orchard of several hundred trees on land
still higher. I had a few little trees which I had started from
seed the year before, and I bought 100 trees of J. H. Hale — 25
Pratt, 25'Mt. Eose, 25 Old Mixon Free and 25 Stump. These, in
all about 125 trees, I set, and at the same time planted pits enough
to grow several hundred more seedlings. I had the idea that
seedling trees would be likely to prove more hardy and sure
croppers than any budded trees I could buy. Friend Hale
assured me that if I planted pits from the Pratt peach, the trees
grown from them would bear Pratt peaches. With the trees
from this planting I enlarged my orchard in 1891 to over 400
trees. In 1892 I added 100 Crosby trees, making 500 trees. I
had lost quite a number from winter killing. I planted corn in
the orchard the first year, and beans the second and third years.
I found the soil washed away so badly in winter and spring that
it was necessary to sow some kind of cover-crop to prevent
washing. I first tried oats and peas, which did very well. I
think that was in the fall of 1893. I have used this crop chiefly
ever since. Sometimes it has rusted so badly that very little
growth was made. In 1894 I first tried crimson clover on part
of the orchard. It made two to three inches growth in the fall.

53

and a portion — rather a small portion — survived the winter and
made vigorous growth in spring. I cut it for fodder and tried
to plow in the stubble, but I cannot satisfactorily p)low an or-
chard. There will be ridges and unplowed strips in spite of
my best endeavors. I supplemented the plowing with the har-
row, which was run until the surface was fine. I have ever
since used the harrow only. It is a spring-tooth harrow, which
leaves the surface level. I prefer a cover-crop which dies in
winter, so it will not be a weed in spring. 1 have tried crimson
clover in a small way since. Once it grew quite well in autumn
and practically all died in winter, which suited me. Last fall I
sowed oats without j^eas, and sowed crimson clover in parts of
the orchard where most open by the removal of trees. Up to
this time the clover appears to be alive, though it has made not
more than two or three inches growth. I have usually sowed
the cover-crop in July, so that it might get rooted enough to
endure trampling in harvest time. The oats and peas might
grow better if sowed as late as Aug. 15 if it were not for the
trampling during harvest. I should like to learn of some plant
for cover-crop, which could be sown about July 20, and would
make vigorous growth in fall and die in winter. If it should be
a nitrogen gatherer like peas, it would suit me all the better.
Stopping cultivation and sowing cover-crop in late summer, I
think is beneficial to the trees, as it tends to prevent too late
growth with immature wood to meet the cold of winter. One
season I cultivated late to destroy weeds, and I noticed more
killing of branches the following winter than usual. I have
never used any stable manure for fertilizing the orchard. At the
time of setting the first trees, about two tons per acre of Canada
ashes was used, and in 1898 and 1899 I used about one ton per
acre each year. I have also used chemical fertilizers, mostly of
my own mixing, which were rich in phosphoric acid and potash.
I have not kept data, but think I have used, when no ashes were
used, as much as one ton per acre each year. When ashes were
used, less fertilizer was used, but always some. The fertilizer
has mostly been a mixture of fine bone and muriate of potash,
with some nitrate of soda, though not much, and sometimes not
any. I have endeavored to give thorough cultivation from early
spring until the cover-crop was sown. I do not mean to have
any weeds growing. By running the harrow both ways between
the rows, the land can be kept quite clean ; but some few weeds
will escape the harrow. These I pull up and carry away before
sowing the cover-crop, so less weed seeds may be in the ground
to make trouble the next year. My harrow is in two parts, sep-
arating in the middle. By separating the parts and using a
spreader to keep them wide apart, I can work very close to the
trees, with the team traveling midway between the rows. I

54

mean to run the harrow often enough to keep the surface clean
and fine. It is easier to prevent weeds than to kill them. In
the earlier years of the orchard there was some trouble with
borers. I think one tree was killed by them. I examined the
trees, dug out the borers, and applied washes, hoping to destroy
the eggs or young before they entered the tree. The washes
were usually made with soap or potash, with lime, ashes or
clay to give body and cause adhesion to the tree. After a few
years I tried lime slaked to the consistency of paint, with about
one and one-half pints linseed oil to the pailful, or say one quart
oil to three gallons. This mixture, when thoroughly painted on
the trunks with a brush about the first of June, kept the trunks
covered through the season, and seemed to keep borers from
getting into the trees. Certainly since I have used it, the borers
have been less and less in evidence, and in 1898 and 1899 not
one borer was found in the whole orchard. In trimming I en-
deavor to so shape the tree as to allow sunshine and air to come
to all parts of the top. My ideal peach-tree has three main
branches starting from the trunk at about two and one-half or
three feet from the ground, and at as nearly one point on the
trunk as may be. Then the middle of the top can be kept open
to sun and air. It has a well-balanced head so low that all the
fruit can be picked from a six-foot stepladder, and this ideal
tree is beautiful when loaded with large high-colored delicious
peaches. I sometimes see statements that a tree should never
be propped, but the fruit thinned until no more is left on the
tree than it can bear up unaided. I do not think this rule a
good guide for practice. It is no unusual occurrence for a peach-
tree to break when no fruit is on it, or when the fruit is very
small. The weight of the foliage when wet, with the help of a
little wind, will do the mischief. The breakage mostly occurs at
the forks of the branches. They split apart. Some varieties
are more inclined than others to fork at sharp angles, and these
sharp angles are the ones most likely to split. Something can
be done in trimming to prevent the trouble, but there will always
be danger and often need of support. I have found props very
inconvenient when cultivating, and have adopted the plan of
making one side of the tree support the other by tieing them to-
gether. I did this with ropes, but ropes are not durable. I
now use wire. The galvanized, No. 14, such as is used for
grape trellises, is about right. When I first used it, I fastened
the ends of the wire to small branches, but this practice stran-
gled the branches in a year or two, thus injuring the tree. I
now take short sticks or blocks of wood and fasten the ends of
the wire about the middle, then pass the wire through some
fork in the branches and the blocks on the outside keep the
wire from slipping through, and so the branch is held in place.

55

I go through the orchard, placing wires in this way wherever I
think support is needed. These wires are left in from year to
year, as they do not interfere with the work of cultivation. I
find them more convenient and better than props, as they do not
fall down when the wind blows.

T have spoken of the trees, their cultivation, fertilization,
cover crop and trimming. There remains to be mentioned the
soil, arid, perhaps most imjjortant of all, location. The soil under
my orchard is what I shall call gravelly loam. The sub-soil at one
and one half to two feet down is hardpan, not clay hardpan, but
close, hard gravel with stones mixed in. The soil is quite re-
tentive of moisture, though well drained, being on the slope of
a hill and well up. The hill slopes northerly down to the
Charles river, distant about one-quarter mile and more than 100
feet below. I have given quite a full history of my orchard.
The location is as good as I could select. A little more porosity
of sub-soil might be an improvement. I have used my best
knowledge to so treat the orchard as to produce the best results,
and I think with a fair share of success. I shall now mention
some mistakes. The greatest was in trying to have a seedling
orchard. Seedlings did not i:)rove to average so hardy as the
budded trees which I bought. Also many trees were cut out
after they got to bearing age, because their fruit was not good.
I will say here that pits from seedling Pratt peach-trees, pro-
duced trees which bore fruit that was mostly like the stock from
which they came ; but the trees grown from pits of budded
trees bore fruit which was very variable. Very few produced
fruit as good as that from which they came. Another mistake
was in trying to make the trees branch too low, and leaving too
many main branches. Some of the trees I made to branch very
near the ground, and left as many as four or five branches.
Thus shaped they were not convenient to cultivate, and more
likely to break because the leverage is gi-eater at the point of
juncture with the trunk. When more than three main branches
are allowed, the bearing wood is likely to be farther fi'om the
trunk than is desirable. I like to keep the bearing wood as
near the trunk as possible. Perhaps it was also a mistake to
plant corn in the orchard the first year. Beans would have
been better.

In thus telling of my efforts to grow peaches I have tried to
make known what, in my opinion, are some of the essentials to
successful peach-growing in New England. I will enumerate
them :

First. Choose a location with suitable soil, well elevated,
near the top of a hill, and preferably on the northerly slope,
where cold air and water will drain away readily.

Second. Select varieties of good quality and as hardy in fruit-
buds as possible to get.

56

Third. Fertilize liberally and preferably with chemical fertil-
izers, not forgetting i)Otash.

Fourth. Give clean and frequent cultivation from early
spring until as late as July 15.

Fifth. So shape and trim the trees as to allow sunshine and
air to reach all parts.

Doubtless I have made mistakes which I have not recognized
as such. I hope criticisms may be made which will show me
such errors, so I may avoid them in future. I thank you for
your kind attention.

Mr, Charles V. Griggs of Worcester — I should like to ask Mr.
Morse what distance the trees are apart.

Mr. Morse — In my present orchard they are one rod apart,
160 trees to the acre. I have made a planting of 158 trees to
the acre, eighteen feet apart, placing the trees at the apex of an
equilateral triangle. It gives more room for the trees to grow.

Mr. Sanderson — About the seedlings ?

Mr. Morse — I stated, I believe, that I had the idea that seed-
lings would be hardier.

Mr. Sanderson — Why would not budded seedlings be as good
as those you bought"?

Mr. Morse — They would not have been seedling peaches, but
would have been budded fruit.

Mr. Hinds — I should like to ask which of the four budded
varieties you think is best?

Mr. Morse — The Pratt peach has been the most profitable
crop, but I don't recommend it as the best peach. I think it
is more likely to decay at the time of ripening, and is also in-
clined to grow one-sided ; the color and quality are good.

Mr. Sanderson — Mr. Morse has very kindly told us how to
raise peaches, but he has not given us a list of varieties.

Mr. Morse — That was not the part I was to take up.

Mr. Griggs — Mr. Hale from Connecticut, I believe, tells us
that the first year after setting, the pruning should not be too

57

close, because it would make the head too compact. I have a
small orchard two years old and ready to be trimmed. How
much of the new growth in a general way should I take off?

Mr. Morse — I do not feel that I am good authority on that.
In trimming those I set last year I have cut off on most of the
trees the greater part of the new growth, more than half, and
have tried to cut it off in such a way as to shape the tree as I
think it should be formed. Next year I shall prune still further
in the same line.

Mr. Alden Derby of Leominster — I think this is one of the
best meetings we have ever had in this hall, because we have
had both sides to the question presented, and it created an in-
terest. Now there is a system of pruning the peach that is in
fashion somewhat in our section that is contrary to that repre-
sented by the last speaker. If you would like, I will explain
it. To illustrate this system, in the first place the trees to be
bought had better be rather of small or medium size. Before
they are shipped from the nursery let them be cut off to fifteen
inches in length, because they will transport better with the tops
removed, and we don't want to pay express or freight on peach-
brush, and the sooner you remove the top that you are going to
remove after the roots are taken from the ground, the less
it will draw from them. When the trees are received they are
set in the usual manner, and have tops anywhere from a foot to
fifteen inches in length. Those trees will send out perhaps from
one to six sprouts. When those sprouts are from six inches to
a foot long, send your hired man around, if you have one, or,
if not, go yourself, and remove all but two; save the two best
ones. After those two sprouts have grown sufficiently, so that
you dare to risk one, perhaps two feet in length or more, go
yourself and save the best one and remove the other. It makes
no difference where the sprout starts from. If the sprouts start
from the base, remove the old wood; if they start from the top,
it is not necessary. You know when a new shoot of
peach grows it sends out from every leaf a side branch. When
you have sufficient side branches to suit you, ten or a dozen,
perhaps, nip the leader and throw the growth into those side
branches. It is with a great deal of diffidence that I come for-
ivard with this system, in opposition, perhaps, to Brother Morse,

58

who has had a long experience, I having had but a few
years' experience in the growing of peaches; but the object in
doing this is to grow a tree that will carry its fruit without any
support, and be almost proof against ice-storms. You see the
point: several small branches on each side instead of the three
large ones. I let the lower limbs come within about a foot of
the ground. I want about a foot of clear room, so that I can
protect the trunk from ice, and cultivate it, perhaps better than
I should if it branched at the ground. I commence to grow
down, because a peach-tree is something like a grape-vine. As
it grows older it expands out, and the lower limbs can be re-
moved. They are just as good as the higher limbs, and you
have the advantage, as your tree gets older, of not being so high
in the air; and again, this is better for exposed situations. In
situations where they are sheltered, T should send them in the
air just as far as I could, and in that way protect them from the
frost. We have found out that we have a tree with six to
ten side branches, with the top shortened in. This is the ex-
tent of the pruning for the first year. For the second year we
cut back severely, perhaps to a foot, the side branches; the main
centre is not cut back. The tree is practically all branches, and
these are cut to within a foot of the centre. They will throw
out a good many shoots, perhaps more than you want. You
thin those shoots as you want them when they have got well
started out. This is the base of your future tree. You thin
them so that there will be as many limbs as you desire, and as
the season progresses, if one starts very much ahead of the
other, pinch it hack a little. This is supposed to be the extent
of cutting back. After that I should let the trees grow as they
would. I shall not shorten the limbs, except for a leading
branch, and then I remove the end, so that I shall not produce a
set of new shoots. I have practiced heading-in severely, but
don't like the result. Where you head back large limbs you
get three or four branches starting out from that surface, and
you get a mass of leaves and wood that is hard to control. You
cannot get your sunlight in nor thin the fruit without a good deal
more work as you can if your tree is even and grows naturally.
The idea is, as the tree grows older and bears fruit, it will spread
out, and the lower limbs rest on the ground, and the others will

59

not break with the ice, and as they spread out the fruit is evenly
set on every branch and the sunlight reaches every peach.
This, in short, is the system. If I have not explained it satis-
factorily, 1 am ready to answer any questions that may be asked.
I have not practiced it a great many years yet. I have two-
year-old trees that I think come very near being ideal trees.
And here let me say that the peach is a very easy tree to control,
and having in your mind the ideal that you want, if you attend
to it in season, you can have eight out of ten trees to come very
near to that ideal.

Mr. Griggs — Do the branches on the ground interfere with
cultivation"?

Mr. Derby — They may somewhat. I use entirely a spring-
toothed cultivator, and expect when the peaches are hanging
down it will run under the branches that reach very nearly on
the ground. I should plant my trees far enough apart so they
would not run up so tall as if planted nearer.

Mr. How far apart?

Mr. Derby — I plant 16 x 20 feet. I consider that one good-
shaped tree full of peaches would be better than two ill-shaped
tall trees that were half full of peaches that would not be so high
colored.

Mr. Griggs — Will the branches after the fruit is removed go
up again from the ground?

Mr. Derby — They will. One point that Mr. Morse brought
forward is not true in my case. He claims if the limbs are near
the ground they grow as high in the air before they bear as they
would if they were started two or three feet higher. My limbs
if starting a foot from the ground will bear the same length from
the body as a limb starting out higher up.

Mr. Morse — Will they continue to bear?

Mr. Derby — I don't expect that the lower limbs will continue
to bear. As the tree grows older I should expect them to die
out.

Mr. Morse — I should like to mention my experience with the
lower branches of peach-trees. My first idea was to have the
limbs down next the ground. The first crop of peaches I had to
amount to anything was in 1897. The trees were loaded, and
many of the branches came to the ground, and I found that

60

nearly all the fruit growing on those lower limbs was worthless,
and most of it was not colored nor of good flavor. That autumn
I removed all the lower branches, which left them better to cul-
tivate among, and lifted the fruit up where the sun and air could
get to it. That was one of the mistakes I thought I made, as I
mentioned in my paper.

Mr. Sanderson — I want to ask Mr. Derby if he had experience
in trimming peach-trees in heading them back after the second
year. He heads them back the second year. I want to know
if he has tried heading them in every year.

Mr. Derby — That has been my practice, as I stated, although,
as I say, there is a disadvantage in it. I tried for several years
what Mr. Griggs advocates on some trees, cutting them back
before the leaves fall. He claims that he can strengthen the
buds so they will stand five degrees more frost by cutting back
in September. I tried that for sev^eral years, and until I was
satisfied they did not produce the desired result. The buds were
no better than when cut back iu the spring.

The Chair — We have a man here to-day who has raised more
peaches than all the rest of us put together, and perhaps un-
derstands the peach business a little better than any of us.
He gave us some good advice yesterday, and we are not going
to miss a little opportunity to day to hear something on the
peach question.

Mr. Hale — Mr. President, I think you will have to excuse me.
I have been in the peach culture all my life, and have given it
careful study. I have thought I have won some success in fol-
lowing out the care of the peach-tree along certain lines. I
have tried in a humble way to help my fellow growers in Mas-
sachusetts, but I have been accused of misrepresenting by mem-
bers of this association and by the press, and they have said
that Hale's ideas were not wanted, and therefore as the state-
ments were made by the members of this association, I don't
want to volunteer anything where my ideas are not wanted. I
should be very glad to have you meet with the Connecticut
Pomological Society, or visit my orchards in Connecticut, and
will show you how we do it, but it won't work in Massachusetts,
as we have been freely told.

Mr. Derby — I want to hear some of his ideas.

61

Mr. Ethan Brooks of West Springfield — We found here yes-
terday that Massachusetts men were pretty nearly at sword's
points on a good many matters of fruit-culture, and we got
along very nicely with that. I hope that we could hear from Mr.
Hale. (Continued applause.)

The President — If Mr. Hale won't come to us we shall have to
go to him. I hope as many as can will visit his orchards and
will be given an opportunity to learn. We should be glad
to hear more from Mr. Hale. It is his pleasure to do as he sees
fit.

Mr. Palmer — Mr. President, I respect Mr. Hale's private
opinion; something may have been said that ought not to have
been said in regard to his opinion, but if one or two had been
outspoken in a way not quite pleasing, perhaps he will overlook
it, as we all should like to hear from him.

Mr. Hale — I appreciate the very kindly words from the gen-
tleman on the right. Nobody has said anything to hurt my
feelings in the least, but I know enough to stay away where I
am not wanted. I have been told repeatedly by the press and
others that Mr. Hale's ideas were not wanted in Massachusetts
fruit-culture, and I don't propose to force them upon them; but
don't worry, for I never feel hurt.

The Chair — If there is nothing more to be said, the next
question is "Thinning, Picking, Packing and Marketing the
Peach-Crop in Massachusetts," and that will be by a brother
who perhaps has raised, packed and shipped more peaches than
any one I am personally acquainted with, Mr. Hinds of Town-
send.

THINNING, PICKING, PACKING AND MARKETING THE PEACH-
CROP IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Mr. President and Brother Fruit Growers : The topic of thin-
ning peaches is one I hardly know where to begin. But as we
hear so much nowadays of the necessity of one's studying a
subject all through, or, in other words, having a plan of his
work in all its details before commencing operations, I will
say, to be able to thin a crop of peaches in the cheapest and
most practical manner, we shall have to begin this with the
setting out of the trees. Prom my own experience, in thinning
peaches I find in order to do the work rapidly and easily we

62

must contrive some way to get up where we can reach to the
top of all the trees, and having got up there we want to stay
there and be moved along from one tree to another without get-
ting down often. So far I have found no way to do this so well
as upon a wagon. I have a wing-wagon for two horses, with
seats upon each side built out over the wheels. On these seats
I place a platform of strong boards, or planking, sufficient to
hold five or six people. This leaves no projections outside of
the wagon-body to catch the trees while passing through the
orchard.

Now in order to pick peaches from both sides of this wagon,
we find that twelve feet apart is far enough to work just right.
Now, as this is too near, we can put them eighteen or twenty
feet apart the other way to make the distance right. This, then,
is the place to begin this job. The next step is in the line of
pruning. This can be kept in mind whenever we are training
the future orchard, keeping the head of this tree open and
spreading as low as possible, and not too low to interfere with
cultivation. Having done all in this line possible, we patiently
wait the time when our orchard becomes old enough to produce
a crop. Then if we safely pass the winter, or nature's great
thinning process, when she often forgets to leave us any sound
buds, and we get through the blossom period without a frost,
then our hopes begin to expand, and we really believe we are
going to have a peach-crop.

There is one other way we can partially do this work, and
that is by cutting back one-half or more of last year's growth
during March and April. This I would recommend only when
the buds are injured by the winter.

Thinning the Crop.

Having safely passed all the dangers enumerated, we wait for
the June drop. This being over, or nearly so, we now estimate
how many specimens of peaches our trees are able to mature,
according to the size of the trees. If the trees are full-grown,
we shall find we still have a big job on our hands. Now, then,
we get out the team and wing- wagon, engage about four or five
of the best working-girls we can find : we like girls better than
boys, as they are more quiet and do the work better. Then put
a good, careful man, or, better still, yourself, in one corner of
the wagon to manage the team, a girl in each of the other cor-
ners, and one between them on each side. Now we are ready for
business. Drive between two rows and stop right opposite the
two first trees; roll up your sleeves and go for the peaches.
You see by this method we pick one side of the two trees at a
time. If the trees are large, make a rule to leave only one peach
on a twig, if it is not more than six inches long; if a foot or

63

more, two may be left. Perhaps some one will think this pretty
severe thinning ; but when you have finished a tree, count up
the peaches left, and I venture you will find 1000 specimens left
where there ought not to be more than 500.

This has been my experience, and you will probably say, as I
have many times, next year I shall thin closer than I did this
time. In this way we are now among the tops of the trees,
where we can easily reach one-half of the fruit of each row, and
with six pairs of nimble hands at work, it takes but a few min-
utes to pull off all we wish to from the two trees. Then just
move the team along to the next two. In this way there is no
climbing down and up again ; the whole six pickers are moved
from one tree to another in less time than one could move him-
self on a stepladder, thus saving much valuable time, and time
is, or costs money nowadays.

We pay no attention where we drop the little peaches ; most
of them go on the ground. We find this the most expeditious
way to do this work, and with a thousand or more trees it must
be done rapidly.

Picking the Ckop.

We now come to the most difficult part of the peach industry,
for while most any kind of help can be used for thinning, here we
want help of the best kind : men of judgment, intelligence and
neatness. For this work a picker must train the eye to detect
the peach that is just changing from the green condition to the
ripe or mellow condition. This is indicated to the experienced
eye by a soft, yellowish tinge creeping over the fruit, and the
red cheek. The green side should have turned to a yellowish
shade. To get sufficient help to pick a large orchard is the
hardest part of the business for us. For if you are among your
pickers, as you need to be, to see that they get all that are
ready to pick, you will find some who are leaving those they
ought to pick. If you gently tell them so, the next time you
come around to this picker, you will find him picking more
that are too green than he was leaving before that he should
pick, and so you have to show him again by comparing speci-
mens of one that is just right and one too green, till you get his
eye trained to the beautiful color of a ripening peach. Some
will soon get it ; others will never get it. I expect some are
color-blind. We need rules for this work, so a good plan
is to give each man a stepladder and number him and his lad-
der, so he will keep the same one ; then pair off the pickers,
and give each two men two rows to pick, requiring them to pick
the same rows throughout the season. Then if you have a man
who cannot do his work as well as others, you can let him go
or look over his work yourself. Now of the two horns of the

64

dilemma, picking a little too close, or not close enough, I pre-
fer to pick a little too close, for this reason : two years ago,
when we had our big crop, I was getting more peaches every
day for the first week than my brother did. I asked him why
it was. Well, he said he wasn't going to pick his fruit till it
was ripe ; he wanted them ripe enough to eat.

Well, my commission men wrote that some of my fruit was a
little too hard, but I kept going over them every other day,
getting all that we thought would do, and a few days later we
had a terrible thunder-shower and wind in the night, such a
wind as I hope will never strike a peach- orchard with
ripe fruit. I had cautioned my brother about this, and told
him if it should come he would wish he had picked closer.
Well, after the shower, he found he had a job, for 500 baskets
of fine fruit lay upon the ground, all bruised and dirty. It took
him two days to gather it; then it wasn't worth half price.
After this went to market, my commission men told me my
plan was best.

Packing the Fruit.

The next step is packing the fruit for market. Here we again
find women and girls are the best help. Arranging suitable
tables to pack upon, the fruit is brought to them by the men.
We use a rack eight feet long, holding seven baskets, to bring
the fruit to the tables, two men easily carrying seven baskets at
a trip. We make four grades: extras, firsts, seconds, and
thirds. This grades the peaches in size and coloring, so it
packs better, looks better, and sells better, for there are people
who want nothing but the best, and are willing to pay for it ;
while there are others who cannot afford the best, and will buy
the other grades for cooking and canning. The only deaconing,
as it is called, we allow, is to put a few of the best colored
specimens on top; this catches the eye, makes quick sales, and
when the skin is removed they are all one grade.

Marketing the Fruit.

Here we find a little Judicious advertising works well, calling
people's attention to your peaches any and every way possible,
and inducing as many as you can to come to the orchard and
buy there. This saves teaming, freight and commission, and
you get your money down. We also keep three or four teams
peddling in surrounding towns, disposing of all we
can of the cheaper grades, getting them into the consumers'
hands as soon as possible. This relieves the big markets so
much, and what you ship to the cities will have a better chance.
We label our Fancys and No. I's and No. 2's with our address and
name of our farm, and find this helps to draw customers.

65

In shipping peaches by the carload we use the rack spoken
of on the wagon, loading seven baskets at a time. We then
spike pieces of joists on the sides of the car the whole length,
except the doorway. These racks are just long enough to slide
on these joists, one tier above another, which prevents all
bruising or tipping over, as each basket sets firmly in the rack
on its own bottom. We find this a very good way to ship
ihem, the racks being left in the car and returned to us each day.

If you have selected a good, honest commission man, who will
take an interest for you, and have done your part well all along
the line, have produced fine fruit, I think when the season is
over you will have no reason to regret you engaged in peach-
growing.

Mr. Morse — I should like to inquire if Mr. Hinds finds any
difficulty in thinning the middle, top and sides of the tree.

Mr. Hinds — Very few trees of mine are so far apart but what
we can reach the centre of the tree from one side of it. If there
is any trouble I have a narrow plank I can draw out and step a
little farther. Sometimes a little box will enable us to step up
to the higher branches.

G. S. Graham of Holden — I did not hardly coincide with this
idea of the morning speaker's method of pruning, but I see an
advantage in it now Mr. Hinds has explained. He lets his trees
grow low, and it is much easier in thinning them.

Mr. Hinds — There are always exceptions to almost every rule.
The fruit and branches are liable to mildew close to the ground.
I don't know but Mr, Morse's theory may be all right, but as
the tree gets higher and shades more, I think he will find no
trouble.

Mr. O. Stockwell of Fitchburg — I should like to ask what con-
dition his peach-buds are in now,

Mr. Hinds — I think from 15 to 20 per cent, are good.

Mr. F. H. Daniels of Sherborn — Did you find the same amount
of good buds on the lower branches as on the top ?

Mr. Hinds — The higher you go up I think the more buds you
find. That always has been the rule,

Mr. Griggs — I should like to ask Mr. Hinds if he has fruited
the Fitzgerald.

Mr. Hinds — I have not ; I have but one good tree.

Mr. Stockwell — I should like to ask if he advocates growing
the limbs low or starting high on the trunk of the tree.

66

Mr. Hinds — I have endeavored to keep my later trees as low
down as I can. I would rather have the branches start not more
than eighteen inches from the ground. I want them high enough
80 that in driving a horse through with a cultivator the handles
will not touch.

Mr. Stockwell — And still you grow them low?

Mr. Hinds — Yes, because I am pretty well up in the air any
way. If on low land I should keep them as high as I could.

The Chair — Our next question for debate is relating to small
fruits, and perhaps I will ask Prof. Mayuard to help us a little
bit in starting that. At the college they have quite a number
of varieties growing.

Mr. Draper — I should like to suggest that if the members have
in mind some places desirable for us to hold our mid- summer
outing, it would be well to announce the same to the officers of
the association, that they discuss the matter as to where we can
go and gather information that would be helpful. Prof. May-
nard has suggested that our autumnal field meeting be held at
the college, and I hope that will be accepted by the association,
for there you will find a large variety of all the leading fruits
which give promise of fruitfuiness this year, and other things in
connection therewith which makes it a grand place for an edu-
cational trip, but in the season of the smaller fruits or straw-
berry season we seem to be wanting for some place to visit. I
think it would be very wise to get some suggestions from the
members from different parts of the Commonwealth as to where
we can go.

Mr. Hinds — I should like to refer to what I mentioned yester-
day in regard to having a committee appointed to look out for
shipping apples. It seems to me it might benefit a great many
in the organization. If two or three gentlemen were appointed
to go together and inspect two or three shipments, at least, they
could look around the fire-rooms, boilers, and see if the fruit
was overheated or there was any extra weight in the holds of
vessels. There is a screw loose somewhere, and it seems to me
we ought to be smart enough to find it out.

Mr. Eames — I don't want to throw on cold water, but I think
a committee would be useless. The steamer is going to be loaded
with all they can get. If you go to these wharves you find them a

67

busy place, and everything is done in short order. I do not
think any committee would receive a great deal of attention .
Somebody's apples have got to be in a bad place in the shipload.

Mr. Draper — It was brought out in the discussion yesterday
that barrels laid on their side caused more or less pressure,
having them five, six or eight barrels deep. Would it be better
if set on their endsf

Mr. Eames — They are always packed on their sides. If any-
one is going to ship any apples to England, they want to stand
on the wharf a while, and they will go home and hoop their bar-
rels over. You will have to pay $5 to |10 for cooperage often.
They must be coopered far better than you would for other mar-
kets.

Mr. Hinds — If we can succeed in remedying this trouble, it
would be great value to us, and if we can't I think more of us
will stop shipping them to England. It is certainly discour-
aging to ship 100 barrels and have only half bring a fair price.
If the shipping companies cannot be influenced by the fruit-
growers of Massachusetts and use us better, let us stop using
them altogether.

Mr. Hale — As a matter of information along this line, of
course the steamships charge in their tonnage rates so much per
cubic foot. I think we get forty cubic feet for a ton. If it is
barrels you cannot get full tonnage, and perhaps you cannot get
a ton in forty cubic feet, and yet you have to pay so much for
that space. In that space you could put more apples if packed
in boxes. Another thing, the steamship companies are plan-
ning to have cold storage on the ships, and if you pay the cost
of tonnage freight and a little additional for cold storage and
half as many apples are sent over, the very best ones in boxes,
you would probably get fifty per cent. more. I am satisfied we
are never going to get our fruit to the European markets profit-
ably in barrels, one lot with another. I think such a committee
would get the desired information. The more you pry around
the more points you get.

Mr. Draper — I am glad that was brought up, because one of
the very first things that was discussed in a meeting of this asso-
ciation after it was organized, was in the matter of changing the
method of fruit-packing, and we had Mr. George A. Cochrane of

68

Boston here, who gave us an interesting address, and had sam-
ples of boxes here, and now we are agitating that same subject.
I hope good will come of it.

Mr. Eames — The English people are hard to influence. If
they get used to a custom they stick worse than Yankees. I
notice in California they ship all their apples in boxes, and, as
Mr. Hale says, they can be packed much better, but in the Eng-
lish market it does not work on account of prejudice.

Mr. Hale — If you are going to use boxes don't use one of your
own. Send to London and find what is acceptable there. The
English are wonderfully pugnacious and tenacious and know
what they want. Whether right or wrong, give it to them.
The one coming from Tasmania, I think I am correct in stating,
is 22 inches long, lOi inches wide, and 11:^ inches high; it is
practically that. When packed full it holds fifty pounds.
Your committee could ascertain from any of the first-class
market men there about the dimensions, and better get them to
ship over a sample and have them suggest what they want. In
Watsonville, California, they are using the same, and you could
probably get them from that place. You might possibly buy in
Boston or New York to-day a box of Newtown Pippins from Cal-
ifornia. You might from some fancy dealer in Boston or New
York find a box of those apples and see what is satisfactory in
that way.

The President — Should not the boxes be made of hard wood f

Mr. Hale — These boxes are made of three-quarter-inch white
pine or other wood for the end. They can be made very cheaply
and easily. Veneers are used, two strips on the side, after
the style of the orange- box.

This is an important matter, and dollars and dollars
are tied up in it, and we want to look after the market. But
don't think you can take second-class apples and ship in boxes
and get a first-class price. You must spray three or four times
during the summer, and get rid of the fungus and insects, and
you could have them inspected by a committee of this associa-
tion and put on a stencil with some guarantee of the Fruit-Grow-
ers' Association, and be sure that no package goes away that is
not sound way through, and then you will get your name up
for them.

69

Prof. Maynard — I move that a committee of five be appointed
to take the matter in charge, and do anything that can be done
to help the sale of the apple-crop the coming season. (Carried.)

Moved that the chair appoint the committee and report at the
afternoon session. (Carried.)

Mr. Sanderson — I saw it stated in my agricultural paper that
a man from England lecturing on this subject recommended that
every apple should be wrapped in paper, and I should like to
know if any one has practiced this.

The Chair — I presume the committee will investigate that
part of the business.

Mr. Charles E. Parker — While you are on this subject this
morning, I wish you would call on Calvin Hartshorn. I
understand he has been in the habit for two or three years of
packing apples for the local markets in papers, and last year
put up 100 barrels or so in papers. If that is so, and he makes
a success of it for the home market, I wish he would tell us
about it.

The Chair — There is no gentleman I would be more pleased
to call up than the gentleman referred to.

Mr. Hartshorn — If I have gained a reputation for the best,
perhaps I had better keep it. I may lose it if I try to talk now. I
have wrapped my apples for the last two or three in papers.
I first was led to wrap my apples in papers in communication
with Prof, Maynard of the college. He was then making an
effort to ship apples across the water in boxes made to hold one-
half barrel, in the shape of an orange box. I made arrangements
and had some of the boxes myself, and procured the papers at
the same place that Prof. Maynard recommended in Boston. In
the first place, I am very particular how the apples are picked
and handled. It will not pay to wrap an apple that was carelessly
handled in picking. The gentleman yesterday afternoon said
he wanted them picked into a bail-basket carefully and emptied
into a barrel, and then taken to the cellars. I am just as careful
in picking my apples in baskets, but never empty them into a
barrel. I havea number of baskets handy, and as one basket is
let down to the ground another basket is hitched on to the hook
and sent up the tree by myself or some employer, taking every
apple from the basket by hand. We wrap them in papers under

70

the trees, and put them into boxes, and they are taken to the
cellar, where they are kept at as low a temperature without ice
as we can keep them. We can keep such apples very well
indeed. It is important that we handle them carefully, for tlie
least prick or bruise on them will cause them to rot before
spring. We have had a little trouble sometimes if the cellar
was not kept just right, but this year we have not had any
trouble. I put paper across the bottoms and sides of the boxes
and so they did not have much air. We have just been selling
apples packed that way for $2 a bushel. We sold them all by
the bushel. Most fruiterers, if they can have a bushel of apples
brought to their store from the cellar, prefer to have them than
to buy a barrel and pack them over. I have done spraying for
the last four or five years, but not as extensively as I ought.
We have not sprayed any time over twice the same year, and
some years only once. Last year, in order to satisfy ourselves
a little more particularly in regard to the matter, we sprayed
the orchards, all excepting one, and there were so few trees in
the orchards that were setting apples, we did not spray ; we
thought we would watch it, and see how they compared. The
trees on the unsprayed that had apples of any account, I found
only had two No. 1 apples. On the ones sprayed we found
a good share of No. 1 apples.

Mr. Daniels — I should like to ask if the apples exhibited yes-
terday were kept in papers.

Mr. Hartshorn — Yes, sir.

Mr. Eames — I should like to ask Mr. Hartshorn if he thinks
it would be advisable to cool the apples off before putting in
papers.

Mr. Hartshorn — I don't know. You have got to watch the
cellar. You want to open it cold nights, and close it during
warm days.

Mr. Copeland of Colrain — I should like to ask if the fruit-
growers have used crates or boxes in the field to gather and
handle the apples and store them. I adopted this plan three
years ago. I think we can put our apples into crates and handle
them for less money. I can handle them cheaper than in bar-
rels.

Prof. Maynard — I think the members know about Dr. Fisher's

71

plan of storing the apples. He uses a strong bushel box with a
block seven-eighths inch thick on each corner. As the apples
are picked they are put into boxes and carried into his cold
storage room, where they are assorted, packed and shipped as
wanted in the market. You can pack more apples in the same
space in that way than in barrels, and there is some circulation
of air about them.

Mr. Copeland — I think apples are handled better and cheaper
in crates than in barrels, and you can draw a bigger load on the
wagon.

Mr. Draper — I think Mr. Hadwen has experimented in this
line with boxes.

Mr. Rich — He has had good success. He came and asked
what I was using, and I said shoe-boxes, and he bought the
first hundred at five cents a box at a shoe store. They are nice
and clean and made of good stock.

Mr. Copeland — (Describes a box used by him with bottoms
and sides slatted, costing 12 1-2 cents apiece.)

Prof. Maynard — The ordinary bushel-box can be bought in
quantities for 10 cents ; can be bought in flats or unnailed for
much less. Dr. Fisher's are all well nailed and strong, and
must have been twelve or fifteen years in use, and it seems to
to me a neat package, all of one size, would be much better than
a shoe-box.

Mr. Copeland — Most of our bushel crates are slatted sides and
ends. This box can be gotten up for less money, but will not
stand the banging a solid box will.

Mr. Daniels — Our fall apples. Porters, Gravensteins and Hub-
bardstons, that we run into Boston on our teams, we pack in
bushel boxes, because we can sort them better, and the fancy
ones sell better. We can buy the box stuff off the box wagons
on the street in Boston for nine cents apiece. We take them
home and nail on the top, then face the apples on the top and
nail up the bottom; this is handier than to buy them whole. It
is very easy to face apples; they look and sell better, and you
always have the boxes returned, but when they are put in bar-
rels they go with the fruit. I have the platforms to my
wagons three boxes wide; that is, one box wider than the body
of the wagon, and have frames that go on the top of each tier of
boxes, and can put on as many tiers as we want.

72

Mr. Parker — The gentleman at the right speaks of packing
apples in boxes for local markets, but he says when he shipped
the two carloads he put them in barrels. What I should like to
ask is why he didn't continue and send apples to market in
boxes, as I presume they would bring more than in barrels.

Mr. Copeland — I was starting this as an experiment, and was
working it about as fast as I dared to, but think we have got
to come to the boxes for shipping also. We have got to raise
better apples and handle them better, and we can handle them in
crates or boxes with less injury. I think the time is coming
when we are going to put our applet in boxes of some kind.
In putting mine in crates, as described, I figure it up as close as
my arithmetic will allow, that I could save quite a little in ex-
pense. If you empty the apples in barrels you must have bet-
ter help than we have. If you have good apples you do not
have to sell many to pay for the crates. Last year my pickers
said they thought I saved enough on my own apples to pay the
cost of those crates. I know I have saved enough to a great
deal more than pay for them.

Prof. Maynard — I should like to say a word on this subject.
The point has been pretty well brought out, I think, in the dis-
cussion, that we are in just this condition: we are growing an
immense quantity of poor apples. Probably nine-tenths of our
apple-trees are under conditions where they cannot produce
fruit of the best quality. Nine-tenths of them are growing in
grass-land where we are expecting to get a crop of grass and a
crop of fruit at the same time, either in the pasture or mowing.
Without discussing the question as to whether cultivation is
the one and only thing, or whether we can grow good fruit on
grass-land, there is this fact, that we are producing this enor-
mous quantity, as Mr. Hale says, of damaged goods. We must
improve the quality of our fruit, and I want to ask the members
of this association if they will not make some experiments this
season in using fertilizers in improving the quality of the fruit.
A great many of our orchards it would be impossible to plow at
all, and we know we can improve the quality by fertilization.
Now supposing under these conditions you should use a small
amount of fertilizer this spring, say one to five pounds of nitrate
of soda, one to five pounds sulphate of potash, and two to ten

73

pounds of acid phosphate or floats per tree, according to the
condition of the soil and the size and growth of the trees. If
your trees are growing slowly, put on the full formula for the
large fruiting trees, reducing the quantity for the younger trees.
If your trees are growing well enough, making vigorous growth,
spraying alone will save your crop, but fruit cannot be grown
on trees not making a vigorous growth. Every tree should be
sprayed to destroy insect and fungous pests, and the poor fruit
picked off as soon as its condition can be determined. I
wish this might be tried and the results reported at our next
meeting.

Mr. E. F. Gilson of Groton— In 1896 I raised 1350 barrels of
apjnes. I tried a little experiment. I asked all the fruit-deal-
ers how best to keep them. Some had one idea and some
another, and so I investigated the matter. I put the apples in
the cellar, some in headed barrels and some in boxes. Those in
boxes came out far superior. A year ago I went and saw Dr.
Fisher, and saw how he puts his up. He says he never puts
them in hot, but cools them off, if they have to stay out nights
to do it. In some places shippers charter vessels and the apples
are put in cold storage, and they have a competent man to go
with them. Perhaps Mr. Hale can tell ho\v they charter and
ship them. In my town and the adjoining town this year, com-
mission men came over from England to buy apples. One of
the fruit-buyers sent his son over to find out how it was done.
I think our fruit interests are large enough to warrant the ap-
pointment of an investigator to look into these things, and send
him over to see what they want. I keep sheep, and I spray and
prune in an intelligent way, and I keep bees.

Mr. Hale — There is one thought that comes to me in regard
to what my friend on the right says about sending some one to
the European market. I am told by merchants in London that
so far as fruit handling goes, there has never been but two
American growers in London to see how the fruit is handled;
there have been many dealers there, but the Co vent Garden Mar-
ket never knew but few American fruit-growers who staid in the
city of London on business to see how the fruit was wanted and
handled. That is stupid business on our part, to keep on manu-
facturing goods, sending them off, the Lord knows where, and

74

not knowing anything of the other end of it; we cannot expect
to be successful in this way. We have been growing apples of
all kinds for the European market. The European market takes
$700,000,000 worth of food products from the United States an-
nually. Massachusetts sends alone 115,000,000 or $18,000,000
worth, and you are sending $1,000,000 worth of fruit from this
state every year. We, the fruit-growers, have never had busi-
ness sense enough to say, "What do you want and how do
you want it^"

Mr. Gilson — I wish the committee would make a specialty of
investigating the Maine way of chartering vessels. They are
not fools if they do live back in the country. They can raise
good apples, because I have seen them, and they can beat us.
It may be the climate, but they had some of the handsomest
fruit and trees I ever saw.

Mr. Stockwell — I would like to ask for some information in
regard to small fruit, and that is in regard to raspberries and
blackberries, if any one has experimented to know if they are
winter- killed by mulching.

Prof. Maynard — I do not know whether the effect of mulching
would tend to winter-killing or not. There might be a condition
on a southern slope where organic matter would draw a good
deal of heat from the sun, and produce a drying effect that would
be injurious, but I should say mulching would be beneficial, only
for a sJiort time while the fruit is rvpeimtg.

Mr. Moore — What is the best raspberry you have had at Am-
herst?

Prof. Maynard — The Cuthbert will produce more fruit one
year with another than anything we have. Still, there are two
or three that stand very well; they have not been grown long
enough or in large quantities enough to say positively that
they are better than the Cuthbert. The Cuthbert is a tender
variety, but we can overcome that fault by laying the canes
down. There is no difficulty in preventing the Cuthbert winter-
killing if it is covered, and the cost is small, as explained at our
meeting, two years ago, by Mr. Sharp, one of the best growers
in Massachusetts, and, perhaps, in New England. For the early
crop, the Miller and King have done the best with us, as far as
they have been tested, and yet they are both medium in size and

75

will not bring the price the Cuthbert will. The Loudon has
also dene well.

Mr. Morse — I rise to state my experience in regard to mulch-
ing raspberries. I have one-eighth of an acre. I got tired of
cultivating them ten or twelve years ago. I simply mulch them.
So far as winter-killing is concerned, I don't think it makes
much difference.

Mr. Hale — One important question which enters into the har-
diness of the small fruits in New England, is that of a too rapid
succulent growth early in the season. I have heard so many of
my friends say that my raspberries that ripen up early go through
the winter in good shape, when nine times out of ten they kill
the easiest. The earliest matured canes die the quickest. It
teaches that if you keep your raspberries growing steadily up
to the latest possible moment in the fall, they will go through
the winter better. This ripening up early is a delusion and
a snare. Continue cultivation up to August and Septem-
ber, and keep the foliage on as long as you can. There is a
wonderful relation between foliage and hardiness. This spray-
ing helps you to get the good fruit. If you keep your raspberry
healthily and steadily growing, with good foliage, and spray
with Bordeaux mixture, you will find a raspberry as tender as
a Cuthbert ; will go through the winter better.

Mr. O. Stock well of Fitchburg — I was in a dilemma in regard to
my own berries last year, and got but very few bushels from the
whole lot. Mr. Marshall, adjoining me, had a fine crop. Dr.
Fisher had a very good crop, and they mulched and I didn't.
My berries kept growing until late in the season, and were as
fine as ever I had. They were nearly all winter-killed, and I
wondered if it was because I did not mulch.

Adjourned.

Afternoon Session — 1.30 o'' Clock.

President H. O. Mead in the chair.

Prof. Maynard — Mr. President, the Department of Agriculture
is making an effort to represent the fruit interests of the country
by sending specimens of fruit to the Paris Exposition. They offer
to take charge of any collections, which may be sent to some
central point, paying the freight and transporting to Paris and put-

76

ting it on exhibition. They ask that this organization shall co-
operate with them. The question is whether we are able to do
so or not. I should like to suggest that the matter be left in the
hands of the committee appointed this morning, and if thought
advisable, that a collection shall be sent from the association.
We also have a communication from the Pan-American Exposi-
tion in Buffalo, which asks for contributions and collections to
be sent next year, 1901, to represent the fruit interests of Mas-
sachusetts. I suppose naturally the State Horticultural So-
ciety would take action upon this matter, and possibly it would
not be necessary for us to do anything more than co operate
with them.

The chair then submitted the following names of candidates,
to comprise a committee for the investigation of proper modes
of shipping of fruit by the steamship companies, and other
questions relating to the fruit interests of Massachusetts: W.
D. Hinds, J. Eames, H. E. Rich, Moses P. Palmer and J. W.
Clark.

The Chair — The topic for this afternoon is: "The Best Varie-
ties of Peaches and Plums for Massachusetts," by Mr, Elliott
Moore of Worcester.

BEST VARIETIES OF PEACHES AND PLUMS FOR MASSACHU-
SETTS.

The subject assigned me by your secretary, "Varieties of
Peaches and Plums for Massachusetts," is one requiring long
years of experience and careful study, and even then, one that
can be answered only in part, for there is great diversity of soil
even in little Massachusetts, and a variety that might do well
on a sandy loam, with gravel sub soil and southern exposure,
would not do well on clay land and a northern exposure. Then
again, what is the purpose of the question? Is it to learn of a
number of varieties by the raising of which one can make money
in Massachusetts ? If so, then I would answer that I do not
know of a single perfect variety, and I think you will all agree
with me that for the last twenty-five years the failures in growing
either the peach or the plum in Massachusetts have far out-
weighed the successes. While on the one hand you will oc-
casionally hear an account of wonderful success, you will fail to
hear of the ninety-and-nine who make a total failure of the
whole business.

But there is more than just the commercial side of the ques-

77

tion to consider in the growing of the peach and plum in Massa-
chusetts, for who does not enjoy, far more than money can buy,
the pleasure of growing his own trees, those that his own hand
has planted, and his care has reared, and the gathering of the
luscious peach and the tempting plum from these trees'?

The peach is supposed to have come originally from China,
where the climate is similar to parts of our own country. It
likes, however, neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Unless
one is equal to the task of controlling the wind and the wave,
the frost and sun, he must be prepared to meet many disap-
pointments, and put a high value on the pleasure of sitting under
his own vine and fig-tree, and eating the products of the same.

In the varieties of peaches either for home use or market, the
change is constant, and what is to-day considered the best, to-
morrow gives way to some new sort. As in the strawberry, we
now hear little of the Wilson, the Triumph, and other leading
varieties of thirty years ago. So with peaches; those kinds that
most of us first knew have passed by, and new varieties have
taken their places. The Early and Late Crawfords may give
way largely to Crosby and Elberta, and yet no better peaches
were ever grown in Massachusetts than the Crawfords.

The selection of varieties is a matter of considerable import-
ance, and no general rule applicable to a whole state can be
laid down. Many choice peaches do well only in restricted
localities. Some are liable to be winter-killed, or to be caught
in bloom by late frosts ; some are uncertain bearers ; some mil-
dew, and others rot badly ; some are too tender for long shipment
by rail ; some ripen at the same time as better sorts, which are
to be preferred ; some, like the Elberta, have many good quali-
ties, but fall short of the finest flavor. A variety for commer-
cial purposes must combine as many good points as possible.
The tree must be hardy and productive ; the fruit must be of
good size, fine color, and superior flavor, and must be firm
enough to stand shipment. The grower who contemplates set-
ting an orchard for profit will do well to stick to the old and
well-tried sorts. If he is planting for home use or pleasure,
then he may select a wider range of varieties, including all the
choicer sorts, irrespective of other considerations. The man
who is in the business to make money can well afford to let his
neighbor try all the new sorts.

For market orchards the following have been found the most
generally profitable varieties the country through : Alexander*,
Amsden*, Troth*, Rivers*, Louise*, Hale*, St. John*, Moun-
tain Rose, Crawford Early, Foster, Old Mixon, Stump*, El-
berta, Crawford Late, Reeves*, Wager*, Fox Seedling*, and
Beers Smock*. These varieties ripen in the order named.

*It is doubtful if in Massachusetts these varieties will be profitable.

78

Of the newer kinds probably none ever came with more flour-
ish of trumpet and loud sounding of praise than the Elbertaf,
but its day and generation may be even shorter than its praises.
Owing to its susceptibility to the leaf-curl, which weakens its
vitality, it is not adapted to this locality. Then again, it is not
a peach of the finest flavor.

For home use each individual must make his own selection
to suit his individual tastes. For myself, for home use I would
say Alexander or Rivers*, Hale*, Mountain Rose, Crawford
Early and George the Fourth*, with Wonderful* and Snow* for
trial. In this list you get the earliest and the latest, proven
quality and adaptation to locality, and variety enough to keep
you on the anxious seat from year's beginning to end.

One prominent grower in Connecticut gives as a list of the six
best varieties for Massachusetts, Carman*, Waddell*, Mountain
Rose, Elberta, Crosby, and Late Crawford.

The Plum.

Much has been written in praise of the plum, and justly so,
for of all our fruits it is certainly entitled to a choice place
in our garden, and will well repay us for all our care and atten-
tion to its wants. Like the peach, it has its enemies and its
faults, and it requires careful attention at the right time to help
it to perfect its fruit.

The plum is a fruit that usually tremendously over-bears,
which tendency saps the vitality of the tree, and consequently
reduces the quality of the fruit. To thin the fruit enough to
properly overcome this weakness, requires more courage than
most growers possess.

The curculio, the black knot and the rot are bad enemies to
fight, but they must be overcome, and diligence and persever-
ance will conquer most of them, and hope for better success in
the future will carry you over one or two failures.

Varieties have multiplied wonderfully in late years, and
among the lot one can find kinds suited to all tastes and locali-
ties. As with the growing of the peach, I do not think the
plum can be grown to any great extent in Massachusetts at a
profit. Both climate and soil seem to be against it ; at least,
that has been my experience, for the fruit is too soft and decays
too quickly for market, but where one grows it for the home
use, it may be gathered from the tree as wanted, and in that
way one may enjoy much that money cannot buy. The time of
ripening may be extended from July to October, and one may

*It is doubtful if in Massachusetts these varieties will be profitable.

tProbably more Elbertas have been planted in the last three years
than of any other variety, and it is generally reported as profitable.—
S. T. M., Secretary.

79

gather plums from his own garden every day, weather permit-
ting, during that time.

Of late years the Japanese plums have taken the lead, and to-
day are more widely set than the European varieties, and we
can confidently boast of some superior sorts. The Abundance,
Burbank, Wickson, Climax, and others, rank well with the
Green Gage, McLaughlin, Imperial Gage, Reine, Claude de
Bevay, Washington, and Coe's Golden Drop. Out of over 400
European and nearly one-half as many Japanese varieties, sure-
ly the most exacting taste may be suited.

A large grower in Connecticut gives as a list of the six best
varieties, Red June, Abundance, Burbank, Hale, Chabot, and
Satsuma, but I should substitute Wickson for Chabot, and Octo-
ber Purple for Satsuma. A prominent grower in Worcester
gives the following list of European kinds : Lombard, Brad-
shaw, Imperial Gage, Jefferson, Quackenboss, and German
Prune. The Lombard, although a fine plum when well grown,
is so susceptible to rot that I would not recommend its planting
either for market or home use. The Washington is a large,
rich plum, but is not so free from the tendency to rot as some
others, but still I should include it in my collection.

The Bradshaw should also be included, for although not of
the highest quality, it is a vigorous grower and heavy bearer of
large plums of fair quality, which will hang on the tree longer
after ripening than many other kinds.

The Climax, Wickson, and Sugar Prune are some of the newer
varieties originated by Luther Burbank of California, which,
judging from descriptions, are decided additions, but like all
new varieties, require further testing to learn their true value
for this locality.

Of the Peach and the Plum,

I would say have some;
Of the Plum and the Peach,

Have but a few of each.

Mr. Abbott — I should like to ask the essayist if the epider-
mis, or skin of the plum, was not punctured by the curculio
or something else, if this plum rot would have got in its work!

Mr. Moore — I don't think this has anything to do with it.

Mr. Abbott — I had an idea, when this got in, the diseases of
the plum began their work.

Mr. Moore — Last year I had some trees of the Lombard,
hanging full, and scarcely one in twenty was touched apparent-
ly by the curculio or anything else. Ten days or two weeks
before they should have been picked, they commenced to rot,

80

and before half of them were suitable to pick or to eat, one-half
had rotted entirely. I examined them closely to know whether
they were punctured. I wish Prof. Maynard would tell ns
whether there is anything we can do to stop the brown rot.

Prof. Maynard — Mr. President, I will simply tell you the re-
sults of spraying, to prevent this brown rot, practiced by a gen-
tleman in New York, Mr. Powell. Two years ago I had a letter
from him, asking what he should do for a crop of cherries, just
beginning to ripen, to prevent the brown rot. I advised him to
use a weak solution of copper sulphate, and spray after every
rain. He followed the advice. I think he had forty acres, and
on one day he sprayed them three times and saved his crop,
while the neighbors lost their crop, and the cost of spraying he
found small. He was well equijiped with pumps, etc., and he
could go over the trees quickly. It cost something like six or
eight cents a tree, and he saved his crop, which brought several
thousand dollars. We almost always succeed in saving plums
from the brown rot by spraying the number of times mentioned
in our bulletin, about five times. But I would supplement
the directions given there by putting on a copper sulphate solu-
tion, three ounces of copper sulphate to a barrel of water of fifty
gallons, during the ripening process, after every rain, and I am
sure that would prevent the rot. It must be done directly after
every rain.

Mr. Daniels — Does the spraying have to be done through the
season, or is it too late when the rot begins?

Prof. Maynard — That is too late to save the specimens when
they are beginning to decay.

Mr. Copeland — I should like to hear from any one who has
fruited the Fitzgerald peach.

Mr. S. R. Walker of North Leominster — I have not fruited the
Fitzgerald, but have it growing, and expect to fruit the coming
season if the buds are not killed; probably more than ninety
per cent, are killed.

Mr. Morse — I should like to ask the last speaker if he has had
it beside other varieties to compare.

Mr. Walker — I have. On the Crosby peach I cannot find a
single dead bud. The other varieties, fourteen in number, I
think, have been live buds; the Crawfords are practically all gone.

81

Mr. Draper — Is the orchard on a hill or level country"?

Mr. Walker — On an elevation probably not 100 feet above
the water, but a quarter of a mile removed from the lower part
of the valley. It is where the Crosby peach has fruited four
years.

Mr. M. W. Longley of Shirley — I have in my orchard what
I bought for Foster and Richmond, and they are so very near
alike I would like to know if any one in the audience has fruit-
ed them.

Mr. Draper — I think there is no question but that there is a
difference. In exhibitions of this society we recognize a differ-
ence. At Mr. Hale's and Mr. Hartshorn's, several years ago,
we saw both fruiting, and they were not greatly different, but
enough to make them distinct varieties.

Mr. Longley — Which do you consider the better peach!

Mr. Draper — I think I would take the Richmond. The Foster
grows very large. I should like to ask Mr. David Fisk if there
is any difference.

Mr. Fisk — I should say that the Foster was a better peach,
and has more color than the Richmond or Crawford; is not quite
as large as the Crawford, but is perhaps rounder. The Foster
peach is about as good a peach as a man can eat, and I think T
set out 300 of them last spring. It will keep about twenty-
four hours longer than most any other peach of that class
that I know of. While I am up I would like to know about
that class of plums known as the American plums. There
is quite a list of them in some of our nursery catalogues, and
I should like to know if anybody has had any experience with
them.

The Chair — Our experience is they are very shy bearers.

Mr. Draper — I want to ask Mr. Fisk if he thinks the Foster
is as liberal and steady a bearer as the Richmond, and if he
considers it as firm a peach for shipment. I can say that the
Foster is a luscious peach, but the question is as to its ship-
ping qualities and productiveness as compared with the other.

Mr. Fisk — I think I should stand by the Foster every time.
I have shipped some to Boston, which is the farthest I have
ever shipped them. The Foster is a pretty good peach.

Mr. Draper — I know it is, but can you get it anywhere?

82

Mr. Fisk — It is not as firm as the Elberta, but it is as firm as
any first-class peach that I know of. I am inclined to think
that the buds of it are no hardier than some other sorts, and I
do not know as I am prepared to say they are not just as hardy
on my place. I have something like fifty varieties, and I went
through them pretty well this week, and I made up my mind if
ten per cent, were alive I was lucky.

Mr. Moore — In looking over the varieties this morning, I find
the Elberta and the Hale, and one other variety, has nearly
seventy-five per cent, of the buds good. Two years ago my trees
were in the same condition at the meeting. The middle of May
there might have been a dozen blossoms in the orchard,
but they were few and far between. I do not have hopes that
I shall have a plum or peach crop this year.

Mr. Record — I want to ask, for personal information, a question
in regard to a hardy peach, the name of which I don't remem-
ber, in a catalogue which my neighbor showed me, I think,
from [New Jersey, sent by a nurseryman of whom he bought
peaches before, which is claimed to be hardy even in a climate
where it goes thirty degrees below zero. I should like to in-
quire if any one knows of such a peach ; another one originat-
ing in Canada, and claimed to be hardy and to bear every year.
My neighbor thought all his buds were killed, and presume
mine have been. But if there is a peach that will stand thirty
degrees, I should like to know it.

Mr. Fisk — In 1894, in the latter part of February, the ther-
mometer at Grafton stood twenty- four degrees below zero, and
in some parts of the town over thirty. That year the Foster
peaches did fairly well with me, and I never had so fine a crop
of apples as I had that year.

Mr. Stockwell — Would the peach-growers who have had ex-
perience set out the Crosby this year in preference to anything
else 1 Last winter I tied up perhaps fifty or more trees with
sacking-bags to protect the buds. Would like to know if any
one has ever experimented.

Mr. Warren — I can give you my experience in tying up trees.
I thought I was going to get a corner on peaches. On some of
the limbs I put more than a dozen thicknesses around, but I did
not see that I got any benefit from this protection. Covering
them with cloth was no protection whatever in my experience.

83

Mr. A. B. Holden of Westminster — I should say the Fitzger-
ald peach originated in Canada. In regard to new plums, I
only tried to handle the Wild Goose and the De Soto. I prob-
ably had a quart of Wild Goose that grew on my place. I don't
think we can do anything with them here in New England.

Mr. Moore — I had six trees I put out eleven years ago, and
this year cut them down. I never picked a peck, and they
were large enough to bear three bushels to a tree without in-
jury. I grafted one of them with the Kelsey three or four years
ago, and a more beautiful plum I never grew. If I had a lot of
Wild Goose plums I would not cut them down, but graft on
them.

Mr. Draper in the chair.

Prof. Maynard — Mr. President, some ten or twelve years ago
we made experiments at the college by covering peach trees with
everything we could think of available, covering with bags,
with mats, with pine boughs, i^utting up mats and putting in
shavings, and winding the branches with paper, something like
twelve or fifteen methods, and not one preserved the buds in
good condition. We put up a frame covered with buildiog-
paper, drawing the branches together with soft rope, fastened a
lantern, which in a cold time we would light, and we did save
the buds. Some three or four years before that we had a lot
of trees laid down. We cut the roots on the north side, and
laid them to the south, and we grew, I think, two crops. The
difficulty of this method was that the mice worked under the
covering. That we overcame later by spraying with lime- wash
and jDaris green before covering. Another difficulty was to
Jinow when to raise them at the right time. If allowed to lie
too long the buds swelled too much, and were destroyed by dry-
ing, and perhaps by cold, after the raising. I think a system
could be worked out by which we might get some profit, but it
would have to be done in a close business way to make any-
thing.

Mr. Gilson — Has Prof. Maynard had any experience in
mulching peach-trees after the ground is frozen solid ?

Prof. Maynard — The buds will be kept back a little by
mulching, but growth will take place more or less, even if the
ground is frozen. The growth of buds depends more upon the
warmth of the atmosphere than that of the soil.

84

Mr. Last year a member of our association had some-
thing to say about native plums, and I ordered some and set
them out. Isn't it a fact that has been well established that
some are not self-fertile, and won't bear unless other varieties
are planted with them? Mr. Moore says he cut his down. I
wonder whether they were self-sterile sorts.

Prof. Maynard — The Wild Goose plum and many other varie-
ties are not self-fertile. We have two Wild Goose trees; one
is nearly thirty years old, and they have borne a few quarts
every year for many years, and we had no difficulty in selling
them. Last year they bore an enormous crop, being fertilized
by other native trees beside them that blossomed for the first
time. They are very good canning plums. We have been
adding to the collection the best native plums we could find,
and last year we had several varieties fruiting, but I do not
know as they will be profitable. Some of the kinds are suitable
for table use, about equal to the Japanese in quality.

Mr. Moore — The Wild Goose is a good eating plum.

Prof. Maynard — We let the fruit drop to the ground and
picked it up from day to day, and when fully ripe they are very
good. We have sold them in competition with the Domestic
plums, and they sold quickly in our small market.

Mr. Hinds — I have one tree set on the west side of the
house, where the winter sun scarcely touches it, and it
has borne every year all it ought to bear. Col. Wilson has
argued this scheme of protecting peach-trees considerably with
me, saying if we put up a high board fence and train trees each
side of the fence, those on the north side would give us the most
satisfactory results.

Mr. L. W. Maynard of South Berlin — I should like to inquire
if any one has fruited the Hale plum.

Prof. Maynard — I should say that probably there were no
trees large enough to fruit in Massachusetts two years ago.
Last winter the buds were all killed. The tree is a beautiful
grower, and the fruit of very fine quality. It is reported al-
most everywhere as not being an abundant bearer.

Mr 1 should like to ask about the October Purple.

Prof. Maynard — The tree is hardy, but has not been tested
long enough to know what it will do in Massachusetts. It takes

85

many years to prove the value of a variety in the market. The
tree is a good grower, and fruit of good quality. I should at
this point say that there are a great many other Japanese plums
recently introduced from Mr. Burbank's collection, from which
we are hoping a great deal. He is producing hundreds, or per-
haps thousands, of varieties grown by crossing in every possi-
ble way that he can bring the combinations together, and there
are hundreds of varieties on his grounds which are superior to
the Abundance and Burbank. Whether they will be hardy or
not here we don't know, but he is certainly producing a large
number of wonderful varieties, and has sold some of them for
their weight in gold.

Mr, Is there any way to grow the Burbank with an up-
right, close head !

Prof. Maynard — The best way to treat that variety is by
keeping the leading shoots from growing by pinching, and fol-
lowing it up closely while the tree is young. It naturally grows
in a straggling condition. We can train almost any tree to the
form we wish by stopping the growth of shoots when they get
beyond the point where you wish them to stop.

The Chair — I think we had better rest with this subject and
give way to the next topic. The next topic is, " Co- operation
in Fruit Culture in Massachusetts," by Mr. Herbert O. Mead
of Lunenburg, our new president.

CO-OPERATION IN FRUIT CULTURE IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Co-operation or the uniting of common interests is as old as
industry itself, and the masses have ever found it necessary
to work and act together for the common good. As civiliza-
tion has advanced and conditions have changed, co-operation
has taken and will in the future take a more prominent place in
the affairs of the people. The manufacturer tells us competition
is the life of trade, and immediately joins a trust to promote his
interests. The laboring man tells us if he did not unite with
others to protect his interests, he would be doomed to long
hours of labor and almost starvation wages. And what says
the tiller of the soil, born under conditions which make a man
independent, and confident in his ability to earn his own living!
Never under discipline, unless it be to the whip of the party
with which he trains, and there he is the weakest slave. ''He
says the soil I stand upon is my own. Other generations have

86

earned a living here, so can I. For the problems of the future
what need I care"? ' '

Yes, we admire the man who has faith in himself, faith in his
farm, and independence to stand alone. The little potato and
the small fruit may be just as fair and just as perfect as the
larger ones, but in a general shake-up they go to the bottom of the
basket. And the farmer of the future, who would associate as
an equal with the friends of his boyhood, who would have his
wife the social equal with the schoolmates of her youth, must
not depend upon faith and independence for a livelihood. With
his labor as his capital, he cannot stand alone. New farmers,
new fruit- growers, and new problems are coming to the front,
and upon how those problems are solved, will depend the future
of Massachusetts agriculture. Co-operation may be the watch-
word which will lead them to success, but success comes not
without an effort, and each should have a part to do. It would
be possible to try to do so much that little if any good would be
accomplished. Let us remember that a green team, on an un-
tried road, should never be overloaded.

Matters of legislation cannot be accomplished without co-
operative effort. And the time has come when all fruit-growers
should demand protection from fraud. Believing as I do that
honesty is the corner-stone of successful fruit-culture, I think
that all fruit-growers should demand of Congress a pure food
law, a law which shall compel the correct labeling of all canned
goods, and the marking as imitation of all adulterated or imita-
tion food products. If it is wrong for the man who raises Bald-
win apples to face and sell his No. 2 as extra selected, or sell his
windfalls as hand-picked apples, why is it not equally wrong
that the product of his neighbor who raises Keifer pears, should
be labeled and sold as canned Bartlett? Or the manufacturer
of jellies or other food products, who uses apple waste and other
adulterations, to make goods which he sells as the pure product
of currants, raspberries, or other fruits ; neither do I believe
that the marking of fruit as the product of some other state, is
either just or right. I have seen apples stenciled extra selected
Maine Baldwins, yet grown in Massachusetts. Any action on
these matters at present would be simply educational. The
people of this country are not educated up to that standard at
present. But this association can use its influence for the pas-
sage of a standard package law by the different states and espe-
cially for our own.

A law which will require the plain marking of all packages or
baskets of fruit not put up in standard sizes, as short or small
size, or on larger packages, the number of quarts they contain,
is only a matter of justice to the buyer as well as to the grower
of fruit.

87

The time will come when a fruit-grower will not be allowed to
breed a nuisance upon his land, to the loss and injury of his
neighbors. I believe a law should be passed in this state in
regard to insect pests and perhaps apply to some other afflic-
tions the fruit-grower is heir to — black knot for instance, even
if that law did no more than require our experiment sta-
tion to report the names of parties who were doing nothing
to prevent such pests becoming a nuisance to their neighbors.
And we might co-oporate to educate the city man and boy,
and also some country folks, that the fruit growers have rights
which they are bound to respect.

Now, a suggestion to the members of this association. T be-
lieve a state law, making sixty hours a week's work (except
the necessary chores of Sunday) for farm help, would be a help
to the fruit-growers and farmers of this state. It would bring a
better class of help and allow the man who requires twelve or
fourteen hours in which to do a day's work, to emigrate to some
other state. I believe it is useless for the farmers or fruit-
growers to depend upon the raising of money to obtain legisla-
tion they need, except to properly present a bill before the com-
mittee having it in charge, but we should use our influence and
votes against any man who will not support our demands, pro-
vided they are just and right, and not based upon selfishness
and greed.

One of the best opportunities for co operative work will be in
spraying. For orchard work the power sprayer, if it has work
enough to do, will prove the most satisfactory, if we may judge
of spraying by other work.

For successful spraying a man must understand the business,
and success and profit will depend very largely upon the intelli-
gence and judgment of the man who undertakes it.

The expert workman will do better and cheaper work than
average farmer or his hired man. There would be a saving in
pumps and other articles which each would have to provide for
himself.

If the small fruit-grower is not to go the same way the small
manufacturer has gone, if he is not to sink to the same level in his
style of living as the foreign class who are now coming upon our
back farms, that man must adopt different methods in the pack-
ing and selling of his fruit. And should he look to co-opera-
tive effort to solve the problem for him, he must understand
that it will not add value to cider-apples as market fruit; that it
will not make the inferior fruit of the careless grower equal in
value to the superior fruit of the progressive fruit-grower; and
that co-operation offers no helping hand except to him who
raises good fruit. Co-operative effort, as I understand it, has
in the past accomplished more as a protection against fraud and

88

dishonesty than in all other directions put together. Co-opera-
tion has proved a great help to the Delaware and Maryland
peach-growers. When peaches were first shij)ped from those
states, the man who raised good fruit and packed honestly, and
he who raised poor frnit and put his culls at the bottom of the
basket, faced with the best he had, shipped their fruit to market
in the same car; a system which demoralized the peach business
and robbed the honest man for the benefit of his less honest
neighbor, and until associations were formed which allowed
only the shippers of good fruit, honestly packed, in cars con-
trolled by themselves, were the peach growers put in position to
receive a fair value for their fruit. The same thing has occurred
in grape- growing centres.

If the strawberry-growers of Dighton would put their fruit
all into the hands of some association, and have all the berries
grown in that township sent as one grade, they would realize
many times as much for their fruit as they now do.

The apple offers for Massachusetts growers the best opportu-
nity for co-operative selling, especially when grown for the for-
eign market. At the present time American apples do not com-
mand the confidence of those markets, yet their auction sales
are conducted in such a way as to encourage the honest shipper.
But American apples are packed in such a loose manner that
the turning out of one barrel in twenty-five or fifty does not in
many cases give a fair sample of all of a shipload. Under these
circumstances co-operative selling, to be a success, will depend
upon honest packing, and when a grade is once established it
must be kept up to that standard.

Are the aj)ple-growers of Massachusetts ready to allow some
one else to grade their fruit? Are they willing to pay what a
man capable of managing an enterprise of that same size would
command elsewhere?

How many realize the amount of work involved in putting up
strictly first-class fruit? Yet the time is coming when, if they
do not wish to supply the demand for fine fruit, some one else
will. What shall our answer be"?

We might spend an hour in discussing how best to form a co-
oijerative association and all its details, but I hardly think it
would prove profitable at this time. It looks very doubtful to
me if such an association can be formed at present. But I will
give a few facts, as I have learned them, in selling my own fruit.
Now I believe in co-operation, and practice it; for the co-opera-
tion I practice is with the commission house with which I deal.
I try to furnish first-class fruit, honestly packed. They furnish
first-class prices, and are glad of the opportunity to do so.

Quality has more to do with prices than most people give it
credit for. The man who has once bought a barrel of first-class

89

apples, honestly put up, will never be satisfied with a barrel of
inferior fruit again.

If the Massachusetts fruit-grower is to make a success of his
business, he must keep his rei^utation as good as the best. He
must be so situated that he may become acquainted with the
parties who sell or consume his products. He has every induce-
ment to build up a reputation which shall give his fruit the
preference in our markets, but to do this he must put up his
fruits as honestly as a co-operative association must do it. He
may have learned the lesson co-operation has solved for others.
Let him forget honesty and honest dealings, and others will
supply the markets which should be his.

Mr. Abbott — I notice nothing has been said about the currant
in this discussion. We have some new kinds, the Pomona and
the Red Cross. I should like to know what would be the best
to put out.

The Chair — Are there any questions on this topic of co-opera-
tion before the general discussion ?

Mr. Stockwell — For the last three years I have attended the
meetings of this association, and from the discussions I am
rather inclined to think that the fruit-growers of Massachusetts
are the most dishonest and deceitful set of men I ever heard of.

The Chair — Perhaps our brother has hit the nail on the head.
Are there any other questions or confessions to be made ?

Mr. Parker — I should like to ask the name of that spraying
apparatus, and whether it was a hand or steam pump.

The President — My suggestion was to rig up with one horse-
power engine. I think a man who would understand the busi-
ness and do spraying for the town, could do it cheaper than
anybody else. The idea is to employ the men best fitted to do
the work. There has got to be a co-operative effort, or the
small fruit-grower will have a poor chance in the future. I be-
lieve the time has not come when we can co operate, but as the
times point, within the next twenty- five years there will be a
great change in the matter of co-operation.

Mr. Moore — I notice the president advocated shorter hours.
I think there is no fruit- grower in the world but will say amen.
We don't want to work longer than the stone-cutter, because if
a good fruit-grower isn't worth more than a stone-cutter, let us
all go to stone-cutting. It is a fact that the farmers, not only

90

in Massachusetts, but all over the country, are working from
twelve to fifteen hours.

The President — In the matter of buying stock, I believe the
fruit-growers of any town can unite and buy trees direct from
some responsible house, and stand a better show of getting
what they ought than from the average tree agent.

Mr. Hinds — It hardly seems to me that co-operation is any-
where near us yet, and as to co-operative spraying, so many
would want it done at the same time that it would be impracti-
cable. In regard to compressed air-pumps, I have witnessed
one in operation : one-fourth minute pumping sprayed seven
minutes by the watch — only eleven strokes of the plunger. I
want to know if that is not as practical as any sprayers.

Prof. Maynard — In this experiment was there any liquid in
the pump ?

Mr. Hinds — Nothing but cold water.

Mr. Eames — The public parks of Los Angeles, California, are
sprayed with a horse- sprayer, and they get a pressure of sixty
pounds with a pump, and then it throws an even spray. They
spray for the San Jos6 scale, using a pump that works on the
same principle.

Mr. Hinds — We could not test it as to the height it would
spray ; it was in a bath-room where I saw it tested.

Mr. Draper — As a member of the Park Commission of our
city, we have had to grapple with 'this question of spraying our
elm-trees in order to protect the foliage from the ravages of the
elm-leaf beetle, and we agreed to take the experience of the best
men in this Commonwealth, the experience of the Gypsy Moth
Commission in using the different pumps that appeared practi-
cal to them. The outcome of it was, they have invented their
own machine, and in my judgment have prepared the most
practical, durable, and satisfactory apparatus that can be found
in this country ; that is, without saying anything disparaging
of other manufacturers. We had four in use last season, and
they worked perfectly. One man would work easily and sup-
ply a double line of hose, at the same time going on to the high-
est parts of these elms. You have got to have your ladder- man
in the branches spraying the trees, and have some one to help
take the ladder and carry the truck from place to place.

91

Mr. Moore — Where is the machine manufactured'?

Mr. Draper — By Mr. Ware of East Walpole, who has been
the manufacturer for the Gypsy Moth Commission for a good
many years. He is now established there, and has a number of
pumps, double-acting pumps, but of different capacity.

Mr. Moore — Can you tell about the cost ?

Mr. Draper — I cannot say, but including truck might cost in
the vicinity of one hundred dollars.

Mr. Warren — It seems to me we have discussed the spraying
question and peach question pretty well. There is a space
allowed for small fruit questions. Has any one had any expe-
rience with the Wilder currant ?

Prof. Maynard — We have, I think, twenty-four varieties
growing, all of the leading sorts, among them the Wilder, Eed
Cross, Pomona, Ruby, Euby King, etc., which are the new
ones. The Wilder has a little longer bunch, perhaps, than the
others ; the Eed Cross and Wilder run pretty close together,
but are not any larger than the Cherry. The most productive
variety is the Pomona, and it is of very fine quality.

Mr. Warren — How does the W^ilder compare with the Cherry
in productiveness "?

Prof. Maynard — I think it is rather more productive. I saw
it in Mr. Willard's grounds two years ago, and it was loaded
with fruit. Taking them on our grounds, as they are all grow-
ing together, the Wilder, I think, would be the most valuable.

Mr. Moore — Would the professor recommend constant culti-
vation or mulching 1

Prof. Maynard — Yes, if in rather dry ground. Mulching will
bring the roots to the surface, and if we plow deeply after this,
we destroy all the feeding roots. It will take two or three
years before the bushes will get over such an injury.

Mr. Eames — Is the Wilder better than the Eed Cross ?

Prof. Maynard — I could see little difference. They are both
very fine. I cannot say they are better than the Cherry. I
think I should plant the Fay Prolific. In the ordinary lot of
Cherry currants, as they are commonly grown, you get all
sorts, long bunch and short bunch sorts. For quality the
Pomona is far superior to any of the others.

Mr, Warren — As we are at the home of the Eecord straw-

92

berry, I should like to ask if any one here in Worcester can tell
about it, how it compares with other varieties.

Mr. Record — I am the one who originated it. The man who
could answer has been on a sick bed for several weeks. He
told me last year that of some twenty-three varieties he had,
the Record was the best. He said it did not pay to grow so
many varieties. Another neighbor, who is a Swede, said it
would be the only one he would grow this year, and there have
been a good many inquiries about it. I have sent it to differ-
ent states, and have sent it to the Agricultural College twice.
The first time they lost it. This year I think they have kept
it. I have never made any claim as to its quality. I originated
the strawberry as a seedling some eight or ten years ago, and a
few of my neighbors have had it, and more want it.

Adjourned at 4.30 P. m.

CONSTITUTION.

ARTICLE I.

Name.

This organization shall be called the "Massachusetts Fruit
Growers' Association."

ARTICLE II.

Object,

The object of this association shall be to encourage
the cultivation of fruits adapted to this climate ; to
collect and disseminate reliable information on the best varie-
ties of fruits, and practical methods of cultivation, gathering,
packing, storing and preparation of fruit, for both home
and foreign markets; to investigate diseases, insects and other
obstacles to success, and the remedies best calculated to over-
come them.

ARTICLE III.

Officees.

The officers of this association shall be a President,
Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, an Auditor, and a
Board of Directors, consisting of twelve (amended to
twenty-four, March 11, 1897) members, one (now two) from
each county, as far as practicable.

ARTICLE IV.

Membership.

Each member shall pay an admission fee of one dollar
and an annual assessment of one dollar, which shall be
due at the time of the annual meeting.

94

ARTICLE V.

Meetings.

Section. 1. This association shall hold, at least, two regu-
lar meetings each year. The annual meeting, for the elec-
tion of officers, shall be held in the city of Worcester, on
the second Wednesday of March, at 11 o'clock a. m., amended
March 14, 1900, at 2 o'clock p. m.

Sect. 2. In the election of officers and the transaction of
other business, twenty members shall constitute a quorum ;
a majority vote shall constitute an election. All officers shall
hold over until their successors are chosen.

ARTICLE VI.

Duties of Officers.

The President and Secretary shall have power to call special
meetiiigs of the Association, or of the Directors; or upon the
written petition of fifteen members they shall issue such call.
The object of these meetings shall be stated in the call, which
shall be issued by mail to each member, at least seven days
prior to such meetings.

ARTICLE VII.

Amendments.

Any amendment to this constitution may be made by a vote
of two -thirds of the members present and voting; a notice of the
proposed change having been given at a x)revious regular meet-
ing.

BV=LAWS.

Duties of Officers.

1. The President shall preside at all meetings of the Associ-
ation and perform such duties as jjertain to the office. In his
absence his duties shall devolve upon the Vice-President, or in
his absence upon the director for the county in which the meet-
ing may be held.

95

Duty of Secretary.

2. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to attend all meet-
ings Oi the Association, and keep a record of its transactions;
conduct all correspondence; keep a list of members of the Asso-
ciation; collect the assessments and pay over the same to the
Treasurer; notify members of their election and members of
committees of their appointment.

Duty of the Treasurer.

3. The Treasurer shall have charge of all moneys belonging
to the Association; he shall keep a record of all receipts and
disbursements; he shall pay out money only on bills approved
by the President and Secretary; he shall report in writing at the
annual meeting; he shall keej) a list of members and their places
of residence, and at the close of his term of office turn over all
records and funds in his possession to his successor.

Duties of the Auditor.

4. The Auditor shall examine and report upon the books and
accounts of the Treasurer; he shall be entitled to demand all
books, papers and vouchers three days previous to the annual
meeting.

Duties of Directors.

5. The duties of the Directors shall be to bring the objects
and interests of the Association to the notice of the people of their
several counties; to urge their claims and endeavor to increase
the membership; they shall examine and report on newly intro-
duced varieties in their several localities, as to their quality and
probable value for general cultivation.

Election of Officers.

6. The President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and
Auditor shall be elected by ballot, and the Board of Directors
by a majority vote of the members present; they shall hold
office till their successors are duly elected; the first five officers
shall be ex- officio members of the Board of Directors.

96

Vacancies.

7. Vacancies in any office, caused by resignation, death, or
removal from the state, shall be filled by the Board of Directors
for the unexj)ired term of their office.

Discontinuance of Membeeship.

8. Any member who shall neglect, for a period of two years,
to pay his annual assessments, shall cease to retain his connec-
tion with the Association, and the Secretary shall have power to
erase his name from the list of members.

9. These articles shall take effect and be in force from their
adoption by a majority vote of the Association.

10. These By-laws may be amended at any meeting of the
Association by a majority vote of the members present and
voting, notice of the change proposed having been made at a
previous meeting.

LIST OF MEMBERS.

Abbott, R. A., Worcester.
Adams, Erastvis, Grafton.
Adams, J. F., Medway.
Allen, J. A., Worcester.
Allen, W. O., Northboro.
Anderson, H. W.
Andrews, H. J., Fitchburg.
Avery, J. G., Spencer.
Ball, H. S., Shrewsbviry.
Barber, H. S., Athol.
Barker, John, North Andover.
Barrett, W. M., Westboro.
Batcheller, F. E , Lawrence.
Bates, Edwin, Lynn.
Blake, C L., Ashby.
Blake, F. A., Rochdale.
Bliss, Ethelbert, Wilbraham.
Bolan, George, Gleasondale.
Bolles, C. P., Wilbraham.
Boutwell, F. M., Groton.
Bowker, J. B., Worcester.
Brooks, Ansel, Ashby.
Brooks, Ethan, West Springfield.
Brown, C. H., Fitchburg.
Brown, N. P., Westboro.
Bruce, E. M., Leominster.
Buckley, C. E., Northboro.
Burgess, S. A., Worcester.
Burnap, C. E., Fitchburg.
Burnap, E. S., Fitchburg.
Burpee, W. H., Leominster.
Buss, C. S., Leominster.
Butterick, G. F., So. Lancaster.
Capen, A., Spencer.
Carter, H. W., Millbury.
Caswell, A. B., Fitchburg.
Chadbourne, A. H., Worcester.
Chamberlain, A. M., Worcester.

Chase, J. L., Maiden.
Clark, J. W., North Hadley.
Coggshall, H. F., Fitchburg.
Cole, W. M., North Boxford.
Cook, H. A., Shrewsbury.
Cook, H. M., Northboro.
Cooledge, Sumner, Watertown
Copeland, E. F., Colrain.
Cruickshanks,Geo., Fitchburg.
Cushing, C. G., Fitchburg.
Damon, S. C, Lancaster.
Daniels, F. H., Sherborn.
Dearth, H. A., Sherborn.
Derby, Alden, Leominster.
Draper, James, Worcester.
Dresser, C. L., Gardner.
Fames, Jonathan, Sherborn.
Eaton, C. B., Worcester.
Ellsworth, C H., Worcester.
Ellsworth, J. C, Worcester.
Emerson, E. A., Haverhill.
Emerson, S. J., Lunenburg
Farquhar, Rob't, No. Cambridge.
Farrar, E. R., South Lincoln.
Fish, C. R., Worcester.
Fisk, D. L , Grafton.
Fletcher, C. F., Lancaster.
Fletcher, E. S., Thompson, Conn.
Fletcher, R. R., Ayer.
Flint, E. R., Lincoln.
Fowler, W. J., Boston.
Fuller, H. C, Leominster.
Gifford, J. E.. Sutton.
Gilson, E. F., Groton.
Goldman, M., Pittsfield.
Goodell, J. W., Lynn.
Goodell, L W., Belchertown.
Graham, C. S., Westboro.

98

Graham, G. S., Holden.
Green, Elton, Spencer.
Gregory, Edgar, Marblehead.
Gregory, J. J. H , Marblehead.
Griggs, C. v., Westboro.
Hadwen, O. B., Worcester.
Hall, Walton, Marshfield.
Hammond, F. M., Worcester.
Harlow, H. J., West Boylston.
Harlow, Thomas, No. Boylston.
Harrington, H. A., Peabody.
Harrington, J. L., Lunenburg.
Hartshorn, C. L., Worcester.
Hartwell, Samuel, Lincoln.
Haskell, E. B., Southbridge.
Hawkins, A. C, Lancaster.
Hayes, W. H., No. Andover.
Hay ward, C. F., Ashby.
Hay ward, Mary A., Natick.
Hayward, M. W., Natick.
Hersey, E. A., Worcester.
Hersey, Edmund, Hingham.
Hinds, A. J., Townsend.
Hinds, W. D., Townsend.
Hittinger, Richard, Belmont.
Hixon, A. A., Worcester.
Hodges, H. H., Sherborn.
Holden, A. B., Westminster.
Holden, S. R., Sherborn.
Hosmer, W. H., Leominster.
Houghton, G. B., Lunenburg.
Houghton, H. R., Lunenburg.
Howe, E. D., Marlboro.
Howe, F. E., Northboro.
Howes, W. E., No. Bellingham.
Hoyt, Edwin, New Canaan, Conn.
Hunt, J. A., Fitchburg.
Hunt, W. H., Concord.
Hutchinson, G.H., So. Middleton.
James, G. B., Boston.
Jefts, C. M., Ashby.
Jewett, W. C, Worcester.
Johnson, Frank, No. Grafton.
Johnson, W. H., Northboro.
Jones, N. R., Billerica.
Kilbourn, Wm., So. Lancaster.
Kimball, J. E., Oxford.
Kingsbury, H. H., Spencer.

Kinney, F. J., Worcester.
Leavens, G. D., Grafton.
Longley, M. W., Shirley.
Manning, J. W., Reading.
Marshall, A. A., Fitchburg.
Maynard, L. W., So. Berlin.
Maynard, S. T., Amherst.
Mead, H. O., Lunenburg.
Mentzer, T. E., Northboro.
Merrill, Arthur, Wilkinsonville.
Minott, C. W., Maiden.
Moore, Elliott, Worcester.
Moore, H. W., Worcester.
Moore, Pliny, Worcester.
Morse, Monroe, Medway.
Munson, W. A., Huntington.
Murphy, Jacob, Billerica.
Nason, J. H., West Boxford.
O'Connell, William, Worcester.
O'Hara, Eugene, Worcester.
Overend, Walter, Worcester.
Page, J. N., Leominster.
Palmer, M. P., Groton.
Parker, C. E., Holden.
Parker, H. L., Worcester.
Perry, A. D., Worcester.
Perry, J. S., Worcester.
Perry, O. H, J., Providence, R. I.
Phelps, A. D., Northboro.
Pierce, J. W., West Millbury.
Pratt, Augustus, No. Middleboro.
Pratt, C. S., Reading.
Pratt, H. S., Worcester.
Priest, G. S., Littleton.
Priest, L. F., Gleasondale.
Putnam, D. O., West Sutton.
Putnam, Henry, Worcester.
Race, R. H., No. Egremont.
Record, S. H., Worcester.
Reed, J. O., Greenville, N. H.
Rice, G. C, Worcester.
Rice, L. W., Wilbraham.
Rich, H. E., Worcester.
Robbins, O. R., "Weston.
Rogers, H. O., Holliston.
Ross, W. D., Worcester.
Russell, F. A., Lawrence.
Sanderson, T. J., Fitchburg.

99

Sawtell, J. M., Fitchburg.
Seaver, J. A., Townsend.
Sessions, W. R., Hampden.
Sharp, A. G., Richmond.
Shaw, E. M., Nashua, N. H.
Sherman, A. B., Wayland.
Smith, J. L., Barre.
Smith, G. N., Newton Lower Falls
Stacy, Albert, Griswoldville.
Stevens, A. F., Wellesley.
Stockwell, H. S., Sutton.
Stockwell, O., Fitchburg.
Stockwell, J. W., Sutton.
Stone, C. N., No. Leominster.
Stone, G. E., Shrewsbury.
Stone, H. J., Shrewsbury.
Stowe, A. M., Hudson.
Townsend, J. R., Green Lawn,

N. Y.
Tourtellot, E. F., Worcester.
Twitchell, S., Fitchburg.

Underwood, H. P., Gleasondale.
Vincent, M. H., Conway.
Walsh, Almon, No. Leominster.
Ward, A. M., Worcester.
Ware, B. P., Marblehead.
Warren, S. H., Weston.
Wheeler, 0. H., Lincoln.
Wheeler, G. F., Concord.
Whitcomb, G. S., Townsend.
Whitcomb, N. H., Littleton

Common.
White, John, Fitchburg.
Whitney, C. A., Upton.
Williams, W. E., Townsend.
Wilson, A. H., Mason, N. H.
Wood, C. M., Upton.
Wood, E. W., West Newton.
Wooldredge, John, Lunenburg.
Wyman, O. B., Shrewsbury.
Young, E. S., Orange.

iilAi1 r

Report of the Seventh
Annual Meeting

Massachusetts Fruit
Grow^ers' Association

Organized
March 21, 1895

-^

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(Organized March 21, 1895.)

REPORT

SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,
March 13 and 14, 1901.

TOlorccstcr, flCass.:

Press of F. S. Blanchard & Co.
190 1.

OFFICERS

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association.

1 90 1 .

H. O. MEAD, President, Lunenburg.

A. G. SHARP, Vice-President, Richmond.

C. A. WHITNEY, SECRETARY, Upton.

ETHAN BROOKS, TREASURER, West Springfield.

J. L. ELLSWORTH, AUDITOR', Worcester.

DIRECTORS.

Essex County. E. A. Emerson, Haverhill; J. J. H. Gregory, Mar-

blehead.
Suffolk County. J, W. Stockwell, Boston.
Norfolk County. Monroe Morse, Medway.
Plymouth County. Augustus Pratt, North Middleboro ; Walton

Hall, Marshfield.
Middlesex County. C. F. Hay ward, Ashby; M. P. Palmer, Groton ,
W. D. Hinds, Townsend ; C. S. Pratt, Reading ;
Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln ; Jonathan Eames;
Sherborn.
Hampshire County. John W. Clark, North Hadley ; S. T. Maynard,

Amherst.
Hampden County. Ethelbert Bliss, "Wilbrahan ; L. W. Rice, Wil-

braham.
Berkshire County. A. G. Sharp, Richmond.
Franklin County. M. H. Vincent, Conway.

Worcester County. George Cruickshanks, Fitchburg ; O. B. Had-
wen, Worcester ; C. E. Parker, Holden ; Jamee
Draper, Worcester ; C. L. Hartshorn, Wor-
cester ; John G. Avery, Spencer ; E. A. Her-
Bcy, Westboro.

PROCELEDINGS

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

1901.
Horticultural Halh Worcester, M^^ss.

The seventh annual meeting was called to order Wednesday
morning, March 13th, at 10.15 o'clock by the president, Mr. H.
O. Mead of Lunenburg.

Mr. O. B. Hadweu, president of the Worcester County Horti-
cultural Society, cordially welcomed the association to the city
and to the hall in which the meeting was held.

President Mead then briefly reviewed the work of the year,
and, thanking the members for their confidence and support,
congratulated them upon the measure of success that had been
attained.

The secretary's report was read and accepted, showing that
out of a total of 255 names on the books, 13 were now de-
ceased, 26 had withdrawn, and 13 had been dropped for non-
payment of dues, leaving a present membership of 203. Two
field meetings were held, one at Arnold Arboretum, June 22nd,
the other at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Septem-
ber 7th and 8th, 1900. Twenty-eight new members had joined
the association during the vear.

4

The treasurer read the following report', which was accepted :

1900.

March 14. Cash on hand, |4 51

Received for annual dues, 197 GO

Received from sale of badges, 10 40

Gift from Samuel Hartwell, 5 00

Interest at savings bank, 58

|217 49
1900. Paid stenographer, |30 00
Bill for badges, 15 55
For programmes, postage, sta-
tionery, &.C., 51 60
Printing annual report, 110 00
1901.
March 13. Balance in the treasury, 10 34

|217 49

Respectfully submitted,

ETHAN BROOKS, Treasurer.
Approved March 13, 1901,

C. L. HARTSHORN, Auditor.

The auditor reported the accounts correct and accompanied
by the proper vouchers, showing a balance on hand of |10.34.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend reported for the Committee
on Methods of Shipping Fruit, describing the manner in which
the barrels are handled as seen by the committee on their visit
to one of the largest steamships of the Cunard line. He stated
that the barrels are packed only four tiers deep on the storage
decks, and exhaust fans are used to keep them cool.

Prof. S. T. Maynard, of the Hatch Experiment Station,
Amherst, Mass., then gave an address on "Packing and Pack-
ages for Apples," in which he described the various kinds of
packages and methods of packing used in the collection of
apples on exhibition at the east side of the hall. He also
gave the weights of the different varieties when packed and
when opened four months later, showing the loss of weight

when left uncovered to be much more than when kept in tight
boxes or barrels. Messrs. John W. Clark and C. L. Hartshorn
were appointed a committee to examine the condition of the
fruit and report at the afternoon session.

In reply to questions Prof. Maynard said that this fruit was
from trees that were sprayed four times. That the brown rot
of the Baldwin is not checked by any method of treatment yet
tried; very little is known about the cause or nature of it, save
that the tissue is identical with that of a bruised spot. No
fungus has been found, and yet it is something that continues
to grow.

Mr. Abel F. Stevens of W-ellesley stated that two German-
scientists have recently claimed to have discovered the fungus
which the}' say is the cause of the trouble.

Mr. George Cruickshanks of Fitchburg moved that a com-
mittee of five be appointed by the chair to bring in a list of
officers for the ensuing year to be voted upon at the afternoon
session. Carried.

The chair appointed the following Committee on Nomina-
tions: George Cruickshanks of Fitchburg, S. T. Maynard of
Amherst, W. D. Hinds of Townsend, C. E. Parker of Holden,
and James Draper of Worcester.

The president then introduced Prof. W. G. Johnson, asso-
ciate editor of the New England Homestead, who gave a very
able lecture on ^'The San Jose Scale — Latest Methods of Treat-
ment."

In the discussion which followed it was brought out that
the scale had already made its appearance in the city, an
orchard of some fifty trees on May street being badly infested.
The theory was advanced that it might have been brought
there in the manure from a stable where refuse oranges and
lemons were dumped by the owner who was in the grocery
business. Prof. Johnson stated that this was impossible, as
the San Jose scale never infested the citrus fruits; that oranges
and lemons were attacked by a so-called "red scale" which
could not live on tlie deciduous fruits. This red scale is very
destructive in California, and is sometimes to be seen on the
oranges and lemons found in our markets. The inference was
a natural one, as the San Jose scale first made its appearance

6

in California; but it has never been found on tlie deciduous
fruits in this country, though Prof. Lounsbury has recently
reported it as occurring on such fruits in South Africa. Later
in the session several of the members visited the orchard men-
tioned and found that in the centre many large trees were
nearly killed by the scale. How it got there was not known,
as the owner said he » had not purchased any young trees re-
cently, but there was no doubt about its presence. As there
was another orchard across the street, Prof. Johnson advised
the local Horticultural Society to take charge of the matter
and exterminate the pest for their own protection and at the
expense of the societ}', as there was no law to compel the owner
to do anything about it. In answer to a question as to how
the scale spreads, he said the principal agents were birds, flying
insects and wind; mentioning a case where a cloth of 28 feet
from an infested tree was almost completely' covered with the
scale. Teams working in infested orchards or even passing by
on the highway may carry the pest to other orchards. In
reply to a question by Mr. Morse of Medway, Prof. Johnson
said that many states now have a law requiring the fumiga-
tion of all nursery stock, irrespective of conditions. The
nurserymen in other states have fallen into line, and nearly
all are now advertising "fumigated trees." He advised the
setting of trees that were thoroughly fumigated with hydro-
cyanic acid gas, and no others. Even then a careful watch
must be kept for the first appearance of the scale.

After some further discussion the meeting adjourned to
1.30 P. M.

Afternoon Session.

President Mead in the chair. Prof. S. T. Maynard of
Amherst explained the collection of shoots of fruit trees ex-
hibited in vases at the end of the hall, consisting of about
forty varieties of peaches, thirty-two of Japanese plums, and
twenty-three of American plums. These were collected some
two weeks previously and placed in the greenhouse, where they
started into growth, thus showing the percentage of injury
they suffered during the winter. Of the peaches the Elberta
and Crawford, both Earlv and Late, showed the greater

amount of injury; while the Dennis, Oldmixon and Crosby
showed the least.

Slv. Ethelbert Bliss of Wilbraham said that in his orchard
the Elberta, Mountain Rose and Oldmixon buds were nearly all
alive.

Mr. Monroe Morse of Medway said that in his orchard he
found about 50 per cent, of the peach buds alive, and the same
proportion in that of a neighbor, both favorably located.

Several members reported all peach buds killed in their or-
chards, while a few estimated from 2 to 5 per cent, of live
buds.

Mr. John W. Clark of North Hadley stated that in his or-
chard the buds were nearly all dead on the lower side of the
field and farther up they grew better, those at the top being
nearly all alive. He also said that he had a complete failure
some years when the temperature had not been below zero;
and full crops other years when it had reached 24 degrees be-
low.

Mr. George Cruickshanks reported for the Committee on
Nominations a list of officers for the ensuing year.

Voted, To have the chairman of the committee cast one ballot
for the entire list as reported. This was done, and the presi-
dent declared the election of the officers as printed on page 2
of this report. After thanking the members for the
compliment of a reelection. President Mead, in his usual
happy manner, introduced Mr. Herbert W. Collingwood, editor
of the Rural New-Yorker, who spoke on "The New York Fruit
Market'' in a manner that held the closest attention of the
audience.

Vice-President Sharp of Richmond then took the chair, and
the comparative merits of new fruits were discussed until the
meeting adjourned at 4.45 P. M.

SECOND DAY.

The morning session opened at 10 o'clock, with President
Mead in the chair. After making a few announcements, the
president introduced Dr. E. P. Felt, New York state entomolo-
gist, who gave a lecture on "Recent Problems in the Control

of Insects Depredating on Fruit Trees." Tliis proA'ed to be not
only interesting, but timelj- as well, owing to the advent of
many new insect foes of the fruit grower.

At the close of his address, Dr. Felt was asked for his
opinion of the result of the neglect, by the state, to continue
the warfare against the gypsy moth. He said that he was one
of the first entomologists in the field when the state began
its work, and he had a good opportunity to observe the insect
and its habits. Two years ago the state was in a fair way
to succeed in the work, but now it was very doubtful if it
was ever exterminated. It is not likely that the Legislature
will ever appropriate as much money again, and as a result the
insect will overrun the state and may extend over a consider-
able portion of the country. He believed that the gypsy moth
was going to be a worse pest than the caterpillar ever was.
When asked which insect he would prefer, the San Jose scale
or the gypsy moth, he said that was a diflicult question to
answer; if a fruit grower he would prefer the gypsy moth, but
if an owner of forest trees the San Jose scale would be less
objectionable. But he preferred neither.

The next speaker was Prof. Fred W. Card, of the Rhode
Island College of Agriculture, who addressed the members on
"Drought as a Problem in Fruit Growing," which he treated
in an interesting manner, giving the results of extended study
and observation.

In reply to questions Prof. Card said he thought our ordi-
nary cultivators go too deep, that a shallow stirring of the
surface would be of greater benefit in conserving the moisture
of the soil.

Questions relative to increasing the membership were brought
up and discussed. Mr. George Cruickshanks of Fitchburg gave
notice that at the next annual meeting he should make a mo-
tion to amend the constitution by striking out from Article
IV the words, ''and an annual assessment of one dollar," so
that the reading shall be: ''Membership. Each member shall
pay an admission fee of one dollar, which shall be due at the
time of the annual meeting." And also to amend the by-laws
by striking out No. 9, which now reads, "Any member who
shall neglect, for a period of two years, to pay his annual as-

9

•sessments. shall cease to retain his connection with the asso-
ciation, and the secretary shall have the power to erase his
name from the list of members." These amendments having
been submitted in writing will be acted upon at the next an-
nual meeting, March 12th, 1902.

Afternoon Session.

President Mead called the meeting to order, and said that as
this was a joint session with the Worcester Agricultural So-
ciety, he would ask Mr. C. L. Hartshorn, one of the vice-presi-
dents of that organization, to preside.

Mr. Hartshorn took the chair, and introduced the speaker
of the afternoon, Prof. F. W. Rane, of the New Hampshire col-
lege, who gave an address on "Horticulture and the Xew Eng-
land Farm," which was appreciated by those who heard it.
At the conclusion of his lecture, Prof. Rane answered a num-
ber of questions propounded by members. After the discus-
sion of this paper, the question of where to hold the field meet-
ings was brought up, and a letter was read from Mr. N. B.
White of Norwood inviting the association to meet with him.
Mr. Ethelbert Bliss of Wilbraham said he had about 6,000
peach trees that gave promise of a full crop, and he would be
pleased to have the fall meeting held at his place. The matter
was left with the president and secretary.

A communication was read from H. E. Van Deman, asking
that the association take some measure to have the state repre-
sented by an exhibit of fruit at the Pan-American Exposition.

Toted, to join with the Massachusetts Horticultural Society
in the matter, and that the chair appoint a committee of five
to unite with a similar committee from that society, and make
such arrangements as are necessary. The chair (Mr. Harts-
horn) appointed O. B. Hadwen of Worcester, H. O. Mead of
Lunenburg, Prof. S. T. Maynard of Amherst, James Draper
of Worcester, and John G. Avery of Spencer as that committee.

After i)assing a unanimous vote of thanks to the speakers
who had addressed the meeting, and to the Worcester County
Horticultural Society for the free use of the hall in which
the sessions were held, the meeting adjourned at 4.30 P. M.

10

PACKING AND PACKAGES FOR APPLES.

Prof. S. T. Maynard, Horticulturist, Hatch Experiment Station,.

Amherst, Mass.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: We have a program
very full of good things, and I will occupy only a short time
in explaining the exhibits of fruit, fruit-packages and buds of
fruit trees that we have brought from the Agricultural College.

The packages of apples exhibited were not made up until
November, after the better portion of the crop of the college
orchard had been sold, so that the fruit in these packages
represents only the last of a very large and fine crop of apples.

The packages used, which may be seen on the east side of the
hall, are the common flour barrel, the Northampton veneer bar-
rel, one-half and one-fourth barrel, the Ross barrel, and four-
teen bushel-boxes.

In these packages some of the fruit is wrapped in paper of
tissue and parchment paper of different kinds, some not
wrapped; some with the covers or heads on, and some un-
covered. The fruit was packed about the middle of November,
and was not opened until it reached this hall. The weights of
the different packages, and the fruit contained in them at the
time of packing and at this time, is as follows:

Baldwins, uncovered.

PACKAGE.

WEIGHT.

WEIGHT OF

APPLES.

PRESENT WEIGHT WRAPPING.

Barrel.

18 lbs.

146J]

lbs.

145 lbs.

h papers.

Box.

7 "

59

U

55

((

No papers.

Box.

7 "

i6^

((

45 *

u

Boston tissue.

Box.

7 "

46

((

44

u

N. Y. tissue.

Box.

7 "

51

((

49

1(

Boston tissue.

Box.

6\ "
Nailed up.

46i

u

45

((

Boston parchment

Box.

9 lbs.

52

n

52

u

N. Y. tissue.

Box.

9 "

54

u

54

(t

Box.

9 "

46.i

u

45

t(

Box.

8J "

47*

a

47^

u

Boston parchment.

Box.

8J "

46

u

44

u

Box.

8.} "

52

u

52

u

Boston tissue.

Box.

9 "

49

11

45

u

N. Y. parchment.

RoxBURY Russet.

Barrel.

19 lbs.
Ben Davis.

160

u

156^

u

Box.

7 lbs.

42

((

42

((

Covered.

Box.

7 "

45

((

44

It

Uncovered .

Barrel.

18 "

141

u

139

((

11

Ross Barrel. 18} lbs.

122 1

Northampton

Barrel. 16} "

133

Red Russet.

Northampton

Barrel. 16 lbs.

145^

Box. 7 "

52

Lawyer.

Common bbl.

166

Ross bbl. m lbs.

135

Northampton bbl. m "

145

Scarlet Cranberry.

Northampton ^ bbl. 9 lbs.

73i

u (( g u

71

R. I. Greenings.

Northampton } bbl. 5 lbs.

33

Mann.

Northampton I bbl. 5 "

33

u u 5 u

34

122 lbs,

133

u

142

((

48

u

164

u

135

u

145

u

73.^

((

71

u

32^

32.}
34

No papers.
Papers.

i papers

Papers.
No papers.

The condition of the fruit kept under the various methods
of this experiment, as reported by the committee chosen at
this meeting, is as follows:

First. The fruit varied so much in character that it was
impossible to make a report entirely satisfactory to your com-
mittee.

Second. The different kinds of wrapping employed produced
little, if any, difference in the fruit.

Third. Fruit that was wrapped, but left uncovered, was in
no better condition than fruit left without wrapping, but cov-
ered tightly.

Fourth. Fruit in boxes tightly covered, without being
wrapped, opened as well as fruit that was wrapped, and in
boxes tightly covered.

Fifth. Where the air was excluded, wrapping did not seem
to produce difference enough to warrant going to the expense
of wrapping.

Sixth. Of the different packages for keeping fruit, the tight
barrel appeared to be the best.

JOHN W. CLAKK,
C. L. HARTSHORN,

Committee.

12

THE SAN JOSE SCALE — LATEST METHODS OF TREATMENT.

Pjbof. W. G. Johnson, Associate Editor New England Homestead,
American Agriculturist, and Orange Judd Farmer.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Wliat I have to saj
will be in a rather cursor}' way, seeking to show you the great
danger that threatens the fruit industry of this state.

You max feel like the old darky down South who, when I
asked him if the San Jose scale was to be found there, said,
^'Dunno, boss; I don't understand; dat name am f'mili'r, but
dat Sam Jones he not on dis place, shuar." So many of you
may feel about this insect, the name is familiar, but you are
sure he is not on your place. I do not think it necessary to go
into any extended description of this notorious pest. It has
been the cause of more legislation than any other insect in
the annals of horticulture. State after state has enacted laws
to prevent its introduction and to exterminate it where it had
already gained a foothold. Owing to its marvelously rapid
reproduction and the great vari*^ty of trees and shrubs upon
svhich it preys, no other insect is the cause jf more anxiety
among fruit growers. Not alone the orchardist, but the gar-
dener as well, yes, even the village residents, are the victims
of its ravages. It is therefore of the utmost importance that
you as fruit growers should be familiar with its appearance,
habits and methods of treatment.

In the first place it is very insignificant in size, being, at
birth, about as large as the point of a pin. They are born
alive, and are of a yellow color, resembling pollen. The young
crawl over the bark of the tree, finally inserting its mosquito-
like beak into the bark, where it remains during life. Once
located it continues to suck the life out of the tree, and exudes a
wax-like secretion from its back, which, added to its cast skin,
forms the scale under which the insect lives, giving the infested
tree an ashen gray color. This old skin of the insect splits
down the back, is added to the other, and we have the mature
form of scale as it appears during the life of the insect. On
badly infested trees one can not see the bark, it being com-
pletely covered with the scales. Xo matter how full of sap
the tree may be when attacked, if no remedy is applied, it is
only a question of time when the tree will be killed by the lit-
tle insect, which slowly sucks out the life-blood. At this time
of the year the brood of last fall is in an immature state, liv-
ing through the winter in a dormant condition. In this climate
they would begin breeding about the first week of June or a
little later, the voung crawling out from under the shell of the

13

female, and in thirty to forty daj's this brood is producing an-
other lot of young. There are probably four or live genera-
tions a season for a climate such as you have in Massachusetts.
The progeny of a single royal pair in a season has been esti-
mated at about three billion. It is impossible for the scale
to spread from December to June in this climate, except by
the sale of nursery stock. After the beak is inserted into the
bark the scale does not move. Until after the first molt we
can not distinguish the male from the female; at that time the
female has a new coat and loses her legs, and consequently'
remains fixed thereafter; the male develops legs and wings,
but loses his digestive organs and mouth parts. He can not
talk back if he wanted to. He lives but a short time. To
compensate for the loss of his mouth, the male develops an
additional pair of eyes, one pair where the mouth should be,
so he has four eyes instead of two with which to seek new
fields to conquer.

This little insect has now been pretty generally distributed
throughout the United States, almost wholly by the sale of nur-
sery stock. In the Santa Clara valley, where it was first discov-
ered by Prof. J. H. Comstock in 1878 or 1879, there is hardly a
scale to be found, even though you ride for miles and search
most diligenth'. This may be due to some change in the climatic
conditions; by the exercise of more care in the selection of
young stock by the growers, and in the careful treatment of
mature orchards. Horticulturists in California are energetic
and quick to meet new conditions; the coming of the scale may
prove a blessing in that it has taught the fruit growers to be
"up and doing."

Another agency that has helped to destroy the scale, or at
least to hold it in check, is a small parasite which feeds on the
scale in California, and I am glad to say that it has also been
found in the East. This little creature lives under the scale all
winter and emerges in the spring furnished with a pair of wings
to fly to other orchards, to destroy more scale. This parasite
resembles a small gnat, and would be destroyed by spraying:
in one case that came under my observation an orchard badly
infested was condemned, and the owner ordered to cut and
burn every tree in it; it was discovered soon after that the
scale here was swarming with this parasite; consequently the
order to burn was countermanded, and, instead, the owner
was directed to cut and pile in heaps all of the trees, leaving
them there all winter and in the spring, after the parasite had
emerged, to burn them before the scale began to breed. Thus
the scale was destroyed, and the parasite saved.

We should not overlook the agencies in nature that are work-

14

ing in our behalf; and yet it will not do for us to sit down and
wait with folded arms foi* these agencies to clear our orchards
and fields of these noxious pests.

In Japan the scale is prevalent, but it is not considered a
destructive pest. Why, no one knows, except that there must
be some natural force keeping it in check. When James Lick,
the founder of the observatory bearing his name, brought the
scale to California he must have left this subjective
agent behind. Whether this natural enemy was

a fungous disease, a parasite, or some peculiar
climatic condition, we have yet to learn. I

have been making a study of parasitism, and am hoping we
may find a species of parasite that will thrive here and hold
the scale in check. Some of these parasites are very small.
I have bred over 1,400 from a few infested twigs, four inches
long, the size of a small lead pencil. The peach, plum, cur-
rant, pear and apple, in the order named, are the most suscepti-
ble to the ravages of the scale; while it is rather shy of the
cherry and some forest trees.

At the present time our greatest safety is in the thorough
fumigation of all trees before planting. It is no theory, but
a demonstrated fact, that the fumes of hydrocyanic acid gas
are certain death to all animal life. No system of spraying or
dipping will do; we must attack the insect through its breath-
ing organs. Even if spraying would kill them, and a 20 to 25
per cent, solution of kerosene will do it, it would be practically
impossible to spray a large nursery so thoroughly that none
would escape. Being so easily scattered by the wind, some
would surely be found on shrubs and bushes in the fence cor-
ners or on other trees that would not be destroyed. I once
knew of an orchard that was badly infested, and it was sprayed
in the most thorough manner. And yet the next year more
«cale was found than before; it had lived on an Osage orange-
hedge fence which was not sprayed. So I say to you do not
tolerate an Osage orange hedge on your place, for it is one of
the best breeding places for the San Jose scale that you can
have.

The hydrocyanic acid gas used in fumigating is the most
deadly gas known in chemical science, and great care must be
observed in its use. We have fumigated several million trees
in Maryland, and. the only accident we ever had was when a
negro opened the door of one of the fumigating houses and
went in without waiting the prescribed fifteen minutes. I had
been telling them about the deadly nature of the gas, and ex-
plained how a person would be asphyxiated if he was to enter
one of the houses before it had been thoroughly aired. Well,

15

it happened one day that a darky — we will call him ''Sam,"
because it may have been his name — wanted to get off
early to go over the way to take his best girl to a cake-walk;
he ventured into the house after it had been open and aired for
about seven minutes; he brought out two bundles of trees, and
started in after another when he fell headlong on the floor.
The other darkies came running to me, saying, "Massa, Sam's
dead." After working over him some time he began to rally,
and I asked him how he felt just before he fell. "De Lo'd
only knows. I tell jou dar's no use ta'kin', boss, dat stuff am
a pow'ful axfltter.''

The best protection the fruit grower can have against this
pest from nurseries is fumigation. A few nurserymen have
claimed that it was not safe, and the results did not justify
the expense. But I say there is no better drawing card a nur-
seryman can put out than to advertise "fumigated trees." And
as to the expense, fumigating in the most thorough manner
will cost less than twenty cents per 1,000 trees for all chemicals
and labor when it is done in the nursery. The seller of trees
must guarantee the purchaser all the protection possible, even
if it cost |1 a 1,000.

Let every nurseryman fumigate his trees, and let ever}' or-
chardist refuse to receive trees that are not fumigated! I would
go further and stipulate in my contract with the nurseryman
that the trees must be fumigated with hj'drocyanic acid gas
in accordance with the latest methods and by some one who
knows how it should be done.

In California large citrus orchards are fumigated, not for
the San Jose scale, but for the red scale, which only attacks
lemons and oranges, the citrus fruits. It is not uncommon to
find so-called "russet" oranges in our markets, where the russet
appearance is due to an encrustation of this red scale. The
method of fumigating employed in California is to cover the
trees with sheet tents. But as the efficiency of the application
depends upon the right amount of gas being used, it is nec-
essary to ascertain the cubic contents of the tent used. To
facilitate this matter I devised a folding box, made of strong
frames covered with heav,y duck, and was enabled to use them
on trees as high as eighteen feet. For trees less than ten feet
in height I have what I call the Emory fumigator, and in these
I can quickly ascertain the cubic contents, and then know
just how much of the chemicals is needed. We use water, sul-
phuric acid and potassium cyanide; the expense was less than
six cents per tree.

Where it is impossible to use this method on account of
the size of the tree or the nature of the land, we must depend

16

on spraying. A solution of wliale-oil soap and water, two
pounds to one gallon, may be used on apple and pear trees
in fall and winter; but on peach, plum or cherry, this solution
should be applied in early spring just before the buds open.
A 25 per cent, kerosene and water mixture can be used with
the Gould or Doming mechanical spray pumps. In these the
kerosene is in one tank and the water in the other, the action
of the pump making a mechanical mixture of the desired
strength by a regulator. Great care must be exercised in the
use of kerosene in any form. The w^ork should be done on
calm, clear, bright, sunny days. In the case of the peach the
spray should be applied about this time in the year, before
the buds begin to open. No application should be made after
the buds have opened so you can see the pistils, as the spray
falling on the stigmatic surface will destroy the possibility of
fertilization. Crude petroleum has been recommended in an
undiluted condition; but what is the use of using it full
strength when a 25 per cent, solution will kill the scale? In
this diluted form it can safely be used on all kinds of trees
in the spring of the year, even on currants.

THE NEW YORK FRUIT MARKET.

Herbert W. Collingwood, Editor Rural New Yorker.

Did you ever stop to think of what New York is? It is
the greatest city in this hemisphere, and surrounded by towns
and cities which add greatly to the population of that small
corner of the country. There are in New York, Newark and
Jersey City 3,875,705 human beings. It is probable that not
more than 5 per cent, of these 4,()00,()00 people contribute any-
thing to the food supply of the country. At least 95 per cent,
of them are consumers pure and simple, depending upon the
farmer for their living. We hear of the vast trade which pass-
es in and out through New York; the ships plowing the har-
bor, and the great railroads bringing their tribute from the
entire country. New York has been called the lungs of the
country, and in a sense that is true; but to the farmer, the man
who produces food. New York is more in the line of a great
national stomach. The farmer cares but little about the lungs
of New York, being more interested in internal than in export
trade. We are directly affected by those 4,000, 000 stomachs in
Greater New York. They should be filled three times every
day, 365 times in the year. Taking the average capacity of the
human stomach, it is safe to say that 8,000,000 quarts of food

17

are required each dav in tlie year to keep the people in this city
filled and happy. I regret to say that many of them are not
filled as they should be, yet when we come to consider it, we
may understand what it means to the farmers of this country^
simply to keep the people of this one city supplied with food.
It would be well if the farmers of this country could educate
the people of New York in the matter of food supply. City
people generally suppose that it is their business to educate
country folks, yet in the matter of pure, fresh food they are in
need of education, and that education can only come from the
countr}' people. Let us see for a moment just what this means.
If the farmers of this country could educate these city people
so that they would eat fresh fruit half as freely as the farmers
themselves do, there would be required for a single day's con-
sumption in New York alone 44,000 barrels of apples, 125,000
baskets of peaches, and 2,500,000 quarts of strawberries. In
other words, if the city could eat fruit as freely as the country
does, Xew York alone would consume 15 per cent, of the entire
apple crop of this country, while at present its consumption is
not much over 3 per cent. I use these figures simply to show
the importance of educating them so that they will recognize
good fruit, and crave and demand it. In my judgment this is
one of the greatest problems of the day. It is not so much
a question of raising more fruit or of producing better fruit, as
of taking advantage of the market opportunities that lie within
our own borders. The truth is that the people of New York
city to-day, or at least many of them, do not know how to eat
fruit properly, and the butcher and brewer secure a large part
of the trade which by right belongs to the fruit grower. The
beer business takes a large share of the money that ought to
go to the apple trade. The problem is not how to put your
fruit into the Xew York market, but how to make Xew York
people understand what good fruit is. Most people have to
acquire a taste for tomatoes and certain other things, and there
are thousands of people in Xew York city to-day who do not
know what a good apple is, simply because they have never re-
ceived a course in apple education. My old friend Ben Davis
is responsible for a large share of this; yet it has been boasted
with truth that, when a man goes to Xew York with plenty
of money, he can, within a few hours' notice, buy almost any-
thing on any d,ay in the year. That is probably true, and the
chances are that if a man had the price in his pocket and was
willing to pay it, he could within a short time secure almost
anything in the way of fresh fruit. Probably raspberries,
plums and currants would be the hardest to obtain out of sea-
son. I only speak of this to show what a wonderful place Xew

18

York is. With all the possibilities of that great market, is it
not more wonderful that the people have not been taught their
possibilities and privileges regarding fruit-eating?

As I have said, perhaps one of the hardest fruits to find at
this season would be raspberries. Yet within a few hours some
of this fruit could be obtained. There are several men who have
developed a dwarf raspberry. This is a little plant looking
like a tin}- shrub, growing scareel}' 18 inches high, yet produc-
ing a delicious quality of fruit. I understand that a few of
them are grown under glass just to supply a limited demand at
a very high figure. I will say here that the popular taste for
the raspberry seems to be passing. The dried raspberry busi-
ness in New York is practically dead, and dealers say that they
would hardly advise growing raspberries for the evaporators
again. The rush of early and out-of-season fruit from
California and the South has destroyed this formerly profitable
business. The finest peaches can be bought to-day or to-
morrow in New York, either hot-house fruit or fruit from
southern Florida and Mexico, and our growers, of course, can-
not hope to make money by raising fruit under glass. What
we as average growers must cater to is a trade in a crop that
can be produced out of doors. I speak of these things to show
how the markets of New York city are calling for fruit. The
rich are forever calling for the new and fine ])roducts, and the
poor take what they can get. Strawberries come from Florida
in the spring, and during the summer the trade climbs slowly
up the country as far north as Canada. From the middle of
November they begin to come in small quantities from Mexico;
then the glass-grown strawberries come in, so that at any time
during the year a plate of strawberries can be obtained. The
railroads have done much to develop trade in southern straw-
berries. By providing refrigerator cars and express transpor-
tation, they have enabled large southern growers to go into
the business in such a way that there is always a profit for the
railroads, always a profit for the express companies, usually a
j)rofit for the commission man, and sometimes a profit for the
fruit grower. It is interesting to watch this crop starting in
southern Florida and slowly crawling up along the coast from
the south to the north, as near to the North Pole as can be
reached with profit. All these things have interfered in
various ways with the fruit trade of the New England farmer.
Not only does this early eating of strawberries lessen the pub-
lic appetite for that fruit during our own season, but other
fruits, such as peaches and plums, come rushing in from the
South, so that people demand these other fruits when we think
they ought to buy our strawberries. It is singular that the

19

cold, biting climate and crystal rivers of Maine are partly re-
sponsible for this loss in New England trade. It is the Maine
ice, taken to the South and packed in refrigerator cars, which
enables this fruit to rush into our market. We frequently hear
people say right in the heart of the late strawberry season,
"I am sick of strawberries; they ought to be gone long ago;
now is the time for peaches, apples and pears."

Apples and pears can be bought any day in the year and any
hour of the day in New York city. Early in June the Red
Astrachans begin to come from North Carolina. They are fre-
quently seen on fruit stands side by side with Ben Davis or
Russet, kept over from the last crop. It is a singular sight to
see these new apples, scarcely five days from the trees, side by
side with Ben Davis seven or eight months from the orchard.
I hear of cases where the Ben Davis has been kept over two
seasons in cold storage and then sold. There is one thing
which must be said about our old friend Ben Davis. You can-
not drive him out of the market, and we are forced to recog-
nize him. There are some things about old Ben that I greatly
admire. I like his color; I admire his cheek; I must admire his
keeping qualities; but I do not admire his taste. The fruit
trade of New York city, if developed at all, will have to be done
by means of the red apple. Unlike the trade in Boston, Hart-
ford or other large cities (which markets you are familiar with),
a large proportion of the apple trade of New Yok city is
carried on by the push-cart men. The greater part of the fruit
is sold to people who eat on the run, or rather on the walk.
A large proportion of these push-cart men are Italians or
Greeks. I can remember the time when a large share of this
work was done by Yankees and Irishmen. Some fifteen years
ago they began to complain about the competition of the Dago
or Guinea. Instead of making their stands as attractive as the
Italian does, they simply growled; fell out of the procession
altogether ; and' nobody knows where they are now. The Ital-
ians and Greeks have finally absorbed almost the entire trade
except in a few cases where the old-timers have been able to
hang on. The point I want to make is that the trade which be-
longs by right to New England has gone largely to foreigners
who do not know one apple. from another. An actual case
occurred which will show the ignorance of the people who
handle the apple trade. We saw an Italian on the streets of
New York with his cart loaded with a collection of third-class
Ben Davis. First-class Ben Davis is bad enough, but you
might just as w^ell swallow a piece of dry sponge and then
drink a glass of cold water as to eat third-class Ben Davis.
This man had evidently bought them at a bargain, and, being

20

determined to show liis borticultural knowledge, he liad print-
ed on a piece of paper a name wliich lie had composed himself.
Tt was, "Kieffer Apples.'' That was really one of the most
intelligent foreigners that I have heard of. That man had in
former days bought a basket of Kieffer pears on their shape
and color. They remained on his hands until he was sure that
he could not sell them. Then he took them home to feed to
his wife and children, and the resulting colic cost him so much
for medicine that he shunned them ever after. With all this
in mind he invented the name for third-class Ben Davis, and
in my judgment it would be hard to improve on it. I speak of
this to show how difficult it will be to put your finer apples
into New York market if handled in the ordinary way. We
cannot put intelligence and brains into the production of fruit
or any other farm crop, and live, if those products are not
handled with intelligence. You will have to go to New York
and in some way bring the extra qualit}' of your fruit to the
attention of the people who want to know what good fruit is.
In Boston and other New England cities the grocery stores do
a very large trade in apples. In New York the grocery stores
do not do anything like so much of this business. Many of
them rent the front of the store to an Italian or Greek, who
takes the fruit business from them and sells what he can. The
fruit is sold by the measure, and this measure will hold almost
anything. In former days it probably held about a peck, but
the top has been broken off, the holes in the bottom stuffed
with paper, and the bottom has warped up so that anything
from three quarts to six can be poured out of it. The apples
piled up in the window look well, but many of them are Ben
Davis, and are regarded by many people in the same class as
potatoes or turnips. One thing, however, has happened which
has helped the apple trade in the city. Fifteen years ago I used
to go about trying to find some place where I was sure to get
baked apples and milk, but it was almost impossible to find a
constant supply of this ordinary dish. A few years ago the
restaurant keepers awoke to the fact that there was business
in this trade. Now most of them supply baked apples, and
several of them have told me that it has proved one of the best
drawing cards they ever picked up. I know of people who will
T^alk half a mile by half a dozen other eating-houses to reach
Dorland's restaurant, where they are sure that they can get
baked Spitzenberg apples and cream. This restaurant busi-
ness has helped trade in two ways, directly by increasing the
call for fine baking apples, and 'indirectly by sending people
home to demand of their wives or housekeepers that they give
them baked apples as good as can be found at the public res-

2L

tauiants. Many a man has had a fine baked apple for his
Inuch, and then gone home, and, I regret to say, made life a
burden for his wife until he got equally as good apples on his
own table. New York people live high. They are high livers,
and consequently their livers are nearly always out of order.
They demand fruit with a sour taste. They are peculiar in the
fact that most of them live far from home. The shape of the
city is such that a fair share of their life is spent in rushing
to and from their places of business. They live on their nerve,
under high tension; eat as they run; consume large quantities
of starchy foods and meat; and the system craves acids and
will not be satisfied without them. That is oiie reason why
there is no better place on earth to sell sour, spicy apples, pro-
•\ided you can make people understand and appreciate their
value. Baked apples are creeping into the homes of New York,
but we rarely see families sitting down together to eat apples
out of hand, as is frequently done on the farm, and in the
homes of Boston, Hartford or Springfield. The apple market
must be worked up and developed, or the butcher, brewer, and
California fruit grower will secure more and more of the trade.
My judgment is that the one thing that has done most to
discourage the trade in fine apples in New York city is the gTeat
sale of the Ben Davis apple. Why, that apple will even de-
stroy a man's sentiment and affection for his old home. It is
not uncommon to see some business man hurrying up Broad-
way, busy with the cares of vast enterprises. He sto])s at a
street corner and is pleased to see a push-cart covered with
beautiful red-cheeked apples. You will see his hand go almost
mechanically down into his jjocket. It comes out with a dime;
the Italian is made that much richer, while the man holds two
beautiful specimens in his hand. He stops in the busy street
and holds one of those apples up to his eyes. Gazing at it his
mind goes back to the old boyhood days on the farm. The
noise of the busy street, the cares of the busy life, are laid
aside, and the apple seems like a tiny mirror, bringing back the
old days. He finds himself in the old orchard behind the barn.
Father has been busy packing apples all through the day.
Night is coming on; the first stars are peeping out; and the
sun is crawling over the hill far over the valley. Mother is
waiting for them at the orchard gate. Her hair is smoothed
back; she has her best white apron on; her spectacles are
perched on her nose; and the white temperance ribbon is pinned
on her breasl^. She is calling them in to supper. The sun
finally goes down behind the hill; the shadows creep out from
under the trees; and he is back again in the happiest days of
his life. With these things in mind he raises the apple to his

22

mouth and will take a bite anyway, just for old time's sake. He
takes one bite, and a strange expression comes over his face.
Something is wrong with that apple, or is it true that he has
so changed in the fierce struggle for wealth and fame in this
city? Something is wrong with that apple. He takes one
more bite, and a pained expression comes over his face. Across
the street is a worthless cur, and with the strength of an arm
that once pitched in the old baseball club, he throws that apple
with unerring aim and doubles up that dog. He goes on with
a scowl, thinking to himself: "I was wrong; it was only a
dream; my memory must be defective; and the only thing that
I can remember about my boyhood days and apple growing is
the time when father took me out behind the barn, cut a sucker
from an apple tree and took the dust out of my jacket." Now
then, my friends, what was it that turned that beautiful mem-
ory into a horrid nightmare; what was it that took all the sen-
timent and inspiration for good out of that man's heart and
life and left him sour and bitter? It was simply a Ben Davis
apple. There may be some fi lends of old Brother Ben here.
I do not want to hurt their feelings, and will apologize to them
if I say anything that rubs them the wrong way, but I will
not apologize to old Ben himself, for he has done too much
to hurt the sale of apples grown on the New" England farms.
If you were to abolish the push-carts from New York city, and
drive these little dealers off the streets so that they could not
sell their fruit two or three at a time, it is my opinion that
nearly 40 per cent, of the apple trade in the city would be lost.
I'eople are simply in the habit of devouring fruit while stand-
ing on their feet and walking. The idea of sitting down and
enjoying an apple as they would an orange seldom enters their
mind. When they are taught to do that, you will see what a
difference is made in the apple trade of New York city. Most
of these people know little or nothing about fruit. An apple
is simply an apple, either red, green, white or brown. They
are just like some one-sided people who, I regret to say, live in
the country, to whom all evergreen trees are simply "green
trees." They have never learned to separate the beautiful
hemlocks, spruces, pines, etc., but group them all together with
an ignorance that comes from lack of observation, and simply
say that they are ''green" trees. It is a fact that many of the
people of New York eat with their eyes, and pick out an apple
largely by its color. You ask one of these men what variety
of apple he is eating, and he will simply say that it is a red
apple, as that is all he knows about it. Giv^him a Rhode
Island Greening and try to make him understand that it is a
better apple than the red one he has tasted, and he will hardly

23

believe 3'ou, because be wants tbe red color. People in that
great city are fond of color. Many of tbeni paint tbe town red
at frequent intervals, and tbat may be one reason for it. We
may say wbat we will about tbe Italians, tbey bave an artistic
sense and can arrange tbeir fruit so as to make an attractive
display. Tbe Italian will take red apples, yellow bananas and
oranges, and fruits of otber colors, and arrange tbem on bis
pusb-cart or stand so artistically , tbat you would almost be will-
ing to eat Ben Davis apples arranged in sucb an attractive dis-
play. I bave been asbamed of my country to see one of tbese
men opening a barrel of fruit to find a pumpkin in tbe middle,
or a lot of gnarly, poor stuff crowded in simply to cbeat tbe
Dago. How can tbe American farmers bope to induce tbe
Dago to act bonestly by tbem if tbey cbeat bini in sucb a way?
An old soldier stands on a prominent corner in New York city,
tbe proprietor of a fruit stand. He wears tbe Grand Army
button on bis coat, and is a clean, respectable man. He made
up bis mind tbat be would bandle tbe best apples be could find.
You will find Xew England Baldwins on tbe stand in tbeir sea-
son, and California Belltlowers, tbe best tbat be can buy.
Tbere tbe old man stands day after day, and down across tbe
way is an Italian witb auotber apple stand. He bas a boot-
blacking cbair backed up by bis apple stand. Wben be is not
engaged in blacking boots, be is polisbing bis fruit, and I re-
gret to say tbat tbere is no wasb bowl in siglit. One day I
said to my friend, tbe old Irisbman: "How are you coming
on?" "Very bad," said be. ''Wbat is tbe matter witb you
now?" "Ab, my friend, it is a bard country and a bard time
wben an old soldier and a Baldwin apple can no longer com-
pete witb a Dago and a Ben Davis." Tbere was a note of
patbos in tbe old man's voice as he said tbis. Just tliink of it;
tbe old soldier and tbe Baldwin apple. Tbe man wbo fougbt
for bis country and tbe Xew England Baldwin, wbicb, say
wbat you will, is tbe king of fruit, going down before a Dago
and a Ben Davis apple. Wbat was wrong? I regret to say
that tbe Dago made a better display witb bis Ben Davis apples
than tbe old soldier could or did witb bis Baldwins. But tbe
Dago breatbed on bis apples, or even worse, and tben rubbed
tbem until, I am obliged to admit, tbat bis stand was 50 per
cent, more attractive tban tbat of tbe old soldier. I tried to
tell tbe old soldier tbat, but be would only say: "Ben Davis
is very fine, but Heaven save your tongue from tbe surprise
party it gets wben you bite past tbe cbeek of bim." Tbe point
is tbat if tbat man wants to sell bis New England Baldwins to
tbe best advantage, be must put bis stand in better sbape.
New Yorkers will not buy apples from tbe old man simply be-

24

cause he fought for them. They hurry and scurry up and
down Broadway, and have little thought for the man who faced
death forty years ago in order that they might have a country.
They are simply living for to-day. They are eating with their
eyes. They are looking for attractive food, and I regret to say
that some of them swallow their food without tasting it.
Therefore the time has come when the rank and file of the
buyers in that great city want fruit that is put up in the most
attractive shape. Some of you may think that I have a per-
sonal prejudice against the Ben Davis apple. It is true that I
have tried to eat one many a time, but to-day I am giving you
facts and not prejudices. Here is an instance of the way Ben
Davis has injured the trade in good fruit. A friend of mine
lives in New York city. With his family he occuj)ies a small
flat. He made up his mind that his children should grow up
to become apple-eaters. This is really one of the best resolu-
tions a city man can make. He told his housekeeper to have
fruit on the table e\er\ day, so every morning at breakfast
time there was a dish on the table filled with oranges, apples
and bananas. Like other ignorant New Yorkers, this woman
picked out red apples, so that they might ''eat with their eyes."
Up to February 15 this man noticed that the apples were al-
ways eaten first, and the bananas and oranges were always
left. He could not account for this, but he observed that after
that date there were always apples left in the dish. The
oranges and bananas were consumed, but the apples were left
there until they began to decay. He thought that was a
strange thing, but inquiry revealed the following actual fact.
These apples were bought at a grocery store. Up to February
15 the grocer had been supplying Baldwins and Spitzenbergs.
On that date the last of the Baldwins were sold, and he began
supplying Ben Davis. Without knowing anything about it,
the members of that family suddenly came to the conclusion
that they did not like apples anyway. They were unable to
distinguish one variety from another, but all of a sudden the
apple palled on their taste. There are tens of thousands of
people in New York city who go through that same perform-
ance every year. Just at the time when they most need the
acids nature has packed inside this noble fruit, something goes
wrong; the head of the family attributes it to various things;
his wife has scolded him because he cannot get her a new dress;
the children are going to the bad; the hired girl never did know
how to cook; his liver is out of order; and half a dozen other
reasons, when the truth is that without knowing it he has tried
to eat a raw potato, packed into a red jacket, and named Ben
Davis. When you see a family disappointed in this way, it is

25

liard to have respect for any man here in this jjlorious New
England who attempts to raise the Ben Davis apple. The
idea of a man whose ancestors run away back to Bunker Hill
and Lexington, with a shrewdness and hard sense boiled into
him through half a dozen generations of Yankees, attempting
to raise the Ben Davis apple, when he knows that out West in
the Missouri valley this apple conies twice as near perfection
as it ever can on the hills of New England. The Yankee farm-
er in the north of New England might just as well attempt to
compete with Cuba in the production of oranges or bananas
as to try to compete with southwestern Missouri or southern
Illinois in Ben Davis apples.

There is another thing in connection with this
city market which must be understood, and that
is the life of the apple in one of those crowded city flats. The
average farmer can go down into his cellar from November to
May and find good apples there. What a pleasure it is to open
the cellar door by the side of one of these New England home-
steads, and draw in the sweet perfume that rushes out from
the bins of Baldwins and Greenings. It is hardly possible to
Itelieve that the life of the same apple in the home of the aver-
age New York city man would be ten days instead of 200. If
you were to put a barrel of apples in the average New York
flat, you would not have room for the cat or baby; the baby
would surely have to go out on the fire escape. There is no
room for a full barrel, and, if there was, more than half of the
fruit would spoil before they could eat it. The life of the
apple being only ten days, and it being impossible to prolong
its life under these conditions, the remedy is to produce a
smaller package, so that there will be few to decay. The New
York flat-dweller is a man who in the future will make a most
important customer for the apple. You cannot reach him by
the barrel; the so-called measure or paper bag are too expen-
sive. When these men buy apples to-day, they buy them chiefly
from ignorant Italians and do not know what they are buying.
Fix it so that he can buy apples in small packages, guaranteed
to be of uniform quality, like the coffee, oatmeal or other
things that he gets put up in small packages, and I am certain
that the trade will be vastly increased. I believe that there
are plenty of men in that great city who would gladly agree to
buy a box of apples every week, provided they could know
what they were getting and they were delivered promptly with
a sure guarantee. It will not be possible for any one individ-
ual to work up a trade of this sort. Here is a case where farm-
ers must be prepared to spend part of their proceeds in adver-
tising the fruit. W^hen a man puts a new kind of soap or a
new brand of coffee on the market, he considers it good busi-

26

ness to give away one package in four in order to advertise the
other three; and it pavs to do this, for without sueli advertising
expense the other three could not be sold. Large apple dealers
in Xew York city tell me that this plan of selling in boxes is
entirely feasible. They recommend boxes of the shape and size
in which fruit is occasionally shipped. They should come in
large quantities and be uniform. The plan would be to hire
some large dealer to go up to the fancy grocers in the upper
part of the city and make them an inducement to handle that
trade. Last year 250,000 boxes of western apples were handled
profitably in New York city. Commission dealers tell me that
by selling in boxes fl.oO per bushel can be obtained for a class
of fruit which ordinarily brings |2 to |2.2o per barrel. These
things are certainly worth trying, but they cannot be done
without co-operation. We have plenty of horticultural organi-
zations in the country now. We need more business organi-
zations, bodies of men who will get together, put up a fair
share of their money, and follow out to a certain extent the
business methods of others who are putting uniform products
on our market and developing new trade. Perhaps I talk of
an impossibility when I say that farmers, who are proverbially
distrustful, can ever get together in organizations of this kind.
Still it must be either that or ruin for the small farmer. The
time has gone by when as individuals, farmers can compete
with transportation companies and those who buy and sell.
Formerly this was possible, because at that time the individual
farmer dealt with individuals who bought, sold or carried his
goods. He no longer deals with individuals, but with combi-
nations, and he must combine his own interests if he expects to
hold his own. Three years ago New York city passed an ordi-
nance prohibiting the use of adulterated lemonade. Vast
quantities of tartaric acid, salicylic acid, and other compounds
were being mixed with water and sold under the guise of lem-
onade. The ordinance restricting this fraudulent trade was a
good one so far as it went, but without public sentiment back
of it it was useless. One might as well put a wooden gun
painted to represent a rifle up over the door and expect it to
keep off the murderous tramp, as to expect a law packed away
on a dusty shelf to remedy an evil. The lemon importers of
New York undertook to work up a public sentiment that would
help in the enforcement of this law. They did not go after the
people with a policeman's club, but they hired spa<*e in the ele-
vated cars where thousands of people could see what they had
to say. There was a picture of a big lemon, a big spoonful of
sugar and a glass of water; and in big type was this advice:
''Never buy lemonade unless you see the lemon squeezed into

27

the water." They kept that before the people all summer, and
there were hundreds who read the announcement who for the
first time realized what pure lemonade was. Instantly lemons
began to appear on the stands, where formerly there was noth-
ing but a big bowl of a yellow mixture. People demanded
actual lemonade and they got it. I am told that the effect of
this advertising was almost instantly visible in the increased
demand and sale of lemons. I just speak of this to show that
while this great trade in New York city is made possible, it
never will come to us if we sit down idly and wait for it. We
have simply got to go after it and educate the people to the
necessity of eating first-class fruit. The manufacturers of Xew
England did not sit down with folded hands and wait for the
people to buy their shoes, watches, clocks or cloth. They scat-
tered their agents all over the country and spent their money
like water in demonstrating that they had the best shoes, watch-
es, clocks and cloth that it was possible to get for the money.
Thus they got their trade, and this trade has stuck to them for
nearly a century because they have kept up their reputation
for good workmanship. When a single manufacturer found
that he could not do this work alone, he came together with
others and demonstrated that co-operation would be to their
mutual interest. They went down into their pockets and
pulled out part of their income to advertise their goods. Now
the fruit growers of New England have got to do exactly the
same thing. You have, in my judgment, in the New England
Baldwin, the best fruit produced on this continent. It is a
hardy, all-around apple, of good flavor, good color, a good keep-
er, and best of all has an established reputation. This apple
is needed in the great city of New York, and you need that
market. You must go to the market, show your goods and dem-
onstrate their value. Do this, and the market is yours. Stand
back and wait for the market to come to you, and you cannot
reasonably raise a word of complaint if Western Ben Davis
apples take this market which by right belongs to you.

RECENT PROBLEMS IN THE CONTROL OF INSECTS DEPRE-
DATING ON FRUIT TREES.

Dr. E. p. Felt, New York State Entomologist.

We are at present confronted with many unsolved problems,
despite the fact that the nineteenth century was a period of
remarkable activity and progress along entomological lines.
The vast sum of classified knowledge known as American
entomoloffv has been brought into existence within a hundred

28

years. Thomas Say. the father of the science in this country,
did not begin his labors, which were largely systematic, till
about ISI'2. Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, the noted entomol-
ogist of Massachusetts, was the founder of economic or ap-
plied entomology in this country, and his classic treatise on
"Insects Injurious to Vegetation," first published in 1841, has
ever since been the basis of work in applied entomology. There
was but one economic entomologist, as we understand the term,
in this country in the early days of Harris. Kow about forty
men are giving a large proportion of their time to a study of
insects from a practical standpoint. Then, no American work
on the subject was accessible, to-day there are a number of
most excellent volumes on economic entomology, a large num-
ber of reports of more or less value and hosts of bulletins,
folders, and minor ephemeral publications. Is the business
being overdone? Only in the same way as in other branches.
There is an excess of mediocre work and a large demand for
first-class investigations. The time has passed when most any-
thing will go. The fruit growers, farmers and others are begin-
ning to demand first-class service from their scientific men.
They not only want information, but they desire it in an ac-
cessible form. One of the serious problems for the scientific
man is the solving of the question of presenting facts so that
the ])ublic will get hold of them. How much use does the
average farmer or fruit grower make of the numerous publica-
tions along my line? Go into a farmers' institute, and after
you have talked for awhile and questions are in order, the
familiar query comes up: How can we kill potato bugs? Or,
What is the remedy for tent caterpillars? Questions relating
to these insects are all right in one sense, and in certain cases
they nmy be asked by parties for the purpose of eliciting in-
formation for the benefit of neighbors. In some cases, how-
ever, such queries indicate lack of a knowledge of the funda-
mental principles which must be recognized in attempting to
control insects. Interesting biological facts might result from
further investigations of either of these insects, but it is very
doubtful whether any improved methods of controlling either
pest would result from such work. It seems to me that in
many cases questions of that character indicate a failure on
the part of the inquirer to grasp the essential facts in the case.
The remedies for most of our familiar pests have been pub-
lished repeatedly. This is well known by most fruit growers
and farmers, but who can find the information at the time it
is needed? This is a serious evil. The man who acquires and
keeps all the literature on certain lines, soon finds himself
overwhelmed unless, and this is comparatively rare, he has

29

adopted a systematic arrangement for bis library. Even then
serious difficulty arises because certain reports contain mat-
ter relating to almost every subject, and unless a man Las an
unusually long memory, he is soon unable to lay his hand on
the desired information. The bulletin has a most useful func-
tion, since it admits the speedy publication of important re-
sults in a very accessible form, and if we abandon the notion
that because bulletins are numbered consecutively and pub-
lished by various institutions, that they should be arranged as
published, we shall be rid of a serious difficulty. Group all
such publications according to the matter the^^ contain and
adopt an arrangement which appeals to you. For example,
in my line, bring all bulletins which treat of special insects
together, and if there be a number of them, subdivide accord-
ing to the crops affected. Place all general reports together,
and reserve a place for those publications which treat of the
insects affecting special crops, e. g., insects affecting grain, in-
sects depredating on fruit trees, etc. Publications on spraying
niigli,t also be put together. It need not be an elaborate sys-
tem. It is simply an arrangement whereby the ordinary farmer
can make his publications accessible. It is not necessary to
have nice file-cases, though they are convenient, but it is de-
sirable to have plenty of shelf-room. The various groups of
publications can be piled by themselves. If there is no other
place, use a portion of the attic or a room in a shed. Then,
instead of relying on memory, all that is necessary is to look
in two or three places, and that settles the question. An ex-
haustive bulletin, if there be one on the insect, will be found
with others grouped under the principal crop the pest attacks.
It may be noticed in connection with other insects those
publications which treat of the insects injurious to special
crops. A further search means consulting indexes of general
reports and such literature. It takes a little time to arrange
publications in this way, but this is nothing compared to the
Time wasted in useless search, or the vexation of knowing that
the very bulletin desired was recently destroyed because of its
being in the way. A farmer can not master all the sciences
bearing on his calling, but he may acquire at very small ex-
pense a good working library. The vast amount of literature
so freely distributed has a value, and he who can make use of
it is bound to advance. I believe that farmers generally have
much to learn regarding the use and value of state publica-
tions bearing on subjects related to agriculture, and on ac-
count of its importance, I have given it a prominent place.

Inaccessible literature is comparatively valueless. In these
days of specialization, it is sometimes quite as important to

30

know where certain information can be found as to have a
general idea regarding the subject in question. A general
library relating to agriculture or any one of its branches can
be classified as readil^^ as one bearing only on entomology, and
it seems to me that every progressive farmer should not only
be desirous of securing information along lines of interest to
him, but he should also keep that information in an accessible
form.

Dissemination of Insects.

This is another problem which has and probably will con-
tinue to attract the attention of scientific men for some time.
It is by no means a very new problem, but the general custom
of imjjorting large amounts of nursery stock annually, and the
recent establishment of several \evj injurious insects in this
country, is awakening people to the importance of this matter.
It also has a very practical bearing, which, I am sorry to state,
fruit growers and farmers have been rather slow^ in recognizing.
This may not be true in the old Bay State now, because the
neglect of this subject has already cost the Commonwealth
$1,155,000 in an attempt to exterminate a pest, not to mention
direct losses caused by the depredations of the insect.

The general importance of this problem is readily proven.
A few years ago Dr. L. O. Howard, Chief Division Entomology,
United States Department of Agriculture, looked into this sub-
ject, and he found that of seventy-three insects regarded as
of prime economic importance, that is, each causing a loss in
the United States running into the hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, thirty-seven are known to have been intro-
duced from abroad, and the original home of six is still open to
question. Over half of our serious pests have come to us from
abroad, and the end is not yet. A glance at the list will con-
vince anyone. It includes such pests as the codling moth,
Carpocapsa poiuonclla, which causes an estimated annual loss
in New York state alone of |3,000,000; the bud moth, Tmctocera
ocellana; the pear midge, Diplosis pyrivora; the apple aphis,
Aphis mali; the cherry aphis, Mif::us cerasi', the pear psylla,
Psiflla pi/ricola; the apple tree bark louse, Mytilaspis pomorum;
the San Jose scale, Aspidlotns po'tiielosiis, and others.

It is not necessary to enumerate more. We have all suffered
to a greater or less extent from one or more of these pests,
and the question naturally arises: Is there any way of pre-
venting similar experiences? It is not my purpose to thresh
over old straw. There have been extensive discussions as to
the possibility of keeping insect pests out through a system

31

of inspection and fumigation. One entomologist lias devoted
considerable time to showing what pests could not be reached
in this nmnner. It is not likely that such a system will be
established, and I certainly do not care to appear as its cham-
pion to-day. I am more interested in the fate of the individual
just at present, and if it is possible to aid him, such is my pur-
pose. There are several points worthy of notice in this con-
nection.

1. Insects depend almost entirely upon shipment of their
food plants in whole or in part for transportation over long
distances. Many of our grain insects are cosmopolitan, be-
cause the substances upon which they feed are so universally
exchanged throughout the world. Certain forms injurious to
fruit and ornamental trees are being established in remote
quarters of the earth by the shipment of young trees. So well
established is this fact that as a rule entomologists are able
to ascertain the source of infestation in many cases.

2. There are a number of well-known pests which are lim-
ited in their wanderings by the absence of wings in the adult
stage, and as most larvae are comparatively indiiferent trav-
elers, these species extend their limits very slowiy. Such in-
sects, once well subjugated in an orchard, are comparatively
easy to keep under control. The canker worm and the white-
marked tussock moth are the most important examples of this
class.

3. Certain species with apparently well-developed wings are
either unable to use them much or else habitually fly little, and
consequently spread slowly. The female gypsy moth has ap-
parently well -developed wings, but, as a matter of fact, she
rarely or never flies, and the natural spread of this pest is
therefore very slow. The parent of the apple maggot, Tnjpeta
immonclkt, is said to fly only short distances. The elm-leaf
beetle, GalcniceUa luteola, has well-developed wings and can
fly readily, but as a rule it does not, and its spread through
a city may be very slow, except where it is assisted by electric
cars and other means of conveyance.

4. The local spread of such insects is much affected by
artificial agencies. The work against the gypsy moth has re-
peatedly shown that the pest was conveyed by vehicles pass-
ing from an infested to a clean locality. Local exchange of
plants sometimes results in the transferral of insect pests. I
liave known of this happening in the case of currants infested
by San Jose scale. It has been shown that men and animals
working during the breeding season among trees infested by
this scale may carry the pest to clean trees.

The above has been brought to your attention for the pur-

32

pose of showing some of the sources of danger and the method
of its approach. It is easier in some cases to exclude an in-
sect than to be compelled to fight it year after year. I do not
mean to say that a farmer or fruit grower can build "bug-
tight" fences, but he can largely reduce the liabilit}' of cer-
tain of these pests annoying him. We hear much in New York
state about the unwillingness of certain farmers to keep insect
pests in subjection, and that through their shiftlessness enough
caterpillars are reared to supply the entire neighborhood. To
a certain extent that may be true, and occasionally such a con-
dition may obtain in Massachusetts. It is true, however, that
the moths of both the forest and apple-tree tent caterpillars do
not fly great distances necessarily, though the}' may be capable
of it, but they are very apt to deposit their eggs in great num-
bers on nearby trees. It is difficult to compel a man to do much
in fighting insect pests. It is not, ordinarily, very difficult to
set out trees where the danger of insects spreading to or from
them may not be very great. That is, I believe orchards, rep-
resenting as they do not one season's work, but the value accru-
ing from years of labor and waiting, should be protected ac-
cordingly. In these days it sometimes happens that the San
Jose scale is found on young trees several years after they have
been set out. Such trees are frequently set near an old or-
chard, and when such is the case it is practically impossible to
get rid of the pest, or to prevent its spread. I know of one
man who has several orchards, two of which are connected by
a few trees. The San Jose scale became established in one
of these two, and is now working into the other. How much
better it would have been had the two orchards been inde-
pendent, thus interposing some barrier to the spread of the
pest. I think that the orchardist of the future will find that
it will pay to isolate his trees to some extent. He will neither
set them beside a road so that the insects can be brought to
them by any of the carriers that frequent the public highway,
nor will he be tempted to save land and set them out close to
his neighbor's field, because in either case he is unable to ex-
ercise much control over what may come in contact with his
trees. On the contrary, he will set his new orchard at some dis-
tance from any boundary line and well separated from his
other trees. Where land is valuable and space limited, it may
prove desirable to plant a row of evergreen trees between two
orchards for the purpose of isolating them from each other
more fully. Such a row, especially if moderately thick, would
materially reduce the danger of insects spreading from one
orchard to the other. It would prevent the blowing of young
scale insects from one to the other, and in so far as birds

33

rested upou the evergreens in passing from one to the other,
in that proportion would the danger of carriage of pests by
these natural agents be lessened.

The orchardist should not only seek to prevent the introduc-
tion of insects through outside agencies, but he should also be
very careful not to bring serious trouble upon himself. Exer-
cise the utmost care in examining nursery stock brought upou
your place, and it is by all means advisable to fumigate all
such stock, or else huj only that which you are sure has been
thoroughly treated. Take no chance in the matter, because
the saving of a few cents may result in the loss of as many
hundreds of dollars. The lurking danger in nursery stock was
forcibly brought to mind only a few weeks ago. A personal
friend, a nurseryman in central New York, sent me a quince
twig, with the statement that it had just been imported from
France, and with an inquiry as to the nature of the borer.
It proved to be the larva of the leopard moth, Zeuzera pijrina,
a European insect which has been one of the most serious
enemies of ornamental and other trees in the vicinity of New
York city, where it became established about 1882. Fortunate-
ly, this pest is another of those insects which spreads slowly
through natural agencies, and it is not known to occur in this
country at a great distance from New York city. It does not
occur in central New York, and, thanks to the interest and
vigilance of my friend, I believe it will not be allowed to es-
tablish itself in this new locality. It is really surprising, when
we remember the large amount of imported nursery stock, that
more insect pests are not introduced. The sinuate pear borer,
Agrilus sinuatiis, is another pest which has established itself
in a limited locality in New Jersey, and, like the leopard moth,
may be introduced elsewhere. It is hardly necessary in this
connection to more than allude to such pests as the San Jose
scale and other of its kind which trouble the fruit grower.

We should not only examine the trees carefully when thej^
are received, but they should be on probation for series of
years, and every suspicious appearance should be thoroughly
investigated. Our knowledge of the limitations imposed by na-
ture upon certain insect pests should lead us to keep a constant
watch for their appearance in localities where conditions are
favorable for their introduction. Trees under which vehicles
habitually stop or where animals are tied are most likely to
have insect pests brought to them, and while a farmer can not
or does not as a rule make a minute and thorough examination
of such places even once a year, it will be the part of wisdom
to exercise a general watchfulness over them. This is special-
ly true of Massachusetts, because of the gypsy moth. This

34

insect maj be brought to any of your farms by teams, on pack-
ing boxes, or almost au}' liard substance whicli may have lain
near an infested tree during the period of egg deposition. It
will be found much easier to keep this pest from gaining a
foothold on a farm than to control it after it has become well
established.

A most interesting phase of this subject is the intentional
distribution of beneficial species through the agency of man.
This appeals very strongly to the average person, because there
is nothing quite like having your work done without cost, or
with very littletrouble. There have been several instances where
the importation of beneficial insects has been followed by
marked results. The threatened destruction of the citrus-fruit
industry of California by the cottony cushion scale insect,
Icerya purchasi, and the importation in 1889 of the beneficial
lady-bug, Novius carcUiiaUs, is a matter of history, and most of
us have some knowledge of the prolificacy of the lady-bug and
how quickly it cleared the infested trees of their dangerous
enemy. This importation was the result of the belief by scien-
tific men that the cottony cushion scale insect was kept under
control in its native home by natural enemies. The problem
was to find these natural checks and, if possible, introduce
them. The outcome was most fortunate and all that could
be desired, but it is well to remember that such results can
hardly be expected in every instance. It is very true that
what is called the balance of nature is maintained as a rule,
but it is quite another matter to get hold of the agent or agents
responsible for keeping a pest in check, and even after the
cause has been found there may be difficulty in rendering it
effectual under changed conditions. We must, therefore, re-
gard the importation of the beneficial lady-bug above men-
tioned as a most happy occurrence — one of the relatively few
instances where man and nature have worked together.

The recent importation and establishment in California of
the minute fig insect, Blastophaga grossontni, which fertilizes
and thus produces the size and exquisite flavor of the cele
brated Smyrna fig, is another triumph for applied entomology,
and if the insect is hardy, as now^ appears probable, this in-
troduction will make California one of the great fig-growing
centers of the world.

A number of economic entomologists are now giving some
attention to the artificial distribution of beneficial insects.
Efforts are being made to exchange lady-bugs with South
Africa. I can not refrain from reminding my hearers that the
entomologist of South Africa most interested in this matter
is Mr, Charles P. liOunsbury, who was brought up and edu-

35

cated in this Commonwealth. His selection by the British
government as one well qualified to teach the people of that
section how to combat their insect enemies is complimentary
to the progress this country has made in economic or applied
entomology. Living parasites of scale and other insects are
being exchanged by entomologists with the idea that every lo-
cality may be benefited as much as possible bj' the presence
of these tiny friends. The extent to which some insects are par-
asitized is astonishing. Mr. Pergande of the United States De-
partment of Agriculture reared the enormous number of 2,528
hymenopterus parasites (Copidosoma truncatcllum) from a
Plusia caterpillar, but this record has been excelled by Prof.
Giard of Paris, who obtained 3,000 of the same parasite from
a Plusia caterpillar. Not many parasites are so prolific, but
they should be recognized and at least be allowed to pursue
their ways without molestation.

How shall a fruit grower know the best method of control-
ling the insect pests annoying him? This is something of a
problem, and yet not so difficult when allowance is made for
the aids at hand. A farmer or fruit grower can hardly be an
entomologist, and it is to be expected that he will experience
difficulty in naming insects he has seen for the first time. The
exercise of a little common sense will usually determine the
character of the insect, whether it be injurious or not, and, if
the former, a little investigation may reveal the nature of its
work. If not, you have an experiment station, which is one
of the best equipped in the countr^^ along entomological lines,
and Prof. C. H. Fernald, or his son. Dr. H. T. Fernald, is ready
to assist in solving the problem. A great many farmers
and fruit growers are too unwilling to consult the experts who
stand ready to aid them. Possibly they fear that they are in-
truding, or that their inquiries will be lightly treated or
ignored. Let me tell you that most of the men in these public
positions are most willing to aid the honest inquirer — it is
their business to do so — and that I have yet to learn of such
communications being slighted. It sometimes happens that a
letter can not be answered at once, but that does not mean
neglect necessarily. Those who do inquire, frequently delay
till ,the remedial stage has passed.

There are A number of common, well-known injurious in-
sects which yearly trouble the farmer and the fruit grower.
If he is any kind of a man, he will soon learn to recognize
them by sight, and in a measure be prepared for their coming.
He should not stop there, but he should learn something of
their habits and what we call their life history, what plants
they feed on, how they feed, and where the different stages are

36

passed. I would have a farmer or fruit grower control an in-
sect intelligently, and not spray simply because his neighbor
does. Know something about the insect, and know why you do
this rather than that, and just what you use. Patented com-
pounds, as a rule, are costly. You pay for the making of them,
if you buy them. As a general rule, use nothing having a
composition unknown to you, because it may happen that you
can get the same thing much cheaper in another form, but be
sure that the latter is equally desirable. Know your chief in-
sect enemies and adapt your methods to their wa^s. I hold
that while a man may meet with fair success by imitating his
neighbor, he will control the codling moth much better if he
understands why the young fruit is to be spra^^ed after the
blossoms have fallen and before the young apples turn their
blossom ends down. He -who knows the habits of this pest can
correct his methods, if the results are not satisfactory, other-
wise he is working blindly. It is just the difference between
a skilled and unskilled workman. The former can meet emer-
gencies, the latter follows instructions without regard to re-
sults. In the same manner, it is of some importance for the
fruit grower to be able to recognize aphid eggs on his trees,
to know where the bud-moth and the case-bearers pass the
winter, and through knowing these things and being able to
recognize them, he can judge as to whether early spraying be
advisable in his orchard or not. To such a man the ascension
of large numbers of wingless canker-worm moths, the presence
on his trees of many egg-cluster of tent caterpillars, the tell-
tale sawdust of a borer, the roughened bark covered by scale
insects, all have a meaning, and though he may not be able to
identify every insect he sees and be totally ignorant of their
systematic position and their scientific names, he understands
the whys and the wherefores of controlling the more common
insect pests, and he is very ready to inquire about any new
forms which threaten him with injury.

The above are some general considerations regardijig well-
established pests. We will now turn to another subject of
great importance at present.

Insecticides.

The ])roper use of these substances and the discovery of more
efficient remedies in certain cases are both matters of great
importance in the control of insect pests. There has been more
or less complaint in New York state regarding the efficiency of
paris <jreen and some other arsenical compounds. These com-
plaints have not. as a rule, been substantiated by chemical

37

analysis. Several cases were brought to my attention where
paris green was said not to kill forest tent caterpillars, and yet
I am rather confident that I could have gone into the market,
bought the same poison, and obtained satisfactory results. A
year ago, a man drove ten miles to make such a report. There
was no fault in his method of work, as described by him, and
yet the caterpillars were not killed. I was reluctantly com-
pelled to assume that the fault might have been with the man
at the nozzle, or with the one who operated the pump and
stirred the mixture. Spraying is a fine art, it is hardly neces-
sary to state, and success is more often proportional to thor-
oughness than to the cost of the apparatus. I have been in
farmers' institutes where it seemed necessary to state that
whale oil soap, kerosene emulsion and such substances were
contact insecticides which must be thrown onto the insects if
results were to be obtained, and that in the case of arsenical
poisons, such as paris green, London purple, arsenate of lead,
and the like, they are to be placed where the insect must eat
them or starve. Such statements are hardly necessary here,
but one experiment may be worth an allusion, since it shows
how sensitive caterpillars are to the presence of poisons,, and
therefore emphasize the necessity of thoroughness. Maple
leaves were sprayed with several kinds of arsenical poisons,
and the treated leaves, after the spray had dried, were placed
in breeding jars with caterpillars. Some unsprayed leaves of
the same kind and caterpillars from the same lot were placed
in another breeding Jar. These latter began feeding at once,
while the caterpillars on the sprayed leaves, which, by the
way, were sprayed so lightly that it was difficult after they
were dry to see the poison even with a hand lens, did not begin
feeding till starved to it, waiting from ten to thirty-six hours.
Is it any wonder that immediate results are not obtained? And
when we consider the difficulty of covering every leaf with a
coating of poison, it is not surprising that caterpillars are able
to find a few unsprayed leaves here and there. This exceed-
ingly fine discrimination was somewhat surprising to me, as I
expected the caterpillars to at least nibble a little on the poi-
soned leaves, but even that did not appear to be necessary for
the detection of the poison.

The magnificent work against the gypsy moth has resulted
in the discovery of an exceedingly valuable insecticide, arse-
nate of lead. The actual cost of this substance, considering
the amount necessary, is greater than paris green or other of
the more common arsenical preparations, but if any allowance
is made for labor incident to spraying, it will usually prove to
be the cheapei', because of the poison remaining on the leaves

38

for an indefinite period. It not only adheres very well, but its
white color makes it easy to detect sprayed trees, and, when
properly prepared, it is harmless to even the most delicate
foliage. This preparation is being; used almost exclusively in
Albany and Troy against the. elm leaf beetle. It is of special
value in such cases because of the insect feeding through a
large part of the growing season. A tree sprayed after the
leaves are out is protected for the remainder of the season.
It is the best preparation to use against the gypsy moth cater-
pillars on account of its requiring so much poison to kill the
pests, and the same is true in a lesser degree in the case of
canker worms. Arsenate of lead has the fault of operating
more slowly than paris green, and where quick work is de-
sired, and there is little danger of rains washing the poison off,
there is probably nothing better than paris green, London pur-
ple and similar preparations. Very large amounts of arsenate
of lead can be used to accomplish this purpose, and in threaten-
ing weather it would be preferable. Several very good prep-
arations of this insecticide have been put on the market in a
paste form.

The appearance of the San Jose scale in the East has caused
much disturbance in horticultural circles, and probably no in-
jurious insect ever received so much free advertising. Conflict-
ing statements regarding the pest abound, and in some in-
stances it is difficult to eliminate untruths. We do not like
the insect in New York state, and the finding of a satisfactory
remedy for the pest in our section is still in the experimental
stage, despite statements to the contrary made by former or
present residents of California. The climatic conditions of the
two places are quite different, and this has an important bear-
ing on the efficiency of insecticides.

Before considering remedial measures in detail, it might be
well to inquire as to the status of this insect as a pest. Is it
injurious in this latitude? My remarks along this line will be
limited largely to conditions obtaining in New York state, par-
ticularly to the valley of the Hudson river, and more especially
in the immediate vicinity of Albany. There the San Jose
scale is a serious and difficult insect to contend with, and it is
very probable that it would be about equally bad in the
vicinity of Worcester (Mass.). It practically killed the currant
bushes •on one place, and, spreading from them to young fruit
trees, it has killed several, severely injured a number of others,
and at the present it occurs on practically every tree on the
place, and has spread to adjoining premises on both sides.
The insect was introduced there less than ten years ago, and
the owner has made some efforts to control the insect, but he
did not meet with much success.

39

There is no reason for believing: that this is an exceptional
record where the insect is not fought most persistently, and it
has been selected simply because most of it occurred under
my own observation, and I am therefore familiar with the
details. The pest has become established in a number of other
places, and, in one, the owner made a most determined fight,
using whale oil soap, but without much success till last season,
when crude petroleum was employed. I have known this
insect to breed from June 20 till into November. It may there-
fore be stated that in certain sections of New York state this
pe^t, under favoring climatic conditions, is enormously prolific,
and that it requires very thorough work to keep it in check.

The contradictory results obtained by various parties, and
the seriousness of the situation, led me to undertake some
experiments last season for the purpose of ascertaining what
could be depended upon in work against this insect in orchards.
A series of experiments with kerosene, whale oil soap, crude
petroleum and hydrocyanic acid gas in various combinations
was tried, and I now propose to give you a brief summary of
the results.

Kerosene.

A series of experiments with this substance, both mechani-
cally diluted with water and pure, has shown that as a winter
spray for the San Jose scale it does not begin to compare with
either a whale oil soap solution or with crude petroleum in
some form. The 20 per cent, mechanical emulsion was sprayed
on seventeen trees, comprising one cherry, several varieties of
pear and plum, and two kinds of peach. The treatment was
given April 11, and the trees were not harmed in the slightest,
so far as could be seen, and, unfortunately, by no means all
of the scale insects were killed. Practically the same results
were obtained with the 25 per cent, mechanical emulsion. I
might add at this point that in these experiments a kerowater
sprayer, made by the Gould Manufacturing Co. of Seneca Falls,
N. Y., was used, and the emulsions obtained were those pro-
duced by this apparatus, which, by the way, worked very satis-
factorily as a rule. Some of the trees treated with the above-
mentioned kerosene emulsions were badly infested with young
scale insects later in the season, and on that account they were
sprayed July 16 with a 10 per cent, mechanical emulsion of
kerosene. This application did not injure the trees to any
extent, practically not at all, and it did kill a great many of
the young scale insects, thus demonstrating its value as a mid-
summer spray.

40

The experiments with undiluted kerosene were not entirely
satisfactor}', because it was considered rather dangerous to
apply it to trees, and, therefore, only four badly infested pear
trees were sprayed with the substance. The trees were in bad
condition to begin with, and the kerosene injured them some
without killing all the scale insects. I presume that it is
possible to kill all the scale insects on a tree with undiluted
kerosene, and possibly the trees in the end might be better
off, but our experience leads us to believe that there is some-
thing better, as will be seen later.

Whale Oil Soaps.

Two brands were experimented with — Leggett's anchor
brand, and Good's caustic jjotash whale oil soap, Xo. 3. The
former was purchased in the open market, and the latter was
sent as a sample for testing. The applications were made
April 11 to several varieties of pear and peach trees. No per-
ceptible injury followed the spraying, either when the soaps
were used at the rate of one and a half or
two pounds to the gallon of water. The trees were
very thoroughly* sprayed, and the San Jose scale
was undoubtedly severely checked, but the results were not
equal to those obtained with the crude petroleum emulsion.
The whale oil soap is a safer insecticide to use than either
kerosene or crude petroleum in one way or another, and it has
the additional advantage of possessing valuable fertilizing
properties. Thorough work with the whale oil soaps will give
very fair results. The experiments were not exhaustive enough
to enable me to pass upon the relative insecticidal value of the
two soaps used. The Good soap dissolved more readily and
gave less trouble in spraying, however. Some of the trees
were sprayed with Good's whale oil soap, one pound to five
gallons of water, Juh' 16, and the results were very beneficial
in killing the youiig scale insects. The trees suffered no
injury.

A brief note on the superior efficiency of a tobacco whale
oil soap for killing clusters of the forest tent caterpillars may
be permissible in this connection. It was found that though
Mr. GFood made both soaps, the one containing the tobacco
infusion was decidedly more effective, 'it killing over 93 per
cent, out of a number collected in the field after they had been
sprayed with a solution of one pound to five gallons, and 72
per cent, when they were sprayed with one pound of the soap
to ten gallons. The ordinary whale oil soap killed but 81 per
cent, when used at the rate of one pound to five gallons, though

41

the somewhat anomalous result of a death rate of over 84 per
cent, followed the use of the soap at the rate of one pound
to ten gallons. It is quite possible that this latter record was
due to more thorough spraying with the weaker solution. The
results given above were obtained by taking a mass of the
sprayed caterpillars and placing them in a pasteboard box,
feeding those that lived and counting the total dead. The
greater efficiency of the tobacco whale oil soap is shown by a
stud^' of the comparative number of dead the next day, which
was over 76 and 50 per cent., while the ordinary whale oil soap
killed 6.3 and 57 per cent, respectively, the higher percentages
being the work of the more concentrated solutions. There is
still an anomaly between the weaker solutions, if the addition
of tobacco be an advantage, but that may be explained as
stated above.

Whale Oil Soap and Ckude Petroleum Combination.

This was tried on fifteen trees representing several varieties
of both pear and peach. It was prepared as follows: Crude
petroleum was placed in the tank, and the kerowater sprayer
set to deliver 10 per cent, oil, the remaining 90 per cent, being
a solution of one pound of whale oil soap to four gallons of
water. The mixture was pretty well emulsified as it ptassed
through the nozzle, and it had not the slightest ill effects on
the trees, so far as could be seen. The presence of the crude
petroleum was noticeable on the trees for some time. The
insecticidal value of this preparation was not equal to that of
the 20 per cent, mechanical emulsion of crude petroleum, but it
is possible that better results would have been obtained had a
larger proportion of oil been used.

Crude Petroleum.

This substance was tested pretty thoroughly in 20 and 25 per
cent, mechanical emulsions and undiluted. The emulsions
were obtained as in the experiments with kerosene by the aid
of a kerowater sprayer. The oil used was such as is sold in
Albany by agents of the Standard Oil Company, and it is the
blended product of a number of wells. It is a greenish oil,
wiiich poured readily, and a s;\mple sent to Dr. Smith in De-
cember, eight months after the experiments were performed,
tested but .37 degrees on the Beaume oil scale. A sample
purchased in Albany in December from the same party ^as
supplied the oil for experimental purposes, tested 41 degrees.

The 20 per cent, mechanical emulsion was tested on twenty-

42

three trees, representing several varieties of pear and plum^
Crawford peaeli, cherrj-, Crataegus and crab apple. The spray-
ing was done, as in the preceding experiments, on a bright,
sunny day, and the trees were nice and dry. Several days of
rain followed the operation, and yet the oil remained on the
trees for several months, the darker color of the trunks of the
treated trees being easily seen at a considerable distance. The
2.5 per cent, mechanical emulsion was thrown on nine trees,
representing several varieties of pears and Globe peach trees.
But four trees were sprayed with the undiluted product; they
were one Lombardy and one Botan plum and tw^o Seckel pear
trees.

The mechanical dilutions of this oil, one characterized by
Dr. Smith as dangerous to use undiluted, have in my hands
been so satisfactory in killing the San Jose scale that I can
not avoid feeling that it is a much safer article to use than the
undiluted product. Both the 20 and 25 per cent, mechanical
emulsions of this crude petroleum, testing but 37 degrees on
the Beaume oil scale, were very effective, and did absolutely no
harm to the trees, so far as I have been able to discover. As
insecticides, either was fully as effectual as the undiluted oil,
and in some instances practically every scale insect must have
been killed by the application. One of the advantages of using
undiluted petroleum or a mechanical emulsion of the same
lies in the coating of vaseline which covers the trees for some
months after the treatment. This is undoubtedly a deterrent
to the settling of young scale insects, and in a measure it aids
in keeping the tree free from the pests. The mechanical
dilution has certain advantages. It is, all things considered,
safer, since it affords a ready means for throwing a very small
amount of a dangerous substance onto a tree. The application
of the oil is more uniform than is likely to be the case when
the undiluted product is used. In the latter event, a very fine
spray must be employed, and this reduces the distance to which
it can be thrown, and the time necessary to make a thorough
application is correspondingly increased. The mechanical
emulsion saves on the insecticide, and while the cost of the
apparatus may be greater than that of an ordinary pump, the
extra money put in the outfit will soon be saved, if the spraying
is at all extensive.

Four trees were treated with undiluted crude petroleum,
and the results were far from Satisfactory. The spraying w^as
done as thoroughly as possible, and as two of the trees se-
lected for this treatment were very badly infested with the
San Jose scale, it was a crucial test, as it is very difficult to
kill all the scale insects on such trees. The two Seckel pear

43

trees both suffered very miicli from the oil, several importaut
limbs of each dying before the summer was over. The two
I)lum trees, one a Botan and the other a Lombardy, though,
but moderately infested with the scale, died before the grow-
ing sfason ended. Both were undoubtedly killed by the crude
petroleum. This experience makes me very cautious in using
or recommending the use of undiluted crude petroleum. The
trees were sprayed at a time when they should be most re-
sistant to the insecticide. It is true that the experience of
last summer has led Dr. Smith to believe that the oil I used
in my work was of a dangerous grade. He characterizes a
safe oil as follows: It must have a specific gravity of 43 de-
grees or over on the Beaume oil scale, but it need not run
over 45 degrees. It may be either green or amber in color,
and it must be a paraffin and not an asphaltum oil. Even
though these characters absolutely define a safe oil, which
maj' not prove to be the case, there is danger of buying a
heavy oil, and injuring the trees. Is a lighter oil effectual
when diluted? Undoubtedly. Several growers of fruit in
New York state have this dreaded pest in their orchards, and
in the course of my work last summer, I compared results
obtained by them. Mr. W. A. Hart of Poughkeepsie (N. Y.)
sprayed a large orchard with mechanically diluted crude pe-
troleum, purchased of the Frank Oil Company of Titusville
(Pa.). The company states that the oil supplied Mr. Hart
ran above 43 degrees on the Beaume oil scale. A sample sent
me in February tests 44.0 degrees, and they claim that their
oil runs from 44 to 45 degrees. This renders it practically
certain that Mr. Hart used a light oil, which might be char-
acterized as safe to apply undiluted, using the criterion put
forth by Dr. Smith. An examination of Mr. Hart's orchard
shows a very gratifying condition. The scale was present
in late summer in very small numbers, comparatively, though
the trees w^ere of considerable size. His success was due
largely to thoroughness in the application. The trees were
sprayed from both sides, always from the leeward. This
necessitated some waiting for a change in the wind, but it
undoubtedly paid. A ten-foot brass extension with two to
four cyclone, or equally good, nozzles, is almost necessary
for the best results in this work. Mr. Hart prefers to have
the nozzles connected with the extension by a small piece of
pipe bent at an angle of about 45 degrees from the line of
the extension. Some prefer the nozzles set at right angles to
the extension. It is better to have them turned at some angle,
and the degree is apt to vary with individual preference.
I also followed the results obtained by Mr. L. L. Morrell of

44

Kinderliook (X. Y.). This gentleman had not had very good
success with whale oil soap, and last year he began with crude
petroleum. He had a Xing apple-tree painted with crude
petroleum December 1, 1899, the oil being applied very thor-
oughly. May 21, 1900, this tree was nearly dead, and by June
20 it was dead to all appearances. It never recovered. He
also had some trees painted with crude petroleum in Feb-
ruary, 1900, and the following May many of the lateral buds
were dead, and the foliage looked sickl}', though later they ap-
parently^ recovered somewhat from the effects of the oil. Some
other trees, top-worked with the Sutton Beauty, were painted
on the trunks in April, and the branches were sprayed with
a 25 ])er cent, mechanical emulsion of crude petroleum. These
trees were also injured to some extent by the oil, probably
by that painted on the trunk. Other trees sprayed with a
mechanical emulsion apparently did not suffer from the effects
of the oil. and on the whole Mr. Morrell is well satisfied with
this treatment. His experiments apparently show that the
earlier in the winter the application is made, the greater the
injury.

The experience of last season leads me to conclude that
the mechanical crude petroleum emulsion is among the most
promising remedies for the control of the San Jose scale, and,
all things considered, preferable even to a safe grade of oil
used undiluted.

Hydrocyanic Acid Gas.

This substance was also tested on a dozen pear
and jieach trees, and the results obtained were very
satisfactory. Infested trees were all around, and it

could hardly be expected that those fumigated would not be-
come reinfested. The fumigation, even with but one ounce to
1.50 cubic feet of space, appeared to kill every one of the scale
insects, and when used double that strength on the dormant
trees did no injury. I will not go into this subject in detail,
as it has been pretty thoroughly covered by one well qual-
ified by ample experience. I can not help thinking that this
method would prove of value in extensive orchards of small
to moderate-sized trees, in spite of the great cost of the tents.

Is it possible to locally exterminate this insect? In some
cases it is, but ordinarily this will not be done. Nothing short
of the most radical measures will accomplish this. Dig up by
the roots every infested tree, and others at all likely to be
infested, and burn them at once, unless this be done in the
late fall, when it may be advisable to allow the uprooted trees
to lie in a pile till about June 1 before burning them, in order
to permit the escape of any beneficial parasites which may be

45

present. Digging- up the roots is quite important, because
a few scale insects may be found on portions of the tree be-
low the surface of tlie ground. A less radical method would
be to treat the suspected trees most thoroughly in early spring
with whale oil soap solution, mechanical petroleum emulsion
or gas, the latter being the most effective in exterminative
work.

DROUGHT AS A PROBLEM IN FRUIT GROWING.
Fred W. Card, Professor of Horticulture, Rhode Island College.

Earely does a year pass without some crops being injured
by lack of moisture at one or another part of the season.
Oftentimes this may occur even in years of excessive rainfall,
for it is well known that after a period of continuous wet
w^eather, crops are more easily and more quickh' injured by
lack of rain than in seasons of normal or slightly deficient
rainfall. Excessive rainfall compacts the surface and pud-
dles the upper layers of soil to such an extent that evapora-
tion is greatly increased when dry weather comes. Then come
years like the last, when the drought is so prolonged and so
general that everything suffers. We all say we never saw it
so dry before, but doubtless will be saying the same thing
again ere long.

Two lines of action are open in attempting to counteract the
bad effects from lack of rainfall. The one which most nat-
urally suggests itself is the application of more water. The
benefits which accrue when water is properly added to plants
suffering from its lack, are beyond question, and often so pro-
nounced as to yield most handsome profits on the outlay, yet
the work is expensive. If streams are available from which
the supply may be taken, expensive canals are often needed
to conduct the water to where it is to be used. If water must
be pumped, there is at once an outlay for the equipment to do
the work, and for the reservoirs to store the water. The
amount of water demanded is nearly always much greater than
those inexperienced would think. An acre-inch is but a mod-
erate application in times of drought, yet this requires, if I
have figured correctly, something over 27,000 gallons, or 860
barrels, of water for each acre. That is not the whole of the
difficulty. An acre-inch is not the same thing as an inch spread
over an acre, for it may be impossible to apply the amount of
water required evenly over the entire surface. Some parts
are sure to absorb more than this amount, while others will

46

receive less than is needed. From a careful study of this i^rob-
lem, Professor Voorhees of New Jersey has concluded that in
extreme years as much as twelve inches of water may be
needed to get the best results, though so much as this would
rarely be needed. In the humid climates of the East irriga-
tion only needs to supplement the rainfall, hence much less
water is demanded than in the arid regions of the West, yet
even this is not a wholly unmixed benefit, since if a heavy
rainfall happens to immediately succeed a liberal application
of water, there may come increased trouble from fungous dis-
eases, which sometimes may be great enough to prove more
serious than the loss from lack of water would have been,
though this is not to be expected.

Irrigation demands much work, not only in the application
of the water, but in the treatment of the land before and after
its application. It should be clearly understood that it is not
a substitute for cultivation, but that it increases rather than
diminishes the demand for tillage. If land is allowed to lie
untouched after being flooded, conditions for capillarity, and
consequent evaporation, are at their best. A crop may receive
little or no benefit, perhaps even positive injury, from the ap-
plication. It is generally recognized, and must be, that only
intensive crops and intensive methods will warrant the labor
and outlay demanded to irrigate. Under favorable conditions
such outlay may prove an admirable investment; under other
conditions it may prove a very poor one.

The second line of action which suggests itself is that of
conserving to the greatest possible extent the water which
falls as rain and snow. Much may be done in this line, both
under intensive and extensive methods. The first thing to do
is to put the soil in the best possible condition to receive and
to hold water. Many things may contribute to this result.

1. Underdraining. Whether underdraining will help to re-
duce the influence of drought will depend chiefly upon the na-
ture of the soil. With a light, open subsoil, which readily
allows water to percolate through it and pass away, it is need-
less to say that underdraining will prove useless, both as a
means of lessening injury from too much water or from too
little. On the other hand, when the soil, and particularly the
subsoil, is heavy, hard and impermeable, underdraining is the
best known means of loosening and ameliorating its condition.
That a mellow, friable soil will absorb and hold water far bet-
ter than a hard and impervious one, goes without saying.

2. Subsoiling. This is a less permanent method of improv-
ing the mechanical condition of the underlying soil than is un-
derdraining, but will produce benefit for a time, under condi-

47

tions similar to those where nnderdraining is beneficial. Yet
much of our New England soil does not need, and will not re-
spond to subsoiling. Whether it will prove desirable in indi-
vidual cases, must be answered by a study of the soil, or by
actual trial, if such study does not prove conclusive.

3. Deep plowing will also contribute to the same end, be-
cause it puts into good mechanical condition a larger amount
of soil; in other words, it deepens the surface reservoir or
sponge which may take up and hold water for the benefit of
crops.

4. Thorough pulverization of the soil turned by the plow
is also essential. If left lumpy and in bad mechanical con-
dition, water will not be retained as it should be,

5. The addition of humus will add greatl}' to the moisture-
holding capacity of the soil. This is a point of great impor-
tance, and one which has been much overlooked. The great
value of stable-manure and of green crops has long been rec-
ognized, but the fact that much of that value conies from im-
proving the physical condition and the moisture-holding ca-
pacity of the soil, has not been so well recognized. A soil
abounding in humus is not only light and friable, admitting
water readily, but it will also hold a much larger amount of
water per cubic foot than will a soil deficient in humus. With
proper tillage at the surface, it will also prevent evaporation
better. The methods of securing humus may vary according
to conditions, but should not be neglected. It is one of the
important offices of green crops, and one which the non-nitro-
gen-gatherers will accomplish as well as those which gather
nitrogen.

fi. Cover-crops may help to conserve moisture because they
add humus, as just indicated, and also because they help to re-
tain snow during winter, and to favor the entrance rff water
into the soil. They also help to reduce moisture while grow-
ing, a fact which should never be forgotten. It therefore be-
comes necessary to so time the growth of cover-crops that
the moisture demanded by their growth shall be taken at a
time when least needed by the trees or other fruits under
treatment.

7. In special locations it may happen that the presence of a
forest on land above the fruit-plantation may assist in main-
taining the moisture-supply, the reason being that the forest-
cover and the conditions of the forest-soil are the best possi-
ble for admitting water and allowing it to pass downward.
This may percolate through the soil, and help to supply needed
moisture to the cro})s growing in fields below.

After having done all that we can to put the soil into the

48

best condition to admit and bold water, we may further assist
matters by preventing the water from getting away in so far
as possible, in other words, by taking means to reduce evapo-
ration. The amount of moisture demanded by the production
of a crop of fruit or other plants is not great. The amount
Avhich is lost is far greater. This loss may be reduced in sev-
eral ways.

1. By preventing weed-growth. Not only do the plants
being grown absorb and give otf into the atmosphere large
quantities of water, but every other plant growing upon the
ground does the same thing. If, then, weeds are allowed to
stand, they are constantly pumping up and sending off into the
atmosphere moisture needed by the growing crop. The les-
son is obvious: keep the weeds down. As already suggested,
cover-crops will do the same thing. For this reason, it is de-
sirable to start them as late as possible, when the heaviest
moisture-demands for the production of fruit have been made,
or when it is desirable to check the growth of wood, and in-
duce its proper maturing for winter.

2. By wide planting. Since the plants, whatever their na-
ture, are constantly giving off moisture from their leaves, it
follows that wide planting will assist in reducing the effects
of drought. The more plants there are, the more moisture
needed. This is a fact well recognized by growers of bush-
fruits in the semi-arid regions of the West. Land is with them
less important than w^ater, and they give plenty of room to the
plants. Close planting demands additional moisture as well
as additional fertility.

3. For the same reason, close pruning will help to reduce the
injury from lack of rain. Pruning is always a fruit-thinning
process. In many cases it is the manner in which all thinning
is done. The more vigorous the pruning, the less fruit there
is to be matured, and the more moisture there is available to
that which remains.

4. By wind-breaks. Evaporation depends upon two condi-
tions, the relative humidity of the air and the rate at which
it is moving. A dry atmosphere takes up moisture greedily
from soil and plant, while a saturated one does not. Evapora-
tion goes on almost continuously at all seasons of the year.
The higher the wind-velocity, the greater the evaporation.
Experiments made by the United States Signal Service, a few
years ago, showed that, under the conditions prevailing at
the time the test was made, evaporation in a wind of ten miles
per hour is 3.8 times as great as in a calm. Ten miles is little
above the average wind-velocity of much of New England.
This shows at once the value which wind-breaks may have in

49

mitigating drought, if located in the direction from which the
prevailing winds of summer come. Their importance in this
regard on the plains is well understood. Wind-breaks are
there nearly always located on the south and west of the plan-
tation, as the hot winds of summer come from that direction,
5. By surface-tillage. Evaporation not only proceeds from
the foliage of plants growing in the soil, but also proceeds
from the surface of the soil itself. This leads to the impor-
tance of a blanket laid upon the surface to prevent this loss.
Hence the necessity of frequent surface-tillage, since a blanket
of dust is the most feasible one yet discovered for this pur-
pose. A word of caution may be needed regarding the philos-
ophy of surface-tillage. It needs to be remembered in the first
place that no moisture is added by this process. It can, there-
fore, be of little benefit after the soil has been neglected until
its moisture has been lost. Tillage should begin as soon as
the ground is in tillable condition in the spring, and should
be repeated promptly whenever a rain occurs, or whenever
from any other condition the surface tends to become com-
pact. It should also be remembered that tillage hastens the
loss of the moisture from whatever part is stirred. It should,
therefore, be shallow, since a deep blanket is not needed, and
every inch added to the depth of the blanket deducts an inch
from the reservoir iii which the moisture is to be held.

HORTICULTURE AND THE NEW ENGLAND FARM.

Frank William Rane, Professor of Horticulture, New Hampshire

College. ,

The backbone of any nation, generally speaking, is its agri-
culture. Go where you will and you will find this statement
to be true. Where a nation has neglected its agriculture,
and not kept abreast of the times, it is traveling toward de-
struction and decay. The more we study the rise and fall of
the Roman empire, or the history of any of the older nations,
the more easily we recognize these facts. Look, for instance,
at the ruins of the great irrigation canals of the old world,
especially those of Italy and Spain. These designate better
times, a fruitful and bounteous harvest, green fields, and a
land filled with a prosperous and highly-civilized people. The
agriculture having since been neglected, however, it is need-
less to ask for the results.

To show that agriculture is of greatest importance to a coun-

50

trj, we need only to cite instances such as our great states of
Ohio and Colorado; the one noted for its boundless coal and
oil fields, and the other for its vast resources of mineral wealth.
We then realize that these great and valuable productions
for which these states get their reputation, do not begin ro
amount to their yearly agricultural resources. Take agricul-
ture out of a country, and what is left? A rocky, barren
country; valuable minerals ma^' abound, but even then, what
kind of a civilization? Every one knows.

But what has this to do with horticulture, and the impor-
tance of it to the Xew England farmer? Agriculture includes
horticulture in the broad sense, and still further, a high de-
gree of agriculture must be attained before horticulture can
exist, which, in a way, is a more concentrated form of the same.

Horticulture, to my mind, is the cream of agriculture. In
a comparatively new country like ours, it is perfectly natural
that general agriculture should first prevail, and horticulture
come in when the country has been more fully opened, and an
aesthetic taste established.

Horticulture is distinguished from agriculture in that it com-
prises the following branches: (1) pomology, or fruit growing;
(2) olericulture, or vegetable gardening; (3) floriculture, or the
raising of flowers; and (4) landscape horticulture, which ap-
proaches landscape gardening. These are the subjects that
come under my jurisdiction as professor of horticulture in the
New Hampshire College at Durham, N. H. We devote at
least an entire term to each subject. The four-year students
of course get inuch more.

When pomology is taken up, the subject is divided into
three main divisions: (a) viticulture; (b) orchard fruits; and
(c) small fruits. The grape being the first fruit to study, it
is taken up in the following order: history; methods of propa-
gation; soils and location; fertilizers; planting; culture; prun-
ing and training; extent and importance of the business in New
Hampshire, United States, and throughout the world; varie-
ties; insect enemies; fungous diseases; remedies; harvesting;
marketing; etc. By the time the following subjects have been
finished, viz.: the apple, pear, quince, plum, peach, cherry,
apricot, nectarine, all of the tropic fruits, the various kinds of
nuts, not to say anything about the small fruits, as raspber-
ries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, strawberries, cran-
berries, etc., a person ought to have some sort of an idea of
the scope of pomology. Similarly, I might take up the ten
classes of vegetables, and show the scope of olericulture, or
equally that of floriculture and landscape horticulture, leaving
out entirely the question of greenhouse construction and man-

51

agement, the wholesale seed and nursery business, and such
important studies as the evolution of plants, plant-breeding,
etc.

We can not help but recognize, therefore, that horticulture
extends over a broad field and contains much in its grasp, do-
ing much for a nation's welfare and happiness. Too many
people think horticulture is simply fruit growing; especially
is this true where fruit raising is the predominating industry;
others recognize only vegetable gardening as the more impor-
tant horticultural operation, while the florist doubtless thinks
all others are comparatively insignificant as compared with
his business, where Latin names and so many of them abound.
There are whole armies of men throughout our country inter-
ested in one or more of these various pursuits, and, too, gen-
erally speaking, they are of a class above the average in in-
telligence, and, in fact, compose our best citizens. There is
something about horticultural industries that calls out the
better instincts of man, due perhaps to his closer study into
the great heart of nature herself. Horticulture must be con-
sidered as refining and elevating. Fruits, flowers, and land-
scape were never intended for association with mean or ill-
tempered persons. It has been said tliat plants and flowers
are all right for women and children to fuss with, but are
belittling for men. Pity on that man who can not see beauty
and even pleasure in a well-kept house surrounded with beau-
tiful flowers, and all of the luxuries that come with farm life.

The first point I, therefore, wish to emphasize is that horti-
culture for New England farmers will more than return the
interest upon the investment in pleasant homes and happier
lives. There is very little trouble when passing through the
state to determine which homes present cheer and welcome.
When on a drive with the state entomologist of West Vir-
ginia we found ourselves at some distance from any town
where we could get dinner, and we resolved to stop at the
first farmhouse that looked inviting. Although we were in
a fairly prosperous section we drove for a full half hour before
finding a home that met these conditions. This place had a
garden; the grounds were well kept for a comfortable farm-
house, and we found our judgment was not misplaced. Not
only were we able to get a good dinner, but found people whom
we remember as friends. Another farmhouse in the same
state, which I wish to contrast with the above, is one with a
single peach tree which yielded two bushels per year it is said,
and the family never sample the fruit because it has such
ready sale on the market. This tree was ten years old when
last I knew it, and I doubt if it has ever occurred to the farmer

52

that more would be profitable. I don't believe this is an exag-
geration over what can be found on many New England farms
to-day. If there is any class of people deserving of fruits, and
plenty of them, it is the farmer and his family, and who can
have them more easily?

All lines of horticulture are found in our New England states
to-day. When we are asked to what extent these various
industries are followed, however, it seems to me this question
is not, and can not be, answered enthusiastically. True, there
are exceptions, but from observation I believe that we drop
very far short of our i)ossibilities. When our men of apparent
horticultural interests are indifferent, and paj' little attention
to modern methods, or care little for exhibits, meetings, etc.,
wherein much good might be gained to the benefit of ail, what
can we expect from others?

Were our markets far distant and competition close, as in
many sections of the West, doubtless conditions would bring
out our keener business methods, but is this any reason why
we should be any the less careless about our opportunities?
I can see little reason for the existence and great good of
strong meetings in one section less favorably located, while in
others, with great natural advantages, so little comparative
interest is taken.

During the past few years work at the experiment stations
has, we believe, awakened more or less interest; but much of
the time has been spent in finding out to what extent the hor-
ticultural interests really prevail in various sections.

The possibilities in horticulture for New England farmers,
I believe, are almost unbounded. Were our people aroused to
the interests of horticulture and would devote an equal amount
of attention in studying out the problems in horticulture as
they have in dairying, I predict that for the time and money
invested the results would be even more profitable. To dem-
onstrate, I ask our agriculturist how much is made per cow
per year, over and above cost of feed, shelter and labor, and
I am told that, on the average for the country, nothing is made,
as it is estimated that a cow must produce 3,000 pounds of
milk to meet her expenses alone. Whatever is produced, in
other words, over and above this amount, therefore, may be
considered as profit. I do not care to go into the discussion
of the dairy problems, nor throw any cold water on the enthu-
siasm along this line of agricultural progress in which New
Hampshire deservedly ranks well at the top, but to emphasize
further by comparison for the benefit of horticulture. I ask
if a good, thrifty Baldwin apple-tree does not bring in as much
profit as a cow? I doubt if I could get many in this audience

53

to exchange a cow for an apple-tree, but if figures be true,
and the one under comparative conditions is as profitable as
the other, I say, give me the apple-tree. 1 am sure that while
getting up at four o'clock in the morning, or tending cattle
all winter is not a hardship to a man that is used to it, never-
theless most people would prefer going to work at seven o'clock.
On the other hand an apple-tree amounts to comparatively
little if it receives no care. With a little care, however, what
a liberal response. After a Pomona Grange, attended a few
weeks since, various farmers said that had it not been for their
apple crops from time to time, they could not have kept out of
debt. Upon inquire', however, I found, as is generally the case,
their orchards were but indifferently cared for. Another man
at this same meeting informed me that his young orchard
which he set in 1891, and had given good care, yielded twenty-
five barrels of fine fruit in 1891).

When I was out with the State Board of Agriculture attend-
ing farmers' institutes in the fall of 1896, the season of our
over-abundant apj^le crop, the subject given me to talk upon
was "orcharding,'' and each time when introduced a con-
temptuous smile was easily detected throughout the audience.
Through my discourse at that time I endeavored to overcome
the mistaken idea that because that season was an off year,
with its over-abundant apple crop, was no reason why in years
to come, the crop would not justify itself. It is only by look-
ing at a business like that of apple growing, for a period of
years, rather than a single one, that we get an idea as regards
fruit growing. I remember making the prediction at that time
that a period of low prices might result in a benefit to the
industry, for larger export trade was made that jeav than
ever before, and as well an undoubted increase in home con-
sumption. This tends to strengthen the demand for future
crops. It is needless for me to ask if these predictions have
come true. In 1898 we sold from our old trees at the college
alone five hundred dollars' worth of apples, and these trees
are far past their prime of life. The season of 1899 we secured
about an eighth of a crop, which brought good prices, and the
past season we sold a large crop of fine fruit.

I mention our own experience because it represents fairly
well the remainder of the state. Many instances have come
to my notice where in the jear of over-production, a few peo-
ple in various sections cut down their apple-trees on account
of their great discouragement. Is it necessary for me to repeat
the old saying, "Not all fools are dead yet"?

Apple growing is an industry full of the greatest of possibil-
ities, well worthy of more attention by the New England

54

farmer. What has been a greater blessing to western New
York than her great apple orchards? I was surprised when
for the first time I visited some of the farms about Rochester,
that state, and found farmers whose main livelihood came
from the apple orchard. Only recently when traveling West,
I perchance met a large apple bujTr and cold-storage man.
Among other things he said that although Missouri and Arkan-
sas can boast of their mammoth apple orchards, nevertheless
four counties in New York govern the trade of the world.

New Hampshire and Massachusetts are equally as well
adapted to the growing of the apple as New York, and not only
do I wonder why more apple orchards are not set, but as well,
how it happens that capitalists do not invade our state and
take away our so-called birthright. I have heard of agitations
in the latter direction only during the present year. While
I am enthusiastic in fruit growing, I should far rather see a
strong and healthy internal growth in our state, in which the
general New England home is the gainer, rather than a mo-
nopoly. When at Chester, N. H., a few years ago, I had
pointed out to me orchard after orchard, which were the re-
sults of the efforts of one man during the past generation.
His work has resulted in this section taking preeminence in
the state as an apple section. These trees are on the decline,
however, at present, and unless they are replaced with new
plantations it is but a matter of time when this industry has
passed here. To a person who has lived for the greater part
of his life in the West to come into New England and see
the neglect, especially of fruit trees, which offer so encour-
aging returns, it is hard to understand. After living here for
the past four and one-half years, and having more or less of an
opportunity to visit the various sections, 1 have become more
and more convinced that right here in New England for gen-
eral horticulture, and especially apple growing, there are no
states in the Union that offer greater inducements. Had I
the time and means nothing would daunt me from starting an
apple orchard of my own; and were I a farmer, much less
would T hesitate enlarging my area in orchards. It is a fact
that apple-trees do not come into bearing immediately, and
simply setting the trees in the ground never to be looked after,
other than in an indifferent way, will not bring results. This
sort of negligence in fact never brings results in anything.
The old saying, "A laborer is worthy of his hire," is too true,
and a man usually gets pay in this world in so far as he has
backbone and energy to accomplish something. I often feel
after talking at a meeting of this kind that I am too enthu-
siastic, as I ever fear lest some person may glean only that

55

portion of my talk tliat will give him enough enthusiasm to
set out some fruit and then "cool olf," leaving the poor trees
to linger and die. It is the man who comprehends the whole
situation, from beginning to end, and who begins with sys-
tem and method, that succeeds. This is the kind of men we
want to enlist in our fruit raising in New England. I am
acquainted with a prominent actor who had amassed a large
fortune, and becoming infatuated with a certain inland water-
ing-place while touring there in summer, finally concluded to
purchase a farm facing the lake, and upon this to devote his
summer vacations. He sent for catalogues, far and near, and
resolved to make his farm a paradise. Seeds, fruits, and vines
of all description came pouring in by freight, express, and
mail, and all hands w^ere put at work, the actor among them,
to set them out.

It is needless for me to say the outcome could have been
easily foretold. It was not until some two or three years had
elapsed before the proprietor aw^oke to his realization of what
such a thing means. The farm has been sold, the actor no
more enjoys his former pleasure, at this particular place; and
furthermore, this instance has been a drawback in many re-
spects in that section. People say, what is the use of going
into fruit raising? and point this instance as an example. I
mention this to show that a person should comprehend and
understand his business, wiiether it be horticulture (fruit grow-
ing) or otherw'ise. We may have plenty of literature on the
subject also, and even then these mistakes like the one alluded
to can be made. Literature is of little account unless it is
read and digested. I was at a grange meeting, and talked upon
the strawberry; one of my attentive listeners asked several
questions, and finally asked wlw the experiment station didn't
print and send out such information. I answered that such
had been done in this very instance. Upon further investiga-
tion I found this person's name upon our mailing list, thus
demonstrating that this very information w^as already avail-
able in his own household.

Examples like this convince me that discussions at our
granges, institutes, and meetings of this sort are necessary.
Many listen who will not read.

As to other fruits than the apple in New England, while
perhaps they can not be recommended for so general a crop
for all farmers, nevertheless they should be given due consid-
eration, and have their place on our farms.

General horticulture upon the farm must generally be con-
sidered of second importance. In order to get any results there
must be a definiteness of purpose. What to grow will depend

56

upon a person's tastes and likings. One person will make a
success with one thing and another with another, but there
is something in all lines for the business person.

Horticulture and agriculture many times go together, and
the two make a success where either alone might fail. Each
person must necessarily study out his own best conditions.
Dairying and gardening go well together; where it is nec-
essary to peddle milk the same wagon will carry the vegeta-
bles to market. Other combinations can be made, as garden-
ing and pig raising, chickens and plums, and general farm-
ing with orcharding.

Horticulture on the farm has its place, and should not be
neglected. It pays for family use, if in no other wa}'. Horti-
culture on the farm pays for the education of the young. Hor-
ticulture on the farm pays, for it keeps the boy there. Horti-
culture on the farm pays, for it makes the pocket money.
Horticulture is education in plant life. For example, graft-
ing, pruning, budding, propagation, rotations, varieties, soils,
fertilizers, cultivation, etc. — these and many more can all be
studied. It is with these and many other advantages that a
much broader horizon is attained. Study possibilities, and aim
high. Horticulture demands time. Peter Henderson recom-
mends that seven men and three horses should be had to run
a market gardening industry of ten acres successfully; and
that when embarking in such an enterprise a capital of at least
three hundred dollars per acre is necessary. One thing that
ever needs emphasizing is, do not attempt too much.

It has not been thought advisable, nor is it possible to go
into other than a general discussion of the subject of "Hor-
ticulture and the New England Farm" in the short time al-
lotted to me. Such subjects as small fruit growing and vari-
ous vegetable crops, like that of celery, asparagus, and musk-
melons, not to say anything of general floriculture and in-
numerable other questions of horticultural interest, can not
be touched upon; they in themselves would each require much
time, and afford material worthy of much consideration.

In closing I simply desire to say that under proper husbandry,
and modern methods, I believe that we at present little realize
the possibilities of horticulture in its various branches as.
adapted to the conditions of the New England farmer.

* CONSTITUTION.

ARTICLE I.

Name.

This organization shall be called the "Massachusetts Fruit
Growers' Association."

ARTICLE II.

Object.

The object of this association shall be to encourage the culti-
vation of fruits adapted to this climate; to collect and dissemi-
nate reliable information on the best varieties of fruits, and
practical methods of cultivation, gathering, packing, storing
and preparation of fruit, for both home and foreign markets;
to investigate diseases, insects and other obstacles to success,
and the remedies best calculated to overcome them.

ARTICLE in.

Officers.

The oflflcers of this association shall be a President, Vice-
President, Secretary, Treasurer, an Auditor and a Board of
Directors consisting of twenty-four members, two from each
county, as far as practicable.

* With revisions to date.

58

ARTICLE IV.

Membeeship.

Each member shall pay an admission fee of one dollar, and
an annual assessment of one dollar, which shall be due at the
time of the annual meetinj^.

ARTICLE V.

Meetings.

Section 1. This association shall hold at least two regular
meetings each year. The annual meeting, for the election of
officers, shall be held in the city of Worcester, on the second
Wednesday of March at 2 o'clock P. M.

Sect. 2. In the election of officers and the transaction of
other business, twenty' members shall constitute a quorum; a
majority vote shall constitute an election. All officers shall
hold over until their successors are chosen.

ARTICLE A'l.

Special Meetings.

The President and Secretary shall have power to call special
meetings of the Association, or of the Directors; or upon the
written petition of fifteen members they shall issue such call.
The object of these meetings shall be stated in the call, which
shall be issued by mail to each member, at least seven days
prior to such meetings.

ARTICLE VIL

Amendments.

Any amendment to this constitution may be made by a vote
of two-thirds of the members present and voting; a notice of
the proposed change having been given at a previous regular
meetiner.

59

BV-LAWS.

Duty of the President.

1. TLe President shall preside at all meetings of the
Association and perform such duties as pertain to the office.
In his absence his duties shall devolve upon the Vice-President,
or, in his absence, upon the director for the county in which
the meeting may be held.

Duty of the Secretary.

2. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to attend all meet-
ings of the Association, and keep a record of its transactions;
conduct all correspondence; keei) a list of members of the
Association; collect the assessments and pay over the same to
the Treasurer; notify members of their election and members of
committees of their appointment.

Duty of the Treasurer.

3. The Treasurer shall have charge of all moneys belonging
to the Association; he shall keep a record of all receipts and
disbursements; he shall pay out money only on bills approved
by the President and Secretary'; he shall report in writing at
the annual meeting; he shall keep a list of members and their
places of residence, and at the close of his term of office turn
over all records and funds in his possession to his successor.

Duty of the Auditor.

4. The Auditor shall examine and report upon the books
and accounts of the Treasurer; he shall be entitled to demand
all books, papers and vouchers three days previous to the
annual meeting.

Duties of Directors.

5. The duties of the Directors shall be to bring the objects
and interests of the Association to the notice of the people of

60

their several counties; to urge their claims and endeavor to
increase the membership; they shall examine and report on
newly introduced varieties in their several localities, as to their ^ ^
quality and probable value for general cultivation.

Election of Officers.

6. The President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and
Auditor shall be elected by ballot, and the Board of Directors
by a majority vote of the members present; they shall hold
oflfice till their successors are duly elected; the first five officers
shall be ew-officio members of the Board of Directors.

Vacancies.

7. Vacancies in any office, caused by resignation, death, or
removal from the state, shall be filled by the Board of Directors
for the unexpired term of their office.

Discontinuance of Membership.

8. Any member who shall neglect, for a period of two years,
to pay his annual assessments, shall cease to retain his connec-
tion with the Association, and the Secretary shall have power
to erase his name from the list of members.

In Force.

9. These articles shall take eifect and be in force from their
adoption by a majority vote of the Association.

Amendments.

10. These By-Laws may be amended at any meeting of the
Association by a majority vote of the members present and
voting, notice of the change proposed having been made at a
previous meeting.

t

POMOLOGY LIBRARY

^

REPORT OF THE.

EIGHTH

ANNUAL
MEETING

Massachusetts
Fruit Growers*
Association....,

Organized

March 21,

1895.

^

1902.

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(ORGANIZED MARCH 21, 1S95. )

REPORT OF THE

Eighth Annual Meeting

HELD IN

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,

MARCH 12 and 13, 1902.

WORCESTER, MASS.

PRESS OF F. S. BLANCHARD & CO.

1902.

OFFICERS OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association,

1902.

A. G. SHARP, President,
JONATHAN EAMES, VICE-PRESIDENT,
C. A. WHITNEY, Secretary,
ETHAN BROOKS, TREASURER,
J. LEWIS ELLSWORTH, AUDITOR,

Richmond.

Sherborn.

Upton.

West Springfield.

Worcester.

Essex County.

Suffolk County.
Norfolk County.
Plymouth county.

Middlesex County.

HAMPSHIRE county.

HAMPDEN COUNTY.

BERKSHIRE COUNTY.

FRANKLIN COUNTY.
WORCESTER COUNTY

DIRECTORS.

E. A. Emerson, Haverhill ; J. J. H. Gregory, Mar-

blehead.
J. W- Stockwell, Boston.

A. F. Stevens, Wellesley; Monroe Morse, Medway.
Augustus Pratt, North Middleboro; Walton Hall,

Marshfield.
C. F. Hayward, Ashby ; M. P. Palmer, Groton ;

W. D. Hinds, Townsend ; C. S. Pratt, Read-
ing; Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln.
John W. Clark, North Hadley; S. T. Maynard,

Amherst.
Ethelbert Bliss, Wilbraham ; L. W. Rice, Wilbra-

ham.
George G. Walker, Williamstown ; R. H. Race,

North Egremont.
M. H. Vincent, Conway.
George Cruickshanks, Fitchburg ; O. B. Hadwen,

Worcester; C E. Parker, Holden ; James

Draper, Worcester ; John G. Avery, Spencer ;

E. A. Hersey, Westboro.

PROCEEDINGS

Massactiusetts Fruit Growers' Association,

1902.
Horticultural Hall, Worcester, Mass.

The eighth annual meeting was called to order on Wednes-
day morning, March 12th, at 10.25 o'clock, by the President,
H. O. Mead of Lunenburg, with a large attendance of members
and friends.

The secretary read the following report, which was ac-
cepted :

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

Mr. President and Fellow Members :

It is with a certain degree of pleasure that your secretary
reports a year of progress. As no satisfactory place was
found for the usua:l summer field meeting, none was held
the past year.

AUTUMN FIELD MEETING, WILBRAHAM, SEPT. 6, 1901.

At the farm of Mr. Ethelbert Bliss, known as "Mapleside,"
the members of the Association gathered on an almost
perfect autumn day. From both ends of the old Bay State
came enthusiastic fruit growers, from North Egremont and
Williamstown at the west and North Andover and Lynn on
the east. The majority of the party arrived at the North
Wilbraham station about ten o'clock, where barges in waiting

conveyed them to the farm, some four miles distant. Here
they dismounted in the inviting S'hade of magnificent maples,
and received a hearty welcome from Mr. Bliss. Ice-cold lem-
onade in abundance served to refres'h the visitors after the
long ride in the hot September sun. A s'hort time was spent
in exchanging greetings between members, neig*hbors and
invited guests. After a brief period of rest and refreshment,
the party began an inspection of the extensive peach orchards,
piloted by the genial proprietor. It was a revelation to many
that such trees and such fruit could be grown on the steep
•hillside amid the multitude of small, loose stone.

Quite a variety of peaches were in fruit, some sufficiently
ripe to be tested by the visitors.

Not a weed nor a spear of grass was to be seen in the
w'hole orchard of over 6000 trees, owing to^ the perfect system
O'f cultivation practiced. Wliile the crop had been severely
thinned, many trees were breaking down under their loads
of luscious fruit. The visitors were free with their questions,
and Mr. Bliss equally free and ready with his answers.

Across the road was found a large strawberry field as free
from weeds and grass as were the peach orchards.

The raspberry patch and fields of corn and cow peas came
under our inspection with pleasure.

The fine herd of Holstein cattle, ample learns and modern
silos were closely examined by some of the party. Returning
to the house we found a most attractive lunch spread on
tables, arranged beneath the shade of those grand maple trees
which give the farm its name.

After divine blessing was asked, the members proceeded to
satisfy the wants of the inner man, for which purpose an
abundance of good things was provided, and served without
delay.

When all were content. President Mead rapped for order,
and introduced as the first speaker the Rev. Dr. Newhall, prin-
cipal of Wesleyan Academy. He was followed by James
Draper of Worcester, Rev. M. S. Howard of Wilbraham, O.
B. Hadwen of Worcester, Hon. Wm. R. Sessions of Spring-
field, Prof. S. T. Maynard of Amherst, Ethan Brooks of West

Springfield, S. H. Reed of West Brookfield, A. F. Stevens of
Wellesley, H. R. Kinney of Worcester, A. D. Norcross of
M on son, and other s.

J. G. Avery of Spencer rendered a song as sung in Tunis,
which was novd as well as amusing.

It was an agreeable outing for all who attended, and it
seemed that everything had been done that could make the
occasion delig^htful.

When the time came for the party to take the barges for
the station again, three cheers for Mr. and Mrs. Bliss were
given with a hearty good will. The "tiger" was not omitted.

The ride to and from the farm along the tree-lined streets
of peaceful Wilbraiham, by the historic Wesleyan Academy,
was one of the treats we shall all remember. It was a day
well spent by all who attended, being a "well-balanced ration"
of pleasure and profit.

The members of this Association, with few exceptions, have
been prompt in the payment of their dues the past year, and
apparently a wave of progress has been started in the right
direction' to increase our membership.

To-day, we have more actual members in g"ood standing
than at any previous time since our organization. The books
show a total number of names, 292. Of these 165 are paid
up to date. Eight are paid one year in advance, and 29 are
one year in arrears. Of the remainder, 12 are two years behind
in the payment oi dues, 14 are deceased, 29 have withdrawn,
and the balance dropped for non-payments of dues.

Thirty-eig*ht new members have been added during the year.

The value of this organization depends upon twO' factors,
both equally essential to its existence : one is members, and
the other fun'ds. We have made a good beginning with the
first, as our members include representative men from nearly
all sections of the State.

Such men can aid us in securing new members and are do-
ing so. But we are handicapped by lack of funds. While
the present members are ready to bear each his s'hare of our
expense, yet it would appear to your secretary that the time

has come, and now is, when we should ask the Legislature of
Massachusetts to recognize our existence by granting a year-
ly appropriation for our use. Our sister states have long
favored their 'horticultural and pomological societies by such
grants of money, ranging from $1000 upward. Shall the good
old Bay State turn its back upon the men wlio furnish fruit
for her table? With such an ofhcial recognition, and thci in-
crease'd fund, it would be possible to hold two or more winter
meetings in different parts of the State, and thus reach fruit
growers in all sections. At present our membership is large-
ly local in character, and must continue to be so while our
principal meeting is 'held in one city from year to year. The
fruit growers in places remote from Worcester can not bear
the expense of time and money incident to attending our
annual meeting, yet they need our help, and would join our
Association and attend meetings held in their respective local-
ities. Your secretary would therefore recommend that a
committee be appointed to present the matter to the next
Legislature.

Respectfully submitted,

C. A. WHITNEY,

Secretary.

The treasurer made the following report, which was ac-
cepted :

TREASURER'S REPORT.

West Springfield, Mass., March 12, 1902.
Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

In account with ETHAN BROOKS, treasurer.

Cr.
1901.
March 13. Balance in treasury, $10 34

1902.
March 12. Received during year, annual dues, 201 00

Received for badges, 2 40

Received interest at savings bank, i 20

$214 94

Dr.

1902.

March 13. Stenographer at annual meeting, 1901, $10 00

Lecturers' expenses, annual meeting, 1901, 19 00

Printing annual report, 1901, 66 00

Stationery, postage and printing, 1901, 34 82

$129 82
Balance in treasury, 85 12

The auditor stated that he had examined the books of the
Association, showing a balance on hand of $85.12, and had
found the accoimts correct, and accompanied by proper vouch-
ers. Mr. O. B. Hadwen, president of the Worcester County
Horticultural Society, welcomed the Association to the city
and to their hall in the following words :

I am very glad, in behalf of the Worcester County Horti-
cultural Society, to extend to the Alassachusetts Fruit Grow-
ers' Association a most cordial and hearty welcome to this
Horticultural Hall.

This is your eighth annual meeting for the discussion and
promoting the interests pertaining to fruit culture in all its
branches which our climate favors.

The value of the fruit crop of the whole country can with
difficulty be accurately estimated, either as food for the many
millions of consumers, or in a money point of view, in which
it 'has reached many millions of dollars.

Thus, as years roll on, the whole subject will be constantly
increasing in interest ; Constantly changing, in accordance
with the demand for domestic and foreign supply.

A thorougih knowledge is becoming every season more fun-
damental, both in the art and science of fruit growing, and
each year some new conditions become manifest.

New insects appear, injurious to both fruits and foliage,
taxing the grower to new exertions to prevent their ravages ;
the use of new implements and insecticides to successfully
check their destructive forces.

Soils are losing their virgin qualities, which must be sup-
plied by artificial means, and man becomes a co-worker with
nature to maintain successful cultivation.

Your Society is especially oirganized, and by practice well
fitted to discuss ail questions essential to fruit growing.

8

Therefore, I welcome you to* the g-oodly city of Worcester,
where almost every industry thrives upon a patronage not
limited by state or national boundaries, and again I welcome
you to Horticultural Hall, the headquarters in this city of one
Oif the interests your Society has especially in encouraging.

Gentlemen, may the purpose, of your coming move you to
co'ntinued efiforts in encouraging one of the important indus-
tries of the Commonwealth. The hall and library are at your
service, and may your meetings prove successful and pleasant
to all the members of your Association.

President Mead then delivered his annual address. This
was practical and pointed. It was listened to with intense
interest by all, and contained muc'h go'od advice and a little
criticism. He reviewed the events of the year as they had
affected the fruit growers of the State, and sug-gested that the
Association ought to hold more meetings each year. Wliile
'he did not approve of the idea advanced by the secretary in
his report, of asking the Legislature for aid, he did believe the
State Board of Agriculture should furnish three or more speak-
ers for the meetings of the Association. He also said that he
tliought the reports published might be made more valuable
and offered suggestions as to their improvement. He invited
the Association to hold a meeting in Lunenburg, and promised
a free hall and free dinner to all whO' would attend.

Jo'hn G. Avery of Spencer, James Draper of Worcester and
Monroe Morse of Medway were appointed by the chair as a
Committee on Nominations to present a list of officers for
the year ensuing, and report at the afternoon session.

The first lecture of the forenoon was by F. A. Waugh of
the Vermont Experiment Station on the subject of "Problems
in Planting and Pruning." The lecture was illustrated with
a number of stereopticon slides, wbich were in fact an essen-
tial part of the address. The principal points brought out
were as follows :

Slides were exhibited s'howing the form and character of
the fruit buds and fruit spurs of the apple, pear, plum, cherry
and apricot. The speaker explained the growth of these
spurs and the formation and succession of the fruit buds upon
them.

He tlien went on to sliow how these fruit spurs succeeded
one another in the life of the tree. Usually they appear to-
ward the extremity of the branches, and after a certain num-
ber of years they decay and disappear. Near the base of a
limb no fruit spurs will be found. The interior of most fruit

9

trees is entirely unprocluctivc of fruit. The crop is grown on
the outside of the tree.

The problem of pruning- was thus shown to be primarily
a provision for the renewal of the fruit spurs, or for the growth
of new fruit spurs in place of the old ones which are lost.
The speaker asserted tliat there is no system of pruning known
and practiced in the United States at present which does prac-
tically provide for the continual renewal of the tree in this
way.

He went on to say that with the present practice of prun-
ing there is a constant waste of land. When the trees are
first set out, and during the early years of their bearing, there
is a considerable area between the rows w'hich bears no crop,
and w'hich brings no income to the land owner. In later years,
after the trees become too large, there is still an equal amount
of waste space. The only diiTerence is that now it has been
transferred to the interior of the trees. There are no apples
grown within a radius of ten o'r fifteen feet of the trunk. If
some system of pruning could be devised which would enable
the fruit grower to maintain bis tree, in a fruitful condition,
without increasing its diameter, then an orchard mig*ht be
planted in such a way as to avoid to some extent this waste
of space.

The speaker then passed to the subject of double planting
ip orchards. Inasmuch as no system of pruning is now known
which will meet the requirements pointed out above, many
fruit growers are inclined to s'ave the waste of the land by
planting temporary fruit trees between the permanent ones
when a new orc'hard is laid out. This double planting is
practiced only in apple orchards. Sometimes the fillers are
apple trees, and occasionally of the same varieties as the
permanent plantation. Sometimes the fillers are of other
species, especially peach, plum, cherry and pear. All of these
methods of interplanting h'ave been tried, co'mmercially, and,
although the majority of the results seem to be unfavorable,
the speaker argued that the favorable results which had been
secured in certain instances were proof that the plan is feasi-
ble.

Two objections have been urged against this method of
double planting. The first is that different kinds of fruit re-
quire different methods of culture. On this point the speaker
thought that fruit growers had not yet g-one far enough in
the refinement of their methods of culture so that these dif-
ferences could be considered important. The second objec-
tion is that the owner of a double-planted orchard will not

10

remove the fillers at the proper time, and that the permanent
trees are thereby damaged. The speaker characterized this
argument as absurd. He said that any fruit grower who lays
claim to even moderate common sense does not hesitate to
remove a branch fro'm 'his apple tree at pruning time if that
bi^ancli threatens to interfere with others. The fact that the
part of the tree which is removed might possibly bear ten
cents worth of apples in a year or two does not weigh with
him. The man w'ho' is managing an orchard for profit should
not hesitate any more about the removal of an entire tree
w^hewever his judgment tells him that it is time for the tree
to go. If a filler is bringing more damage than profit to the
orchard, and if the grower has any way of knowing when
that time arrives, he certainly oug^ht not to hesitate to pursue
the course which brings the greatest cash returns.

In conclusion the speaker said that nature and the circum-
stances of the case seem to outline very clearly the methods
which may be pursued in treating these problems. Nature
quite clearly suggests the proper methods of pruning, and the
circumstances under which apples are now cultivated sug-
gest the meth'od of double planting. It simply remains for
these matters to be worked out on a practical scale by pr'ac-
tical men. in the orchard. The speaker presented them as
problems to be solved by the fruit growers and not as conclu-
sions set forth for their direction.

The slides shown in connection with this lecture made it
clear to all that there was a prohJcin in pruning not yet solved
by many of the members.

Various questioins were asked by the audience, and readily
answered by the speaker.

Prof. H. E. Van Deman was then introduced, and spoke
briefly in reference to Professor Waugh's paper. He said
the crying evil of nearly all bearing orchards is too close plant-
ing. It is a common thing to see apple trees set out twenty to
twenty-five feet apart, but we must go further, say fifty, or
even sixty, feet, to get the best results. When we put them
twenty-five feet apart we do not notice any trouble until the
branches interlock, but long before this the roots are having
a fearful struggle for existence underneath the surface, striv-
ing to get at the moisture and fertility of the soil. Trees need
sunlight and air as much as house plants or persons. We

11

«

must see that our apple trees have plenty of lig'ht from all
sides ; then we will have the good foliage and good roots neces-
sary to produce good fruit. He said he sh'ould plant nothing
but apple trees in 'his apple orchard, using the early-bearing
varieties for fillers.

His experience led him to the conclusion that the peach tree
has no business in an apple orchard. It is a rank feeder, and
takes away much of the growth of the apple trees, so that
when the peach trees are removed you have a stunted apple
orchard. The plum, che'rry, or peach should not be planted
in the apple orchard, as they require different methods of
culture and spraying. Too many fruit growers are in the sees'
business or the forestry business raising apple seeds and
apple branches instead of good fruit.

J. H. Hale was introduced as the lecturer fo<r the afternoon,
and combatted the ideas of Waugh and Van Deman in regard
to close planting. He said we should prune our apple trees
as thoroug'hly and closely as our grape vines, which we place
six or eight feet apart. He had no use for great big trees
such as Van Deman wanted, preferring low, shapely, close-
headed trees. Plant them near together, not over thirty-two
feet, and often he had put them nearer than that; then prune
severely. "A short life and a merry one" for his trees was
what he desired.

In answer to a question as tO' wlien to prune. Professor Van
Deman said, midsummer, o'r some time in June or July, for
this latitude.

Mr. D. L. Fiske of Grafton said he planted peach trees
among liis apple trees in the same orchard, and had good
results. If he were to put out another apple orchard, he should
certainly use peadh trees for fillers.

Adjourned to 2 p.m.

Afternoon Session.

President ]vlead in the chair.

Jolm G. Avery of Spencer, chairman of the Committee on
Nominations, reported for that committee the list of officers

12

as printed on pag^e 2 of this report. It was voted that Mr.
Walter M. Bliss of Wilbralham cast one ballot for the entire
list as reported. This was done, and they were declared
elected.

President Mead then yielded the chair to A. G. Sharp of
Richmond, the newly-elected president, who accepted the
office with a few words of thanks. He then introduced the
speaker of the afternoon, J. H. H'ale of Soiith Glastonbury,
Conn., who spoke as follows :

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :

I was just coining into the hali, and, sitting here in the
darkness, I heard part of the address of my friend, and I have
been quite interested in the illustrations he has shown and
the discussion that followed; and, while I can not agree with
him in everything he has said, yet he has given some very
good hints as to the training and care of trees.

I agree with him that you must give to trees the same
careful attention that you would give to plants and vines, if
you expect great results.

Now, take the strawberry: in the whole discussion of this
question it 'has been local. Strawberries are a good deal alike,
however, everywhere ; the strawberry fodiage in this latitude
is more or less susceptible to rust; and don't think you are
going to successfully raise strawberries unless you have got
plenty of good, healthy foliage. You have got to have plenty
of strong, 'healthy foliage on every plant in order to get any-
thing from it, as Mr. Van Deman said.

I wouldn't any more think of attempting to grow straw-
berries for profit without spraying them than I would on com-
mon land without fertilizing them.

Question : What do you consider is the best time for spray-
ing 'strawberries?

Mr. Hale : I have sprayed them at all times — from the time
they begin to gro-w in the spring — from the time they begin
to sprout — to full bloom. I think, however, it is better to
begin e'arly so as to get the spray on all the old foliage be-
fore the new comes up. I think, as a matter of precaution, it
is better to begin spraying early in the spring on the young
plants — begin with the new foliage — before it becomes old.

N'Qw, w'hen your secretary asked me to come before your
Association and talk upon some phases of fruit culture, it
occurred to me that all of that especial ground had been gone

13

over again and again ; time and time again, things that we
come the closest in contact with and usually know the most
about have been discussed from almost every point ; but, hav-
ing some slides covering the various work done on my own
fruit farm, it seemed, perhaps, as if, should I bring along these
pictures and not give any particular lecture, but touch upon
the various p'hases of fruit culture in New England as I have
found it, it mig*ht bring out some points to interest you and
give you some facts to think about and some to question me
about.

'(S'hows picture on the screen.)

This simply s'hows a little push-cart, w'hich was the first im-
plement of transportation on our New England farm.

Before we 'had horses on the place, brother and myself used
a little 'hand-cart, which cost a dollar, as a means of transpor-
tation.

(S'hows another picture.)

Here is- a general view taken just below my home on Main
Street. You can just see a little of the electric car line. We
call them "trolleys" in Connecticut ; you call them "electrics"
in Massachusetts — they go just the same in every place.

This picture will give you an idea of the country throug'h
there. From this point here, you can look back to a hill 700
feet above the Connecticut River ; and 3^ou can look for miles
and miles up and down the Connecticut valley.

When that hill came into my possession, it was the only
thing I had ever bought in my life ; I went up one Sunday to
look at it and found this brook here that ran away over there
throug'h a lot of stones. There are a few apple trees on this
pa'rt.

(Mr. Hale exhibited many pictures and described them to
the audience, interspersing the descriptions with funny anec-
d'otes.)

These are old stubs and weeds — I leave that in there be-
cause I want you to see them.

Voice: Is that wild carrot?

Yes. "Lord, bless the weeds." Next to the San Jose scale
they are the greatest blessing a farmer has. Weeds stimulate
culture. Many and many a farmer would never till a crop
in the world except it w^as tO' get rid of the weeds ; in fact,
most of the tillage is done to get rid of weeds, and not to
make crops ; therefore, always pray for weeds, and more weeds,
and then, more weeds.

We have gone over the top of the hill (shows another pic-
ture) where I told you it ran into the stones. Here are the

14

stones, ain'd 'here is the foundation of my orchard. Here is
the land as it was w'hen I completed the purchase, and this is
the stone wall that was built up years a^o. We pulled out
the stumps and the stones and the sticks, and we are now
taking out the stones ; but we have got a vigorous peach
orchard there. The land is pretty thoroughly broken up, but
it was a pretty hard proposition — that land wasn't worth $3
per acre, but it cost me two or three times its price to clear it.

(Shows another picture.)

Here is another view in the same orchard. It is a cold day,
and they are driving up there. This shows where they are
taking out the stone. I suppose we took out an average of 200
tons per acre — several hundred tons per acre'.

Here is an acre or two piled up with stones that aJstonis'hed
this professor (indicates on the picture), my assistant, who
said he never saw such a pile of rocks in his life. Well, New
England is a hard country to work in ; you have got to get
the rocks — get them more ways than one.

(Another picture.)

That is the same old professor. There is another dump.
That is a dump of stones covering about two acres — dumped
in there. That pile of stone cost me nearly $3000; I will sell
it for $25 — only take it as it is.

There is a peach orchard of about thirty acres — it was an
abandoned farm, and was offered me six or seven years ago,
but I told the owner I wouldn't take it as a gift. I bought
it two or three years later at $25 an acre, and 'have spent three
times as mudh in clearing off the stones and stumps as I
paid for the land. Twenty-five acres are planted with apples,
thirty feet apart, and in between with peaches. The first
crop of peaches, which I got at the end of the third year,
p'retty nearly paid for the output ; now I have got the rest of
it for fun.

This is a picture of a two-year-old peac'h tree. I show you
this because this was taken right in midsummer. We have usu-
ally (in years past) left our pruning until the trees were in the
winter and early spring; but of late years we have gone
in and taken the old shoots out — and taken this and this and
five or six of the older s'hoots out about on a line of that
point, leaving all the lowest branches ; I find it strengthens
the fruit buds on these shoots down below. In the spring of
the year — this month (March) and early April — we go in and
prune out the branches, giving us greater fruitfulness.

We are aiming now to get bearing peach and plum trees so
low a man will stand on the ground and pick it over, and

15

do the pruning and all the work that is necessary in handling
an orchard successfully.

Here is an orchard in the ear^Iy part of the second summer.
There are something like 3000 trees.

I don't like to 'have strawberries or any other small fruit
planted between trees. This is an orchard of interest to me,
and will be to you because i was short of trees in my own
nursery and was obliged to buy three thousand trees. I am
pleased to know that other humans make mistakes as well
9:s I. Wlien the trees got to growing in the early summer, I
found two or three varieties other than the one I bought.
The next spring I sawed the top of the trees off to let them
throw out new sprouts, and they budded all over. This was
the following summer. In two years I made strong, vigorous
heads. This is the same orchard later on in the season.

This is at an elevation of less than 100 feet. At this eleva-
tion I got peac'hes about three years in five ; at twenty-five
feet above that, I got them four years in five; at one hundred
feet above, I was getting them about three in four.

This picture shows a vigorous old peach tree without any
pruning. I get peaches there of two kinds. They are fairly
sweet, but not anything as compared with some other varie-
ties.

This s'hows some of the expense of gathering the fruit. The
weiglit of the fruit bends the tree down so that the men can
pick. It is an abomination to have a tree that way. It is
very fine fruit, but it is difficult to do the picking.

Here is another orchard. A whole line of orchards further
back on the hill ; that was an old cow pasture — abandoned
pasture land. These trees were in charge of another party
while I was building up a larger orchard. These trees are
14 by 14 feet apart, and they grow up — up — I don't know how
high. It cost four times as much to take fruit from these
trees, simply because they were not kept where they ought
to be. In a portion of this orchard we pulled out the trees,
and are going to let them grow after Van Deman's plan. We
have got some of the others in better sliape than before. I
went in there last winter and cut the tip off the top of every
tree in that row — every other tree — and left every other tree
to bear fruit. That picture has a good deal of interest to
me. Tliese trees I headed oiie and one lialf tO' two feet. Last
spring, in March, we 'had a full load of healtliy buds on them.
It scared the very life out of the neighbors to think I was
so wicked as to destroy the crop — when I went in to saw
them off like that.

16

Voice : Suppose the tree is covered with the San Jose scale.
What is the way to treat it?

Mr. Hale : Cut and burn the branches affected ; you can
spray or fumigate, if necessary. Then cover the cut en'ds wit'li
a thick coating of white paint. Talk about s'hellac for a cover-
ing there is nothing equal to good white paint.

Voice : What is the diameter of those stubs? A. I suppose
thev would average two and one half inches.

There is the same tree the first week in September.

(Mr. Hale exhibited many more pictures, and explained
them.)

In this latitude, if you cultivate an orchard thoroug^hly and
well through April, May, June and July, you may seed down
from the middle of July to the first of August. You wouldn't
want to seed an orchard before the middle of July, unless it
was a very wet season.

Voice: What should the seed be?

Mr. Hale : In this latitude, crimson clover.

Voice: What is the cost of a peadh carrier?

Mr'. Hale : A cheap, light crate that will 'hold six 4-quart
baskets, equivalent to a basket and a half? The Jersey peach
basket can be boug'^ht in any quantity from three and one half
cents to five and one half cents, to carry the same amount
of fruit. The larger carriers, in Massachusetts, in carload lots
will cost you about sixteen cents in the market. It might
cost one cent apiece to put them up. If you buy in small
lots it might cost about eighteen cents apiece. The best
s'hould cost seventeen cents here in Massachusetts.

In reply to a question as to what was the best fertilizer
for fruit trees, Mr. Hale said, "A horse and a harrow." We
constantly hear that the farm lands of New England have
been run out, are worn out, etc., but that is aill nonsense.
The soil is full of fertility, but needs constant tilling and culti-
vating to make it available for the trees. We have gone
crazy on buying fertilizers, and I have been the biggest fool
of all. If your orchard does not bear, then cultivate it ; and
if you have cultivated it, then do so some more.

If you must buy commercial fertilizers, those rich in potasli
are Vhe best.

In packing fruit Mr. Hale said he found women did the best
work, as they would pack honestly, while a man somehow
would let the smaller, inferior fruit get down to the bottom
.of the basket.

One view showed a trolley train of his peaches on its way
to market, and he urged the farmers to secure from the Leg-

17

islature permission to use electric roads for the transporta-
tion of their fruit. Electric freig'ht cars would make market-
ing easier and dheaper, and the only objectors are the steam
railways. Mr. Hale then s'howed many views taken on his
Georgia fruit plantation, and described the methods in use
there, keeping his audience in good humor by his jokes on the
professors, and liis inimitable way of expressing them. At
the close of his talk Mr. James Draper asked him about the
use of the lime, sulphur and salt spray for San Jose scale. Mr.
Hale then read a letter from Mr. C. E. Hathaway, who re-
ported good results from its use. For his own part Mr. Hale
said 'he did not believe the San Jose scale would drive any
careful orchardist out of the business. The entomologists
have made a great scare about the scale, but if a man takes
ordinary precautions it can be liandled. He considered it a
blessing, as it compelled fruit growers to take care of their
trees or lose them, and trees that owners will not care for
should be destroyed so the industrious may prosper. He
considered crude petroleum the best material for spraying for
the scale. It is effective, and properly used does not injure
the foliage. For the curculio he uses a jarring arrangement,
consisting of a rubber-headed battering-ram and canvas trays
set under the trees to catch the insects. These are then col-
lected and destroyed.

Mr. W. D. Hinds then reported for a committee on fruit
packages, explaining two new forms of a bus'hel box, divided
into four compartments, much after the style of candy boxes,
and gave the prices for the same.

Adjourned to ten o'clock, Thursday morning.

SECOND DAY.

The morning session opened at 10-15 o'clock with President
Sharp in the chair. The amendment proposed at the last
meeting by Mr. Geo. Cruickshanks of Fitchburg was taken up
and discussed. Many were of the opinion that such action
would not be a benefit to the organization, and when the ques-
tion came to a vote it was almost unanimously defeated. Vari-
ous ways of increasing the membership, and helping on the
work of the Society, were discussed, till finally the matter of
asking for a State appropriation was brought up by the secre-
tary. Capt. M. P. Palmer of Groton spoke in favor of the
suggestion.

Prof. H. E. Van Deman said he was surprised to 'learn that
no help was given such an organization by the State of Mas-
sachusetts, and amazed to find that the secretary served with-
out pay. In some of the western states the secretary of such
societies receives $1500 a year, and he did not know of any
state having such a large and active Association where no
aid was given by the Legislature. He thought it just as
important to foster the horticultural societies as those dis-
tinctly agricultural. He warned the fruit growers not to get
entangled with the Board of Agriculture.

After considerable discussion, Mr. A. F. Stevens made a
motion that a committee of three be appointed by the Presi-
dent to present the matter to the next session of the Legis-
lature, and ask for such an appropriation as they deemed ex-
pedient. Mr. John G. Avery of Spencer offered an amend-
ment that the committee consist of five. The amendment was
accepted by Mr. Stevens, and the motion was then carried
with but few dissenters. Later, President Sharp announced
as that commitee, A. F. Stevens of Wellesley, J. W. Stockwell
of Boston, Warren C. Jewett of Worcester, J. Lewis Ells-
worth of Worcester, John G. Avery of Spencer. The matter
of San Jose scale was then taken up.

REPORTS ON THE SAN JOSE SCALE.

The Chair: Ladies and Gentlemen —

The subject of the San Jo'se scale is now before you. Re-
ports are requested from all infested districts, as widely as we
can gather them. We shall be pleased to hear fro'm any of
the members who may have anything to say on this subject.

Mr. Morse of Medway : Mr. President, I have found the
scale existing in the town of Franklin in a limited area. It
was in a man's garden. He does not know where he got it as
he says he has purchased no stock for at least fifteen years.
He did not know that his neighbors had any, but it was there,
and so bad that several of his large pear trees were entirely
ruined, and had to be cut down this year, but he knows one
of his neig'hbors has a tree with scales on it. He re-
ceived, several years ago from outside of the State, some
seedlings, and these trees were the ones that had the
scales on them. The scales got on them and de-

19

stroyed them. When he saw the scales he didn't rec-
ognize it ; but last year he began to think it was tlie scale, and
at last he got me to go over there and' investigate, and I found
his trees were as bad as those up here in Worcester that I
saw last year. His trees were pretty badly off. Some were
ready to die, and others were already dead. Some ol his
peach trees were dead from'the scale. I didn't know that it
existed anywhere but on the fruit tree ; but Mr. A. W. Oheever
said recently that he had found the scale on currant bushes
in liis garden.

I will add another remark in regard to this scale in Frank-
lin. There is a type of pear tree — good-sized pear trees —
there were several trees that had been bearing for a number
of years, as far as I could see, had no scale on them. This
same person also had some apple trees, I think — I wouldn't
say for certain just what kind they were — but I think they
were Baldwins that were not touched at all, while the Fall
Pippin and one other variety were badly affected.

It seems to me that some varieties oi fruit are much more
readily atacked by the scale than some others — judging from
wliat limited observation I had there. I mention this because
there are some others here who have had much wider expe-
rience than I have had who can tell more about it.

Professor Maynard of Amherst : I see Professor Fernald of
Amherst is here. I would like to ask him to tell us where we
can find this scale, and in how many localities it is to be found,
and anything else he knows about it.

THE SAN JOSE SCALE.

Professor H. T. Fernald of Amherst.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen :

I came here to learn, not to speak this m'orning, and I know
I s'hall carry away with me much of profit, much information ;
much that I can use in my work hereafter.

Perhaps I cannot do any better than to give you a brief
statement of the facts relative to the scale in Massachusetts
as I have found it during my three years' service as State
nursery inspector.

In so far as I can gain any information of the scale, it comes
to me in two ways : one, in the form of inspection work
I do ; the other, in the form of materials sent to the Hatch Ex-
periment Station for identification.

We get many scales there in the course of a year. During

20

the past year I 'have received from different places in this
State nearly loo samples of what prove to be the San Jose
scale. Of course many towns were duplicated, but I have now
a list of some sixty places in this State where the scale is found.
I can safely expect there are at least sixty more that I don't
know of, w'here the scale exists. The man who gets the scale in-
troduced in his orchard or his farm is now likely to find it
out very soon, because we are getting stirred up on this
question, but as has been said here this morning, it has here-
tofore been very often the case that a tree will die before the
owner knows what the matter is; frequently, even then, he
does not discover what the trouble is, but simply gives it up
and lets it go and gets no results. There are many cases when
w'here the scale has a start it will go from orchard to orchard
until it is quite generally distributed over large districts before
its discovery.

Now, if any of you will take the trouble to go out on the
railroad from Boston to Forest Hills Station, get ofT there and
follow along the general line of the Arnold Arboretum to be-
yond Roslindale Station, you will find the scale is practically
everywhere. In one portion of this district, in a ten minutes'
search I found fourteen trees infested with that scale.

I submit that the problem we have to deal with is a problem
that we must find some means of solving. It is no longer a
nursery problem ; it is no longer an orchard problem ; it is a
State problem. It is distributed on all kinds of plants except
evergreens. It is true that destructive abundance is very
scarce except among fruit stocks ; 'however, they are there and
you will find the scale practically on everything except ever-
greens. Most plants will live though infested, except our
fruit trees and a few others ; but every infested plant stands
as a menace to all fruit stock at least, in the neighborhood, and
usually to many other shrubs and trees as well.

The distribution of the scale in Massachusetts is now such
that we expect it will appear almost anywhere. Along the
coast district from the Rhode Island line, starting in from
Attleboro and Fall River and running along a strip through to
Cape Ann, the blackened spots marked on my map strikingly
show where it is distributed more widely than in any other
portion of the State. Now, swing around to Worcester, out
through Dracut, Leominster and Fitchburg, and you will find
that the map looks pretty black with spots showing the loca-
tions which I have put upon it. You will find it in the western
part of the State, through the Connecticut Valley, where it has
apparently spread up from the south — how far north in the

21

Connecticut Valley it 'has spread, I am not now able to say,
but it is certainly further than Amherst — and apparently up
the Westfield River in that direction. I have no data from the
Housiatonic district, but there is every reason to think it is
there. The farmers throug'hout that district have all been
getting- infested stock from the nurseries — inoculation centers,
— and it has spread in all directions.

The scale is a serious question. I met it more than ten
years ago and have struggled with it ever since, with only
partial success. Coming to Massachusetts I find the same
experience that I iiad in Pennsylvania. Entomologists and
scientists have studied the subject and the result of their ex-
perience is t'hat I can give you no hope of extermination in
t'his State. It has. gone too far already.

The annual meeting of the nursery inspectors of the United
States, held last November at Washington, had representatives
from sixteen out of the twenty-four States which have nursery
inspectors, and letters from a majority of the others, and the
unanimous testimony at that time was that in spite of all at-
tempts by law to reduce and restrict the distribution of this
pest, in those states, even where these laws have been in op-
eration the longest, the scale is nevertheless more widespread
than ever. W'hat else can be expected of an insect which mul-
tiplies with such unprecedented rapidity and which is so small
that the most careful eyesight will at times overlook its pres-
ence?

Fruit-growers in Massachusetts, ot any other of the United
States, have learned that their trees can produce millions of
these pests before they will be discovered. They unknowingly
get this scale into their orchards and it may exist there for
years, spreading and multiplying without their having
knowledge of it before it has become abundant enough to do
serious damage, only being revealed when the fruit-yield in
some year is so much less than in the last that the fruit-
grower's attention is called to it.

Now, I am no pessimist ; I would like to speak cheering
words as to the prospects before us, but I must confess that
after ten years' study of this subject, I am led to believe that
if we expect in the future to raise fruit, we must be prepared
to meet and beat the San Jose scale as we meet and beat our
other insect foes to orchard trees. We must know the scale ;
we must fight it; we must pay not only our taxes to the state
and town, but we must pay our tax to nature itself, for the
right to raise our frUit ; but "forewarned is forearmed," and by
taking this thing in time we can at least reduce the amount of

22

the tax which we must pay and thereby save ourselves both
trouble and much expense thereafter.

I thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity you have
given me to speak upon this subject and I would like to say,
in closing', that the work of the Experiment Station of x\mheirst
needs no explanation to this audience, but I would like to
add that if at any time there is any doubt in your minds as
to the identity of an insect and what to do for it, send the
specimen to the station with your questions, and the matter
will at once be attended to. We are always ready to answer
questions and give advice relative to that kind of case —
whether it be scale or other insect, — and if, by my speaking
in this way, I may in the future be able to assist some of you
in determining what an insect is, send it tQ me and I will do
my best to determine it, and what to do for it.

A member : I'd like to inquire, Have you ever been in
southern Berkshire to inspect anything?

Prof. Fernald : No, sir.

A member: What do you think of spraying for the scale?
It is very little spraying I have ever done for anything. I
never spray any of my fruit trees except the Pearmain. I was
looking at those the other day and thought I saw something
alive, and made up my mind I was going to head it off. It is
a pretty small thing to find with the naked eye.

Another member : We would like to have the Professor
come to southern Berkshire and look after this matter. I don't
know what the San Jose scale is, and I'd like to know what it
is.

Prof. Fernald : I am obliged, by the duties and require-
ments of law under whic'h I work, to go only on the demand
of nurserymen to inspect their stock in order that they may be
able to send their stock into states which require a certificate.
We have at the college no fees whatever for any such out-
side inspection except in particular cases, and in those cases
the nurserymen pay the bills for such work.

I would say that there is now a bill before the Legislature
which may shape this matter — a bill drawn in the interest
of the State. I can say that, because I was partly responsible
for the bill myself; and I had the fruit-growers in mind w'hen
I drew it. The hearing was yesterday.

A member : I would like to know if the gentleman would give
me some simple, quick remedy for the scale.

Prof. Fernald : I would that I could. I will, if I can ever
discover a remedy that can be applied for the cure of this
scale, with entire success.

23

Air. Morse of Aledway : I'd like to inquire if this certificate
of inspection is guarantee enough so that a person could rely
upon it. The insect is so small that it seems to me a simple
investigation by eyesight would be almost impossible. It
seems to me I should rather prefer fumigation at least in addi-
tion to the inspection.

Prof. Fernald : Personally, I believe inspection is not an
absolute guarantee. We are all fallible — we all make mistakes,
and inspectors are no more infallible than other people ; but
there is a difference in inspectors. Some inspectors are more
reliable than others. Some of the men are appointed in some
states to such places through politics rather than for their
scientific knowledge. We must all recognize such facts. What
does a certificate mean? It means that the man, who is sup-
posed by the aippointing authority to be a good man for that
sort of thing — as good as is obtainable — ^has carefully exam-
ined the nursery, with his reputation at stake — as he has got to
sign his name at the bottom of the certificate^ — and that man
over his signature declares that to the best of his knowledge
and belief there is no scale present on that stock. It is, in a
measure, a declaration that may. but usually does not, afifect
the reputation of the inspector. I think a careful inspector
will realize that if lie certifies stock which is scaly his repu-
tation is going to fail. But we miust also remember that a
nurseryman ma}^ receive a certificate, and then go down to
Rhode Island, and buy up stock w'hic'h has not been certified,
sell it under his own name, and put that certificate onto it.
I don't know of any arrangement that is possible to prevent
that, except by requiring certificates, upon everything that
comes into the State, which is what the present bill provides
for.

If it were a choice between fumigation and inspection I'd
prefer fumigation every time. It is much easier for an in-
spector to fumigate — he doesn't have to work so hard. It is
a great deal 'harder for an inspector to get down on his knees
at the foot of a tree and work up over every inch of it, examine
every inch and spot with a pocket lens. It takes but a few
minutes for your head to ache, your knees to ache, and your
back, your neck and your eyes give notice o'f the strain that
is being imposed upon them, after about eight hours on your
knees in the mud — sometimes up above your knees in the
wet. I think the inspectors universally favor fumigation.

Yet, I have seen fumigation that failed, too. The fumiga-
tion was honestly, carefully performed, yet it failed. There-
fore I can say as my answer to the question after this

24

explanatory statement that, thoug'h I consider inspection a
pretty good safeguard and fumigation a little better safeguard,
they may neither prove absolute ones.

I haven't answered the other gentleman's cjuestion. There
is no sure and easy road to fortune nor to the treatment of
the San Jose scale.

I had my say on that point — stating what our present knowl-
edge of and treatment for the San Jose scale is — in the crop
report of this State for last May, together with figures of the
three commonest scales in our Massachusetts orchards — the
San Jose scale, the oyster shell scale, and tlie scurfy scale.
Directions for the treatment, and the dififerent kinds of treat-
ment, are there given in full and I prefer not to attempt to
report tliem by word of mouth here, because it is better to be
able to turn right back and see, step by step, in each case, what
is to be done. It is in the Massachusetts Crop Report for May,
1901.

President Sharp : This speaker, judging from what we have
heard, has covered the ground very thoroughly, and has given
us an opinion which is complete and very valuable ; but we
shall have to stop this discussion right here.

Henry E. Rich of Worcester: Mr. President, the Chair-
man of the committee appointed by the Worcester Horticul-
tural Society which appropriated $100 for use in looking
up the San Jose scale is not here and he wishes me to make a
short report — I will make it very brief.

You all know that the Worcester Horticultural Society
appropriated $100 for the use of the committee. As a result
of their investigations they learned that the worst cases of San
Jose scale in this city was on the Abbott estate. Mr. Abbott
died, leaving a widow who was unable to look after such
things. The large trees which were the worst afifected on the
estate on May Street, we- cut down and burned the wood.
When the ground gets dry enough it will be raked over and the
whole surface will be burned over.

We found the scale in other places in Worcester and the
owners are now treating them. It ruined many large fine
trees and those had to be cut down and burned. Among the
younger trees we have found a great many that can be saved
to good advantage and with little expense. I would say here

25

that in our investigations in this section, we have investigated
thousands of trees that perhaps w^ere infested from trees that
were set out eig'ht or ten years ago on the Sprague estate.
When we find old trees badly infested we recommend that they
be cut down and burned. My opinion is that the San Jose
scale in Massachusetts can be stamped out if taken hold of
immediately.

President Sharp : This is all the time we can spare now for
this discussion. I take pleasure in presenting to you Professor
H. E. Van Deman of Washington, D. C, the man who organ-
ized the Division of Pomology of the Department of Agricul-
ture, who will now speak to you on

THE INCREASE AND MAINTENANCE OF FERTILITY IN
FRUIT LANDS.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :

The fertility problem is, in short, the topic which has been
given me for a talk this morning. Some one may say, "Well,
now, that's an old story. What we want to hear about is
something new. Why should we hear about that again?"

This reminds me of a story I heard about a parson who
preached a very acceptable sermon — one which seemed to be
received with a great deal of pleasure and profit by the con-
gregation. The next Sunday he preached it again^preached
from the same text and practically the same sermon. That
was a surprise to the people and, in fact, it displeased them,
but the next Sunday he preached it again — the same text and
the same sermon over. Then he was waited upon by a com-
mittee. They wanted to know why he should continue preach-
ing that sermon, and what he meant by it. "Well," he said,
"I am waiting for you to put it into practice, — and when you
do that, I will take a new text and give you a new sermon."

Now, it may seem rather commonplace and perhaps improper
to discuss this everlasting question again and again and again ;
but, good friends, let us wait until we have put it thoroughly
into practice before we cease to hear about it. It is a fact
that a great many of us who have become gray-headed on our
farms are only beginning to get an understanding of the real
bottom facts about fertility. We have been manuring with
farm manures made upon the farm and we have been buying
fertilizers, at a great expense in many cases, and applying

26

them to the soil ; but as Mr. Hale said yesterday, we want
first to be sure that we need to buy commercial fertilizers ;
be sure that we have done our full duty by the fertility that
nature 'has planted in the soil. Now, wherein consists that
fertility? And that really, I think, is the leading question of
all.

Per'haps we generally understand that the soil is made up
largely of two things : rock-meal or rock-flour, and humus ;
tliat is, the stones on the surface of the earth have been ground
into small particles for the one, and the other is decayed veg-
etation, or, as scientists would say, decayed organic matter,
w'hich is made from leaves and branches which fall from the
trees, and the roots that are in the ground and some animal
matter that finally reaches the soil. We know that in the world
of nature there are three great divisions : mineral, vegetable, and
animal. The mineral kingdom constitutes the real true earthy
matter, the part whic'h was originally on the surface of the
earth, or the earth itself ; the second is all that grows out of the
earth — the vegetable kingdom ; the third, the animal kingdom,
consists of the animals that walk and fly, and creep over the
surface of the earth.

Now, the soil, as I have said, is made out of a combination
of these three kingdoms, and it is rich in plant food. It has
been estimated by those who have carefully and scientifically
examined the soils in a great many of our States, and among
others in the State of Massachusetts — although I do not know-
to what extent in this State experiments have been conduct-
ed, but I do know that in some of the neighboring States
they have been conducted very thoroughly; and the same that
holds good for them would be good for Massachusetts, — that
there is, in the first eight inches or foot of soil, more potash
and phosphoric acid than we can ever get out.

Mr. Rice, one of the best fruit-growers in the State of
New York, had been applying potash to his land — buying
muriate and sulphate, and various other forms of potash as
well, and applying it to his fruits. He got very poor results,
so he took up three samples of the soil — after scraping ofif
the top — about a cubic foot in each case, mixed these together
thoT'oughly and then sent a sample of this mixture to the State
Experiment Station to have it analyzed. He found that the
first foot of soil on every acre of his land, as far as these
samples indicated, contained over 55,000 pounds of potash and
almost as much phosphoric acid.

He was simply going it blind ; he was not making use of
the fertility that was in the soil, or, unfortunately for him,

27

you may say, and I t'hink there is no doubt, strictly speaking,
that this fertility was largely in an unavailahle condition, — it
was locked up in chemical combinations that were not easily
made use of by the plants ; they could not lay hold upon the
fertility that was there, all scattered through the soil in won-
derful abundance. What it lacked was something else. Now,
what that something else is, is what we want to understand.

Aside from w'hat is in the soil, we have in the air an in-
exhaustible source of fertility. Perhaps we do not all fully
understand, or at least appreciate the fact, that four-fifths of
the bulk of the air is free nitrogen, not in chemical combination
with other elements, but a mixture in the air — that is, the other
gases are mixed with it ; and while this nitrogen is around and
about every tree and plant and permeates everywhere that
air can go, yet the plants cannot lay hold upon it, yet nitrogen
they must have.

It is just as we may say of the thirsty sailor that has been
shipwrecked, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to
drink." And it is just so with the plant; the nitrogen is in an
unavailable condition, except for a few plants that are able to
take it from the air — and those are the clovers, the pea, bean,
and all that class of which we call leguminous or pod-bearing
plants ; even some trees have the ability to thus take nitrogen
from the air, with the aid of "what Professor Roberts of Cor-
nell University calls "our invisible friends" — little bacteria
or bacilli that live upon the roots of plants and have the very
mysterious ability to cause a deposit of nitrogen from the
air on the roots of the plants. We can see it in nodules on the
clover, cow-pea, peanut, the common pea, and many other
plants of this general class. I have seen these nitrogenous
nodules, which are largely composed of nitrogen and water,
on the cow-pea fully an inch in diameter ; and on clover plants
I have seen thousands of them on the roots of a single plant,
but no bigger than a common bird-shot and some still smaller
than that.

We ought to fully understand that we have within our reach,
within certain reasonable limits, an inexhaustible supply of fer-
tility in both the soil and the air, and before we begin to make
use of artificial fertilizers, let us make use of the natural
sources of fertility.

And what shall we do to make these unavailable fertilizers
available? In the first place, by tillage — cultivation, in other
words, is the thing we want to give our most careful atten-
tion. We have perhaps heard it said that "tillage is fertility" —
and so it is. The simple stirring up of the soil has the effect

28

ot bringing together particles that were never brought together
before, and leads to certain chemical changes \n the soil that
aid, in a measure, to unlock some of this fertility. It has
been found by careful experiment at Rothamstead, Eng'land,
where w^heat 'has been grown for over fifty years upon one
piece of land continuously, that in an ordinary season they can
raise a crop of about twelve bushels of wheat per acre — that
is, twelve bushels of wheat is about the measure of the fer-
tility that is unlocked and taken up by a crop of wheat in one
year. If we can get twelve bushels this year and twelve
bushels next year, why can't we get twenty-four bushels in
one year? Well, we can if we will take the right steps. We
can bring about such conditions that a good deal more than
the minimum amount of fertility will be unlocked in one year,
and this stirring up of the soil will help it.

But there is anotber very important factor that I want to
call your attention to, and that is the control of the soil
moisture. Now, the moisture in the soil is just as necessary
as the soil itself ; it does not matter how much fertility there
is in the soil nor how much there is that is available, if we do
not have water, because plants live by drinking ; they take
their food in liquid form ; they live on soup, we may say.
Plants do not live on dry matter at all ; they cannot take it
up in that way ■ — that is, the potash and piiosp'horic acid, and
nearly all the nitrogen must come througl'i by means of the
roots, and these fertilizers must be dissolved and taken up
by the water of the soil in order to be passed into the plants.
So we sometimes find it necessary to drain the soil when we
wish to get rid of the water, although water is what we want.
That is what we call "soil moisture" — or the moisture that
clings to little particles of soil — just as we can easily see if
we take a marble or a cube an inch square of hard stone, glass
or something else that is absolutely impervious to water, dip
it into water, and taken out it is covered all over the outside
with a little film of water. If we break it into two pieces, it
will have more surface than it had before and will take up more
water — that is, more water will cling to the sides ; and if we
break it into ten thousand pieces, it will take up that much
more water. That is what happened in nature by grinding
down some of the rocks which originally composed a part of
the body of the earth. Thus we liave fine particles, each
liaving a little covering of water with spaces between them.

Then we have humus ; that is, vegetable and animal matter,
which was taken into the soil to help absorb and hold the

29

moisture. Water cling-s to all these particles which compose
the soil.

A soil that is full of humus, that is, rich soil, looks dark. It
is full of humus, and that is what larg-ely makes the fertility.
If all the humus was completely washed out of the soil, and all
the iron and other stains that exist were washed away, it
would be as white as flint glass ; and that is what we see in
some parts of the country — for instance, in Florida, — where,
after it rains, it will make your eyes ache just as the snow
does when the sun shines upon it. The humus has all been
washed down or away, if it was ever tlrere. This humus is
a wonderful tiling in helping us to control the moisture of the
soil, and we need plenty of it.

But, as I said, we must get rid of extra water, the water
that fills the channels, or the interstices between the par-
ticles of sand and clay and humus. We must drain this ofif.
Drainage is, therefore, a very important thing. Fortunately,
nature has drained a good deal of our soil, especially where it
is gravelly or sandy — where the sub-soil is not so tight as to
be, as we say, impervious to water ; there we scarcely ever
have to drain unless in case of storms or floods. We want
to get rid of needless water and retain in the soil that which
we do need. That is w'hy I say that we must control the
moisture of the soil.

We also need air in the soil. The very circulation of the
air through the soil helps to keep it moist. That may seem
strange, but it keeps it moist on the same principle that the
circulation of air does when it comes in contact with a pitcher
of cold water in hot weather. We know that water congeals
against the side of the pitcher and finally makes
great drops that trickle down to the bottom. This
same thing goes on in some degree in the soil. If
the air can get through, it will help maintain the moisture
supply somewhat.

Then the fertility that we have in the soil, as I have said
before, we must have dissolved by the proper amount of
water, or else it cannot be taken up by the plants. Some
people may have an idea that they can water a plant from
its top. For instance, sprinkle a house plant and thus moisten
it. If you were to make an experiment by taking a pot with
a good healthy plant in it and let it evaporate until it begins
to dry and the leaves to wilt, then cover the whole pot and
soil with some rubber covering so that the water cannot get
in, and sprinkle the leaves, you could not cause them to
absorb any of the water. They do not drink water that way.

30

The office of the leaves is to exhale water instead of absorb-
ing it ; the same as in an animal, where the expiratory organs
are very largely in the skin. Leaves are filled with little
pores that pass out the water, but never absorb it.

It is estimated that an ordinary apple leaf has on its under
side about 400,000 pores, constantly breathing out the moisture
of the sap, and that very fact calls for more moisture to come
in at the roots, and that brings in fertility. It brings in plant
food and that same plant food is taken in and appropriated
by every part of the plant, from the end of the tiniest root
up to the remotest leaf on the furthest branc'h from the roots.
It is stored up, and the more circulation you can keep up the
more vigorously the plant will grow and the more and the
better the fruit will be.

This is really one of the fundamental principles of plant
nutrition that every one who cultivates fruits, flowers, farm
crops or anything of that sort s'hould thoroughly understand.

Perliaps we have heard the matter of the dust mulch talked
again and again, just as a sermon is preached over and over;
yet, we never get any too good morally, and we will never
get this principle any too well grounded in our minds, of the
great necessity of the dust mulch. It is what Professor Bailey
calls "watering with a rake." Sometimes, we call it watering
by horse power, this stirring of the top of the soil. In our
orchards and berry fields, in all our cultivated fields, what
takes place when it rains? The water goes into the ground,
trickles down through the little pores and channels and is
absorbed by the sub-soil. When it stops raining, and the
clouds blow away and when the sun shines out, the top of
the soil dries off and the moisture comes up. It is being
pumped out — pumped up by everything that is growing on the
earth and turned loose again into the air through the leaves
and then is turned back again onto the ground in the form of
rain. In the best tilled orchard the ground is apt to bake.
Wihat would we do in the former case — in case of the farm
crop — in order to keep this moisture from getting out? We
would scratch the top of the ground. We would cultivate it.
We would run cultivators and all that kind of tools to break
ofif the ends of the pores or channels that were pumping the
water out of the soil; and .so would we arrest this process
of evaporation — ^the unnecessary, improper evaporation from
the soil. If you have a crop of weeds, they help to pump the
moisture out of the soil and turn it loose into the air. If you
have grass in the orchard it is pumping it up, robbing the
soil of its water and fertility; because, if the soil is left in

31

proper condition, the trees will be in proper condition to lay
hold of the fertility. If you have robbers there and the fer-
tility is checked and the moisture wasted, the trees cannot
do their duty nor do as well as we should hope they would
do ; so we say that cultivation is one of the very essential
things.

I do not want you to understand me to say that there is
no such thing" as growing a profitable crop of apples without
tilling the soil — that is, that there are no profitable orchards
in grass. I think they exist, per'haps, in every county in this
State, but I think, on the Whole, they are not doing nearly as
well as if they were better treated. There may be cases w'here
they are coming up in full measure, but I think those cases are
very rare indeed. We have had instances mentioned ; but I
want to say this regarding one very notable case which has
been mentioned in the public press — I think that of Mr. G.
G. Hitchings of New York. His conditions are perhaps un-
like those of many who are here before us to-day. His is a
very exceptional case. I have never been on his farm, but have
talked with those w'ho have and they have told me his land
is of such a character that it does not dry up in the time that
average farm land will. I have been in some orchards that
were doing fairly well where a farm-crop was grown after the
orchard came to maturity ; but I believe that after an orchard
gets to bearing it ought to have the full benefit of the soil — it
ought to have all the room to absorb fertility that it needs.
We want to give the trees all the chance they need.

There is another case that I have in mind ; it is that of Mr.
J. S. Woodward, who is one of the good fruit-growers of
western New York. His land is similar to much that I know
of in Massachusetts. He lias a large bearing apple orchard in
grass, but not only is grass in the orchard, but he pastures the
grass with s'heep. Mr. Woodward's case is pointed to with
pride by a good many who believe in the grass theory. Just
about two weeks ago, Mr. Woodward and I talked before a
farmers' institute in western New York. He was then
telling of his method of treating this orchard. I had heard him
tell it before and had been in the orchard and seen it. He does
what there are perhaps not two persons in this room would
do. He puts on about ten times as many sheep as the land will
profitably pasture if there were no trees there ; and he puts
them on before the grass gets a start in the spring, so it does
not have a chance to grow vigorously. Then he feeds the
sheep. He gives them bran, corn, and everything good to eat,
and tries to see how much fertility he can run through the

32

sheep into the soil, instead of seeing how much nourishment
he can get out of the soil into the sheep.

I have never seen nor heard of one who will do what Mr.
Wo'odward has done successfully. Of course, he grows
splendid apples ; but the grass does not have a chance to get
up — it does not have a chance to rob the soil of its fertility ;
because he is seeing how much manure he can get into the soil
from the sheep.

A member: Would the sheep pay for their feed?

Mr. Van Deman : Yes. He has just about sheep enough
to con'sume the grass and yet not quite kill it all.

A member : About how many sheep would he have to the
acre ?

Mr. Van Deman : About ten, I think. He said that if the
grass got too high, he put on more sheep. In order to do
that sort of t'hing he must watch the grass and put on more
s'heep if there are not enough, so that the grass would not
have a cbance to grow. With such a course of treatment as
that, why should not the soil be fertile? But who will do
it? Who will do it? That's the question.

Now this matter of orchard treatment is a living question,
one that comes rig'ht home to every one who has an orchard.
What is the most sensible thing I can do with my orchard?
Whatever you do, don't starve your orchard. Till it if you
can. There may be rocky places so you can not till it. Then
beg, borrow or steal enough mulch to put on it and keep down
everything that grows. That is what nature does. You can
n'ot name a forest tree that is not mulched from the time it
starts until it dies.

We must have our orchard trees separated so they can have
plenty of room. As I was saying yesterday, let them have
room in the air as well as room for their roots in the soil. In
order to have a crop of fruit it is absolutely necessary to give
them space. If their shade does not keep down the weeds
and grass, we must keep them down with mulch. Put on
mulc'h right along, and for that there is nothing better than
barnyard manure. Now, I have heard people say "you must
not put barnyard manure in the orchards, it will hurt the
trees."

There is not one apple tree hurt out of 10,000. Put on all
you can. There is very little danger of hurting the trees if
it is properly applied. I do not mean to pile it around the
base of the trees two feet high. That is like tying a bag of
oats to a horse's legs, and is a great mistake. You should put
the plant food where the roots can get hold of it — that is, all

33

over the surface of the ground. There is not a bearing orchard
in the country that does not 'have roots spreading all over the
ground. It is with that just as it is w^ith the potato. Farmers
often place a handful of fertilizer about the potato, just where
they plant it. That, too, is a great mistake. The place for it
is all over the soil, where it will all reach the roots. There
is not a quarter of an inch of soil that the roots will not reach
if the potatoes are planted properly. And so it is with the
peach trees, plum trees, currant bushes, gooseberry bushes,
and even the little strawberry plants will permeate most of the
soil. They will fill the soil and take up the fertility if they get
a good chance. What I am pleading for is that every plant
have a good chance.

First and foremost and of all things till the soil well, so the
roots may be able to lay hold of the fertility that is already
in the soil, before we go to buying fertilizers.

Then comes another question : How are we going to get
the nitrogen out of the air so that our plants can lay hold of
it? That is an important point. We know that clover is a
good fertilizing crop. Any one knows that we can raise a good
crop of wheat or potatoes after a good crop of clover. We
very often find it a good thing to seed an orchard down to red
clover, let it stand a couple of 3^ears and plow it in again. Plow
it under and do not mow it ofif. If the orchard is bearing, mow
it and let it lie.

Mr. Wellhouse of Kansas is treating his apple orchards with
red clover. He runs over them with a special kind of machine
that cuts it to pieces and then lets it rot and make mulch. In
order to have trees grow properly there s'hould be enough
mulch for them. Perhaps they may be thoroughly cultivated
for a number of years and occasionally afterwards. I want
this one idea left in your minds, if I do not leave anything else,
and that is, to give the trees, the bushes and the vines a good
chance to grow and develop their fruit.

There are other good crops for adding fertility to fruit
lands beside the common red clover. Mr. Hale spoke of some
of them. He did not speak of the Canada pea — the common
field pea of the north — which is a good thing. In seeding
to this crop the first thing to do in the spring is to stir the
ground. Plow it shallow, three or four inches at the extreme,
and cultivate, cultivate, cultivate, and so thorouglily that
the moisture can not get ou.t, except it escapes through the
trees, and you want it to escape that way. The more it
escapes the better it will be for the trees, and the bigger
the fruit will be. You want to so treat the ground that the

34

moisture will be kept in as much as possible up to about
the first of August. Then sow a bushel of peas per acre.
They will gather nitrogen from the air, and die when cold
weather comes on. Let the vines lie upon the ground, and
in the spring you can work them in. I would not do it
before then. You will add humus and nitrogen to the soil.

Vetch is another good crop. There are dififerent kinds of
vetch, and one of the best is commonly known as "hairy,"
or winter, vetch. Near Vancouver, Was'h., where I v/as
about a year ago, I saw it growing luxuriantly. They told
me it grows as high as the backs of horses sometimes. That
is a wonderful crop to add fertility to the soil. Sow it at
the same time as for a field pea crop, or perhaps a little
earlier. Vfetch will grow in the cool weather of the fall, and
attain quite a little growth before winter sets in, and lie
there absorbing the nitrogen in the soil that otherwise might
escape, and taking the nitrogen from the air, storing it prin-
cipally in the roots. It is an excellent crop in orchards, if
plowed under early in the spring.

The cow pea is another plant that I want to speak of that
you are hearing about in the papers. There is a bulletin
issued by several of the state experiment stations on its
varieties and culture.

I lived in Virginia at one time for several years, and used
to grow several kinds of cow peas, both broadcast and in
drills, in open fields and in the orchards, and I am heartily
in favor of the cow pea as a fertilizing crop. It is a summer
plant, as Mr. Hale said yesterday. If any one has an idea
that what is known as the "cow pea" is a pea he is very
much mistaken. It is a bean — a very tender bean, too — and
you must never think of planting it until the ground is fully
warmed. About late corn planting time is right for the first
seeding. Usually it will come right up. It is the most de-
pendable grower of all the leguminous plants I ever tried.
It will sprout in a sand bank, or anywhere. It is adapted
to almost any condition of soil, loose or stiff; althoug*h it
likes dry, loose soil as much as any other plant, growing
much better there. They grow cow peas at Southern Pines,
in central North Carolina, in soil so poor that there is hardly a
trace of fertility in it, yet the cow pea will grow and it will
gradually add to the fertility. After a little crop is grown,
a better one can be grown, and then a still better one.

A member: How much seed would you plant to the acre?

Mr. Van Deman : It depends somewhat on how you put
them in. If you are going to sow broadcast, not less than a

35

bushel to the acre, and a bu&hel and a half is better. If you
are going to put them in with a drill, half a bushel is plenty,
and a little less will do very well. I have worked that out
to my satisfaction, and would rather have the drilled rows,
even though it may be a little more costly. Take any ordi-
nary bean drill, and use it just as if planting beans, and put
the rows about the same distance apart, or perhaps a little
closer, say about two and a half feet, and the seed four inches
in the row.

A member : Can they be put in with a common seed drill ?

Mr. Van Deman : Yes, they can be put in with a common
wheat drill by stopping part of the spouts.

A member : I suppose you mig^ht put in a little phosphate.

Mr. Van Deman : Yes ; it will make them grow much
better, but they will grow without it. I am trying to im-
press upon every one in this meeting the importance of mak-
ing use of all the natural fertility we have ; after that we will
resort to the artificial forms. I do not object to putting potash
on or even nitrogen to stimulate it to grow; but even with-
out all that effort, you can get the cow pea to grow in any
average soil in Massachusetts, Canada, Wisconsin or Mich-
igan. They are already growing it in New York State. I
know it has been tried in this State, also. The cow pea is
one of the things you want to look into. Don't make the
mistake of getting any very late variety; if you do, you may
grow it so late into the fall as to be frosted.

It is a very important point for us to understand that a
young plant of one of these nitrogen gatherers does not
gather nitrogen nearly as fast as the older plant. The nearer
it comes to maturity, until it begins to die, the faster it gath-
ers nitrogen. Get the early kinds, such as the W'hippooTwill
or the New Era; avoid the Wonderful, which is a very late
one. If you put it in here in May or the early part of June,
you will find that the Wonderful will make a wonderful crop
of vines, indeed. They will grow ten or twelve feet long in
loo days. I once had a single vine that covered a space six
or eight feet in diameter. Put the cow pea into the orchard,
after you have done your cultivation in the early part of
the season, and you will be astonished at the successful re-
sults. You will n'ot see it this year, but the next year. They
will grow wherever corn will grow. I make the statement
as broad as that. I do not say they will always come to
maturity, but the earlier varieties will if planted in proper
time.

A member: Will they grow in the shade of a cornfield?

36

Mr. Van Deman : They will not do as well in the shade
of a cornfield as in the open, but I have grown them there.

Some of the dairymen are putting the cow pea into their
fodder crops for silo, and t'hus balancing up the ration won-
derfully well.

The Little Black, the Whippoorwill or the New Era will
come to maturity if you put them in in June. If you wait
until July, they will just about make pods when the frost
comes.

Crimson clover is another good thing. I know that in some
places it does not do well ; and it was told here yesterday,
during Mr. Hale's talk, that it will die when winter comes
on. It is so in some cases. I will repeat the statement that
was made, that the average man is so greedy that he wants
the whole crop to grow until it blossoms and goes to seed,
and thinks that is soon enoug'h to plow it under. He is mak-
ing a great mistake. Till the orchard from the time you
start the corn in the spring until midsummer, at least, and
you will be astonished to find how the fruit will develop
along in August. If you 'haven't done your duty in the early
part of the season, the time has passed for doing it in July.

A member: What is your idea of putting in a wheat or oat
crop?

Mr. Van Deman : An oat crop is the next thing to a fire in
the orchard ; you expect to gather the crop, and then g-o in
and plow the ground ; you then think you have done your
duty. Now, that is about like feeding a person after he is
about starved to death. You want to feed him in time; and
it is so with the orchard — you don't want to starve the trees —
you want to start right in the spring.

There are two more crops useful for this purpose that I
wish to mention. There are some other crops that are not
nitrogen gatherers, but w'hich are sometimes beneficial in add-
ing humus to the soil. One of them is buckwheat. It is like
everything else, it takes water out of the soil and hurts the
trees some, but if you have done your duty earlier in the
season you can risk adding the buckwheat after the season
gets late, because of its peculiar ability to unlock some of the
fertility in the soil. And so it is with the turnip. It will
grow, and is a g'ood thing to unlocR latent fertility. It will
live on material in the soil that most other plants can not
utilize. I 'have seen rye, turnips and buckwheat used all at
once. They do not make a very good mixture, but the turnips
and rye will live after the buckwheat is done. If they are a
little late, they stay in the ground. They will help out the

37

humus in the soil, and help to unlock some of the fertility
there.

The soy bean is another nitrogenous plant that I forgot in
my haste to cover the subject. I have grown soy beans in
the orchard and in the field, and am very much pleased with
them. As you generally find that bean in the market, it is a
pretty late grower. It takes as much of the season as any
ordinary corn crop. It is a bean and not a pea. It is not
quite as tender as the cow pea, but you must not put it into
the soil until it is thoroughly warmed. The soy bean is an
excellent fertilizer. It gathers nitrogen and makes an excel-
lent crop, and it will, if planted promptly enough, in the early
part of June, give you a pretty fair crop. It is different from
the cow pea in two respects, particularly in the fact that the
pods all ripen at the same time ; while, in the cow pea, they
ripen along continuously, for a long time. The soy bean is
entirely different from that. It grows on an upright, stiff stalk,
and when the stalks are thoroughly ripe they are almost as
hard as hickory brush. You can grow it in the orchard with
profit, but it does not grow as well in the shade as the cow
pea, according to my experience, and this I have heard stated
by others. I 'have already mentioned rye and oats as plants
that are not nitrogen gatherers.

Mr. Morrill of Michigan, who you know is one of the first
peach growers in the country, has been growing oats in his
peach orchards for several years past. He sows about the first
of September, so that it would grow up in the cool of the fall
and be killed by the winter, and take up some of the nitrogen
that might otherwise escape, because I want you to under-
stand that nitrogen is always trying to get back into its orig-
inal home — the air.

There is a loss going on in any soil that is vacant, and we
ought to try to keep something growing all the time if we can.
Oats are good for this purpose, and so is rye. If you have a
good crop of rye, when the spring opens, plow it under. Don't
think of waiting till the season is fully advanced, but plow it
under early, because of sapping the ground.

There are other crops I might mention, but those are the
principal ones, and there are certainly enough of them to afford
us the opportunity of m'aking all sorts of experiments, and I
am sure if you work this line thoroughly, you will fall onto
some plan that will suit each one of your particular cases,
down to the raspberry and blackberry growers. You will
find you can add lots of humus and fertility to the soil.
If you have not the humus in the soil, you have poor

38

soil. You have only stone-meal and stone-flour, without the
humus.

The matter of artificial fertilizers is one thing- that we all
oug'ht to study carefully. We oug-ht to know that we have
done our full duty in laying hold of what nature has supplied
to us before we g-o to commercial fertilizers for assistance.

'If you have boug-ht commercial fertilizers wisely, then you
fruit growers have boug"ht more of potas'h and phosp'horic acid
than you have of nitrogen. Now, I don't wish to decry nitro-
gen. It is generally as essential a factor in a fertilizer as any-
thing else, but for a fruit grower it is not as important a thing
as phosphoric acid and potash, especially if we add some of
these humus-making plants to the soil. Potash is one O'f the
things, above all others, that a fruit grower should put into
his soil. Muriate or sulphate of potash are about equally good
for fruit growers. They are about half potash.

A member : Suppose there is plenty of potash in the soil. I
take it that where they apply lime to the soil it is merely as
a liberator.

iMr.Van Deman : Yes ; lime is a liberator of plant food already
in the soil. In the State of Rhode Island, where the conditions
of the soil are very similar to those of Massachusetts, there have
been a great many experiments with lime. There have been
a great many in Massachusetts, and in other states as well. But
I think that the Rhode Island Experiment Station has done
more with lime than an}^ other. It does enter into chemical
combination with certain other things in the soil, and so un-
locks some of the potash and phosphoric acid. The mere ad-
dition of one simple element sometimes makes all sorts of dif-
ference with a crop.

Perhaps I had better stop a moment to explain one point
that we may not all fully comprehend. There is a principle
that runs through all nature, that the animal or vegetable will
assimilate its food in certain definite relative proportions, one
to the other. The same plant must have so much potash and
so much phosphoric acid and so much iron and so much lime,
etc. An animal must have so much protein, etc.

A plant will take up food in certain definite proportions,
and if you happen to add phosphoric acid, it may be just
the thing that the plant wants. It may enable that plant not
only to take up more phosphoric acid but more potash, and
more nitrogen. That is, really, a very fine point — one that we
ought clearly to get into our minds — that plants need their
food in definite proportions.

The case of the plant is like the case of a man v^ho is going

39

to build a house and wants to plaster it. He goes to a plas-
terer and asks, "How much shall I get of the dififerent mate-
rials?" He says, "You need so much 'hair, so much lime, and so
much sand." You take his figures home with you and look
them over and consider the prices. You say, "Oh, 'hair costs
money; I'm going to skimp a little on that, and I'm not
going to use quite so much lime — that is a little costly. But
I have a good sand-bank on the farm, so I'm going to get two
or three extra loads of sand." When the plasterer comes he
asks you, "Did you get what I told you?" You answer, "No,
I didn't get quite all." He says, "What didn't you get?"
You reply, "I didn't get as much hair as you told me to."
"Get the lime?" Answering, "No, nor as much lime." "Well,"
he will say, "you didn't get hair nor lime enough to make the
mortar, so I will make just as much mortar as you have hair
and lime to make it with."

Now, the plant and the animal says, "I will assimilate just
in proportion to the least amount of any one of the elements
that is available."

If we can fix that one thought in our minds, we have one
of the keys that will help us to unlock the whole fertility prob-
lem. That, I think, is the most important thing I have learned
in several years past. We ouglit to know what will help us to
unlock those other elements which may be in our soils in
unavailable condition. It might be a lack of lime ; a great
many times it will help us to appropriate the fertility that is
otherwise lying unused.

It might pay, and it sometimes does, to add land plaster
to the soil; that has an effect of the same sort. But, instead
of buying land plaster, I should buy an acid phosphate article.
If you want to fertilize fruit lands through stable manure
which you are making on the farm, buy acid phosphate in-
stead of land plaster, because you pay only for phosphoric acid.

A member; Do you mean the acid phosphate or rock?

Mr. Van Deman ; Yes ; it is phosphate rock ground and
treated with sulphuric acid ; that grinds the particles still
finer. It is a very important thing to add to the stable ma-
nure, in the gutters behind the cows, in the horse stable, and
in the pig pens. It helps to keep down bad odors. They
come from the nitrogen going back into the air. If you can
arrest that by adding about a pound per animal per day in
the manure as an absorbent, you will have saved nearly all of
it. If you can keep down the smell and lock up the nitrogen
so it can not escape, you will have made sulphate of ammonia,
and it goes out on the farm in the best possible condition.

40

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston: You don't mean to say that
all the stench from manure is fertility?

Mr. Van Deman : Yes; that is just it. Land plaster will
do, but I prefer acid p'hosp'hate rock. Kainit is also excellent
for the same purpose. It adds potas'h. Now, friends, don't
get mixed on this phosphate-rock-bone business. These phos-
phate rocks are simply the bones of animals that lived mil-
lions of years ago, now stored up in great beds covered up
by soil. There are numerous beds in Florida, Tennessee and
Canada. The best we get now is from Florida. People sell-
ing bone will say, "Don't get phosphate rock. You don't
want that ; what you want is bone." You will get bone w'hen
you get phosphate rock. This is the very cheapest thing you
can buy in the way of fertilizer, if you are going to get any-
thing that carries phosphoric acid, and that is what you
need.

But, if you want nitrogen, get nitrate of soda. That is as
soluble as common salt or sugar in water. So you must put
it in the soil when the crop is ready to take it up. Put it on
just before they are ready to use it.

A member: What is phosphate rock, aside from phosphoric
acid? Is it lime, or what?

Mr. Van Deman : You pay for the phosphoric acid it con-
tains, and the rest — that is, about from 1400, 1500, or 1600
pounds per ton — is nothing but land plaster.

A member: That is sulphate of lime?

Mr. Van Deman : Yes. If we are buying land plaster, we
are putting out good money for it ; if we are buying phos-
phate rock, we are getting sulpliate of lime for nothing,
only the hauling. I hope every one who wants to
buy commercial fertilizers will think of that one point. They
should buy ph^osp'hate rock and scatter it in the stalls and
everywhere, and it will absorb the ammonia that is trying to
escape into the air, and eliminating all bad smells at the same
time.

A member: Does not it liberate it ?

Mr. Van Deman : No, sir ; it locks it up.

A member: What is the general price of phosphate rock?

Mr. Van Deman : About $1 per hundred, or $12 to $14 per
ton in carload lots.

There is one thing about lime that I haven't stated. If you
want to buy lime, you should see that you get fresh lime.
They now grind lime fresh from the kiln into fine f^our and
sell it in sacks. It costs more than the ordinary stone_lime,
which you have to slake on the farm, but it is in much better

41

condition for the liberation of the plant food. It makes a big
difference \Vhether it slakes in the air or in the soil.

A member: How about ashes?

Mr. Van Deman : There is nothing in the world better for
trees than good, hard-wood ashes, unleac'hed. But I should
not buy ashes of any one — I do not care how responsible they
were, or purported to be — unless I selected them myself or
sent some one I could trust. And I would not have them
shipped then without a firm, business, binding contract that I
was only to pay for what potash they contained.

Farm manure was never better than it is to-day. And the
nearer you can run it on from the animals to the land, the
better it is. I do not care particularly when it is applied, but
if I want to do the crop good for the next year, I would like to
have had the manure put on last fall. I feel that applying the
manure last fall do the next year's crop very much more
good than if I put it on next spring. It will rot and go irito
the soil. Experiments 'have been made to see how far barn-
yard manure will run down a steep hill-side in a field. Piles
of manure have been placed and stakes driven around it.
stakes that could not be pulled up easily, and it was found that
it had run down some five or six feet. Do not think that
because you put it on a steep hill-side it will get away. The
best time to apply it would be in the fall.

A member: If there is considerable potas'h contained in
clover is a question I'd like to ask.

Mr. Van Deman : Yes, cjuite an amount. But not as much
as there is in some other things, such as bran, oil-cake and.
grain fields.

The meeting was then dissolved by President Sharp after
announcement was made of the afternoon session of the Wor-
cester County Horticultural Society. The speakers for that
meeting were John W. Clark of North Hadley, on "The His-
tory of the Apple" ; S. T. Maynard of Amherst, on '-'Varieties
Best Adapted to Massachusetts"; W. H. Blodget of Worcester,
on "Storage and Marketing;" Mrs. Alice E. Whitaker of Bos-
ton, on "The Apple in Cooking." Many of the members re-
mained during the afternoon, and the papers read will be found
printed herewith.

HISTORY OF THE APPLE.

John W. Clark, North Hadley, Mass.

When the apple was first cultivated is, and probably always
will be, clouded in mystery. That it was known at a very early
date, and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of cultivated

42

fruits, is not questioned. Lyell, in his "Antiquity of Man,"
carries us back 5000 to 7000 years into the Age of Stone, and
says that "carbonized apples of small size are found in the mud
of that period."

We also have records of sliced apples, cut as if for drying,
being found beneath the ruins of the Lake Dwellers, where
they have lain with the implements and utensils of these ancient
people for centuries, and by their presence do their part in tell-
ing us of these strange people.

The home of Pyrus mains, the source from which our culti-
vated apple sprang, according to the best authorities, is
western Asia, and it is a fact worth remembering that west-
ern Asia, the cradle of mankind, is also the birthplace of our
apple, and has followed man in his wanderings into nearly
every country and clime, and, like him, has reached the highest
stage of development in the temperate zone. Of the fruits
known to man the apple has the widest range of adaptation,
being found cultivated in nearly the whole of Europe, north-
ern Africa, western Asia, China, Japan, North and South
America, and Australia.

The apple was known and cultivated by the ancient Romans.
Theophrastus, we are told, knew of two kinds; Cato, seven;
Pliny the elder, twenty-three, and says that some of the sorts
were so sour as- to turn the edge of a knife.

Loudon says, "The apple ; Whitaker conjectures to have

been brought into Britain by the first colonies of natives, and

by Haedni of Somersetshire, in particular"; Glastonbury was

called Avillania, or the apple orchard, before the arrival of the

■Romans.

Before the third century the apple had spread over the
whole island. The Romans, according to Tacitus, on their
arrival began to plant apples.

The Druids, Loudon tells us, paid particular reverence to the
apple. Northern mythology informs us that the giants used
to eat apples to keep them from growing old.

The introduction of the apple into the British North-
American colonies dates back to the earliest period of their
settlement. Seeds of apples were brought from England by
the order of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay
in 1629, and in 1632 Governor's Island, in Boston Harbor, was
granted to Governor Winthrop, on condition that he should
plant a vineyard or an orchard.

The first apple orchard planted in Rhode Island was at Study
Hill, near Pawtucket, in 1636. Connecticut had apples prior to
1645. In 1741 apples were exported from New England to the
West Indies in considerable quantities.

43

The apples of early New England were grown mostly from
seed, and were what is known as natural fruit, the larger pro-
portion of which being of little value except for the feeding of
stock and the making of cider, with occasionally a seedling of
superior quality. From among these Massachusetts has given
us the Baldwin, Roxbury Russet, Hubbardston Nonesuch,
Sutton Beauty, Porter, and Williams' Favorite; Connecticut
the Golden Sweet and Seek-no-further ; Rhode Island the Green-
ing, that bears its name, with Peck's Pleasant and Tolman's
Sweet. From New York come the Newtown Pippin, North-
ern Spy, Spitzenburg and Jonathan.

The Yellow Bellflower and Maiden's Blush we have from
New Jersey. Pennsylvania gives us the Fallawater, Smith's
Cider and York Imperial, Ohio the Rome Beauty, Kentucky
presents us with the Ben Davis, and from Minnesota comes the
Wealthy, the introduction of which has extended the profitable
cultivation of apples loo miles further to the north than they
could be grown before this variety was known. From the
origin of the varieties given it will be seen that as a rule a
variety of apples does best near the locality where it originated.
Taking Great Britain, Central Europe and America, the
Gravenstein is the most popular variety with the German,
Briton and Yankee, the Red Astrachan coming next and hav-
ing the most extended area of cultivation of any known variety
of apples.

Schoolcraft, in his report on the Iroquois, states that on the
first introduction of the apple into New York, these tribes were
captivated by its taste and lost no time to transplant it by
sowing seeds about their ancient castles.

The pioneer who first introduced apples into Ohio and
Indiana was Jonathan Chapman, more commonly known as
Johnnie Appleseed, who, in his wanderings on the frontier of
civilization, planted apple-seeds in places that he cleared in the
forests, from which the larger part of the trees of the first
orchards planted in this section came.

The real apple-growing region of this country, it was
claimed only a few years ago, was only about 600 miles from
north to south and 1500 from east to west; this fixed the west-
ern limit of profitable apple cultivation as middle Kansas.
Within the two last decades apple orchards have been made to
flourish where it was thought impossible to make them live,
and are now cultivated from Florida to Alaska. At Sitka they
blossom in June, but seldom perfect their fruit.

Colorado has within her borders 99,000 acres planted to apple
orchards.

Orchards are found in Utah, New Mexico, Idaho and Mon-

44

tana; the last-named boasts of orchards containing from 60,000
to 100,000 trees. Marcus Daly in his day owned one in that
State that contained 60,000 trees.

California and Oregon in 1890 each had over one and one
fourth millions of bearing apple-trees, whose fruit competes in
the markets of Europe with our eastern-grown apples.

According to the census of 1890 the United States had over
120,000,000 of bearing apple-trees, and since then has produced
in a single season over 69,000,000 barrels of apples, and shipped
to England 3,000,000 barrels.

In cold storage we carry each year from 6,000,000 to
10,000,000 barrels of apples. Ships especially fitted for carry-
ing apples weigh anchor from New York and Boston for
Europe, laden with this fruit.

The exporting of apples has grown with such rapidity it has
become one of our leading exports, and bids fair to rank as the
greatest fruit crop of the world.

"The fruitage of the apple-tree,
Winds, and our flag of stripes and stars
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view.
And ask in what fair groves they grew ;
And sojourners beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood's careless day,
And long, long hours of summer play
In the shade of the apple-tree."

VARIETIES BEST SUITED TO MASSACHUSETTS.

Prof, S. T. Maynard.

I would preface my remarks on this topic by saying that
there are so many varieties of apples now grown that are of
much value, being of large size, good color and quality, when
well grown, in soils especially adapted to their needs, or in sea-
sons favorable to their best development, that it will be impos-
sible for me to give a list that will be the best for all under all
circumstances. I propose to divide the more valuable varieties
into my first choice, second choice and third choice.

First choice: Astrachan, Williams', Gravenstein, Wealthy,

i Baldwin, Hubbardston, Rhode Island Greening and Sutton

I Beauty.

I Second choice: Early Harvest, Fall Pippin, Haas (Fall
Queen), Oldenburg, Fameuse, Lady Mcintosh, Roxbury Rus-
set, Wagner, Washington Royal and York Imperial.

Third choice: Sweet Bough, Congress, Twenty Ounce,
Maiden's Blush, Vandervere, Lady's Sweet, Jacobs' Sweet,
Jonathan and Danvers' Sweet.

45

Last choice: Ben Davis, Gano, Black Ben Davis, etc.

New varieties worthy of trial: Stayman's Winesap, Pewaukee
and Wolf River.

The Astrachan is one of the best-selling varieties, owing to
its bright red color; is good for cooking and quite popular.

The Williams' is better for a table apple, but rather difficult to
harvest in its best condition, as it needs to be left on the tree
until fully ripe to gain its best color and flavor. They some-
times sell as high as $4 per barrel. The tree is a rather
scraggly grower, and should be pruned often.

The Gravenstein succeeds well in some sections, doing best
in light but rich soil. In heavy land it is a slow grower, and
the fruit does not keep well. For all purposes it is one of the
best, being excellent in size and quality.

The Wealthy is a western apple, and does not bruise as
readily as some other kinds. It is a handsome fruit, and good
for market, as it sells quickly.

Of the old stand-by, Baldwin, I hardly know what to say. I
have seen but few good Baldwins in the last two years; nearly
all had the brown spots under the skin, and were almost worth-
less. Unless we can grow better fruit I would hardly advise
planting all Baldwins, as some now do. Doubtless the Baldwin
will produce the best tree and the most fruit of any variety,
yet it is often poor in quality.

The Hubbardston Nonesuch is very productive, a good,
hardy tree, and the fruit sells readily for table use, though it is
not so good for cooking.

Rhode Island Greening will yield a moderate crop of apples
every year, if well fertilized, and in the market is a rival of the
Baldwin, gaining in popularity each year.

The Sutton, or Sutton Beauty, as it is frequently called, is
one of the best-growing trees in the nursery and young
orchards that we have. It is a hardy, vigorous grower, and
the fruit is of fine appearance, resembling the Baldwin.

For second choice, the Early Harvest is profitable under
some conditions, but in other localities it is a failure, on account
of the curculio. If properly protected it can be grown in good
shape. It is a solid apple, of beautiful color.

The Fall Pippin has a reputation in some markets, and is a
vigorous grower, but only fairly productive. It is excellent for
cooking, as it retains its form in baking. It has a pleasant
flavor, somewhat like a quince.

The Yellow Transparent is an early apple, ripening at the
time of Early Harvest, but difficult to market in the best
condition.

The Fall Queen, a new variety here, is very productive, and

46

fair in quality. It is a good cooking apple, but not first-class
for table.

Oldenburg is a good cooking apple, and sells well when care-
fully grown. Like the Gravenstein it is sometimes affected a
great deal by the black rot.

Fameuse, or Snow Apple, would be one of our best apples if
we could only grow it successfully. It succumbs readily to our
insect pests, and requires a cold season to do well. On high
ground, with plenty of potash and phosphoric acid in the soil,
it may be profitable here.

The Macintosh is equal to the Wealthy in many respects,
but is an uncertain bearer, and is affected by scab and curculio
so much as to require constant protection from them.

Roxbury Russet does best on strong, rich soil, well culti-
vated. It is sometimes quite profitable, though not always.

The Palmer Greening, or Washington Royal, is one of the
best in quality, but the tree is of weak growth. A large yellow
apple, it sells well and is a good variety to handle.

The York Imperial is one of the most promising new varie-
ties we have. It is productive, of good color, and will keep
almost as well as the Ben Davis.

The Lady Apple sells for a good price when grown on high
land here in Massachusetts, as it then attains a handsome
color. But it is merely a decorative apple for the table.

My third choice would include some sweet apples, which, as
a rule, are not profitable in large quantities. We should grow
them in a limited amount, as they will not keep as well as the
others I have mentioned. Sweet Bough is perhaps the best.
Of fine shape and appearance, not highly colored, but with a
bright, shining skin, it sells well for cooking and for table use.

Orange Sweet comes a little later, and is hardly as good.

Congress is one of the best for both eating and cooking.

Twenty Ounce is an extra large apple, fairly productive, and
has proved profitable in the Connecticut Valley.

Maiden's Blush is a good cooking apple, and always sells
readily, though rather acid for table use.

Vandervere, or New York Spitzenburg, is a brilliant apple of
very fine quality.

The Jonathan succeeds well in Massachusetts, and would do
better if we gave it better treatment.

The Jacob's Sweet is the largest andbest sweet apple we have.
It is a fine, creamy cooking apple, which appears to develop
sugar in baking.

The Lady's Sweet loses much of its saccharine character in
cooking, though it is one of the most beautiful red sweet
apples.

47

The Danvers' Sweet is a long keeper, but not of the best
quality.

My last choice would be the Ben Davis, a variety that will
yield more fruit with less labor than any other apple. While
it can be grown more cheaply than any other kind, yet I think
it has been a direct injury to the apple-growing industry. It
is a big, red apple of fine appearance, and sells well when first
put into the market. As its flavor is not good, it ruins the
sale of other apples similar in appearance but better in quality.

STORAGE AND MARKETING OF APPLES.

W. H. Blodget, Worcester.

If you want to raise apples for commercial purposes, you
should not try to grow the Red Astrachan. They will not keep
till they get to market, and no dealer will handle them. It is
about the worst variety you can grow for distant trade. I
would recommend Duchess as far preferable.

Apples should be packed as soon as picked, and, if sound
when put in, will shrink very little. Only the best quality
should be put in refrigeration. The process has been perfected
so that Ben Davis has been kept a year with gy per cent, sound,
while Gano showed 95 per cent, perfect after a year in storage.
By this process you can sell your fruit at any time after har-
vesting, up to the next May or June. In order to keep well,
the temperature should be about ^;^ degrees, and when shipped
cars should be iced at least twelve hours before the fruit is put
in. If this is not done the heat of the fruit will melt so much
of the ice that the produce will arrive in very bad shape.

If the market for you Massachusetts fruit men was a thou-
sand miles away instead of fifteen, it would be much better for
you. Now it is so near that you think any old box or barrel
will answer for a package. I have seen carloads of peaches
come into New York market, after a week on the road, in bet-
ter shape than those from Delaware which were picked from
the trees the previous day. The grower in the distant country
packs his fruit better and sorts it more carefully. In Colorado
and California, as well as other western States, apples are put
up in bushel boxes, five tiers of apples to the box. We do not
grow fruit good enough to put in boxes, so barrels have to
answer. The Massachusetts fruit growers seem to know the
least about the proper way to pack apples of any set of farmers
in this country. About the only way is to buy their apples in
a heap on the ground and put them up yourself.

It would be for their own benefit to learn how to put up their
own fruit. As it is now, the apples we buy here in Massachu-

48

setts are put up in the worst shape of those from any section
where we buy fruit. For that reason we prefer to do the pack-
ing ourselves.

Some growers prefer to sell at the time the fruit is gathered,
while others wait for higher prices. If carefully packed and
put in cold storage they may be held for four or five months
with but little loss, and at a cost of 30 to 50 cents per barrel
for the season. Fruit put up in good shape will always sell.
The Greening apple is apt to " scald " in the refrigerator, and
does not keep late. Baldwins keep much better and sell higher.
Of all the kinds I have handled the Ben Davis keeps the best
and makes the most money for the dealer. I have here two
boxes of Ben Davis, grown in the Ozark region, where this
variety reaches its highest state of perfection. They are good,
fair apples, and a sample of what can be done by cold storage.
While the Ben Davis, as grown out there in Arkansas, is of
very fair quality, it would not be desirable for Massachusetts,
as it is not suited to our climate.

The amount of apples in cold storage on Jan. i, 1901, was
2,019,300 barrels; on Jan. i, 1902, was 1,557,275 barrels and
at the time of our latest report, March 2, 1902, it was 718,835
barrels.

APPLES IN COOKERY.

Alice E. Whitaker, Boston.

Apples in cookery are like snakes in Ireland, so far as the
average city or suburban household is concerned. There are
Boston families, for instance, who live generously, but do not
have an apple in any form upon their tables from one week's
end to the other.

Several reasons exist for this condition.

When apples are seventy-five cents or a dollar a peck, as
they have been this winter in many places, there is a strong
temptation to substitute some other fruit. Housekeepers,
unfortunately, get into ruts in their cookery, and do not
readily make an effort to step out of them. If the impression
once prevails that apples are an expensive luxury, they are cut
from the family menu, and it is an accepted matter to get
along without them even in a year of plenty.

The reputation for expense has been merited this winter by
the high price alluded to, by the peck, and by the " three for
ten cents" cards on the fruit stands. New York markets are
as high as our own. In late December a well-known teacher
of cookery in that city, in summing up the cost of an
apple salad, allowed twenty-five cents for six King apples.

49

This indeed places the apple among luxuries, and fosters the
idea that it is not a fruit for the economical cook's considera-
tion.

One reason for the popular indifference to the apple by
cooks is the lack of acquaintance with the different varieties.
My own ignorance is greater than I like to admit, but how can
any one learn as apples are now sold? We see all other fruits
labeled; but on the fruit stands an apple is an apple; it has
no specific name, and to the peddler and to the order clerk all
red apples are Baldwins, and all green ones Greenings.

A woman will know the variations between the different
Mediterranean, Florida, and California oranges; she will know
that one kind is slightly bitter and is good for marmalade,
that another is sweet and juicy for the fruit course at break-
fast, and that still another is pleasantly acid and highly
flavored for making jellies and desserts. But quite likely this
same woman will know absolutely nothing of the characteristics
of New England apples.

Another great reason for the absence of apples on many
tables is the fact that most of our domestics come from
foreign countries, and many are not familiar with the apple.
They soon have control of the kitchen, and in many homes it
is a much-to-be-regretted fact that what these housekeepers
learn at their first place of employment fixes the limitations of
the family cooking in all subsequent situations.

The old-time New England housewife, with nothing better
than natural fruit, would contrive to get the apple onto the
table more times in a year than one of these cooks who can
have the crisp, juicy, highly flavored apple of to-day. But the
latter knows nothing of light apple dumplings, rich red baked
apple sauce, of pandowdies, apple snow, or other tempting
desserts.

She may possibly make an apple-pie by taking a quarter-
inch paring and chopping out the cores wastefully — and
Madam, looking over the household stores and accounts,
decides that apples last no time, and that she will not buy
any more at present. The "present" lengthens somehow
into a whole season.

The popularity of the apple sometimes suffers because a
second quality is used. So-called "pie-apples " are no more
satisfactory than case eggs or renovated butter.

Still another drawback to the more extensive use of apples
in cookery is the lack of cold storerooms for keeping them.
The price of any food increases somewhat in the ratio of
decrease in amount bought. In a city flat a half-peck is the
largest quantity that is likely to be bought at one time.

50

Families living in detached houses rarely buy over a peck. A
barrel of apples put into the warm basement of one of these
steam or furnace heated houses goes about half to waste, so
that it is a loss to buy in the larger package.

I tried wrapping sound apples separately in newspaper and
storing them in a large, airy attic, where the temperature is
always just above the freezing point; but while they kept bet-
ter than in the cellar, there was not sufficient return for the
trouble. However, the apples had been in the cellar two or
three weeks, and the experiment might not be conclusive.
When we buy a dozen oranges, at least one fifth, and in some
varieties more, is waste — but we never count this. The neces-
sary waste from sound apples is scarce a tenth.

The next generation of cooks will be ignorant of how to cook
the apple unless more attention is paid to it by the writers of
cook-books, the demonstration lecturers on cookery, or those
who make the fashions in eating. No apple consumers' league
can overcome a neglect from this quarter. Modern recipes and
cook-books give twenty orange, lemon, banana or prune des-
serts to one for the use of apples.

The average cook needs to be taught the different treatment
of sour and sweet apples, although for general, all-around use
in cooking a sub-acid apple is the best choice where one cannot
have several kinds. The sweet apple requires longer and
slower cooking; it has more fibre or cellulose and keeps its
form better than the acid fruit after cooking, resembling in
this respect the quince. For this reason sweet apples are often
used in quince preserve and jams "to make it go further," as
the economical woman says. It dilutes the strong flavor of
the quince without materially changing the consistency or
appearance of the sauce.

Hard sweet apples should be cooked slowly a long time, but
mellow, sour or mild apples should be dropped into the boiling
syrup and taken up on a wire spoon as soon as tender. The
syrup may then be boiled to a thicker consistency.

Baked apples may be dried, shriveled and tasteless, or the
reverse. To have them at their best, pare and core without
cutting; butter an earthen dish and sprinkle with sugar.
Place the apples in it close together and sprinkle them lightly
with sugar. Most apples will be better if covered the first ten
or fifteen minutes; this keeps the juice from evaporating.
Baked apples are better for being basted with the syrup which
forms in the dish. Bake sweet apples cored, pared or not, as
preferred, and covered with a syrup made from brown sugar
or molasses and water. Cover the dish, and cook a long time.
A bean-pot is excellent for baking apples.

51

Late in the season apples are sometimes almost entirely lack-
ing in flavor. In this case a few raisins or the grated peel and
the juice of a lemon give a distinct taste; but whenever fruit
has flavor of its own it should not be smothered in sugar or
overcome by flavoring extracts. Our delicacy of taste needs
cultivating, not blunting by strong flavors made from
chemicals.

Dried-apple pies and sauce have been ridiculed even in dog-
gerel, but the cook — not the fruit — should be the subject of
flippancy. Dried apple or other dried fruit should be rinsed
quickly in cold water and then soaked in cold water enough to
a little more than cover, for several hours. It will then have
absorbed the moisture which it lost in drying. It should be
cooked in the water in which it was soaked, because some of its
juices have become dissolved and would be wasted if poured off,
leaving the fruit tasteless. Cooked without stirring, it will
closely resemble fresh apple.

The acid of apples is needed and relished with fat meats like
roast pork or roast goose. Our fore-mothers served fried apples
with their fried salt pork, and it was a good combination.

As the apple has considerable pectose and gum in its compo-
sition, even the amateur succeeds in making jelly from it.
Waste apples will furnish a half dozen glasses at a time, with
a little work, and give a pure article for the table in preference
to the turnips and glucose of commercial jellies.

In fact, the apple is a most adaptable fruit in cookery. Its
possible uses extend from salad to dessert; it comes on with
the cereal at breakfast and with the roast at dinner. In the
sick room the invalid is refreshed with apple tea, and in early
convalescence is allowed a baked apple.

Any skilled cook who understands principles and combina-
tions can evolve a long succession of desserts from apples,
because they combine well with the starch of rice, tapioca,
corn flour, and similar preparations, also with eggs, milk or
cream, and with batters and doughs from flour and all kinds of
meal. The possibilities with gelatine in fancy moulds and gar-
nishes are also large. Probably the worst way to cook apples is
enclosed in a dough, tied in a bag and boiled, or in a pie with
a sodden undercrust.

The pie that comes to the modern dinner-table is a different
affair from those that grandmother used to make or the pies of
" Pie Alley," where the multitude lunch for a nickel.

Of a well-made apple-pie it is proper to remember that:

" All new dishes fade, the newest oft the fleetest;
Of all pies ever made, the apple's still the sweetest."

This of course means a freshly-baked, juicy pie, seasoned

52

mildly, and with a light, flaky crust. The apple-pie deteri-
orates with keeping, Serve it fresh and not quite cold. It is
well to make it sometimes without top crust, cover it with a
meringue or with whipped cream. Give it the frills and furbe-
lows that are granted to oranges, lemons and bananas when
they are cooked, and the result will show that the apple re-
sponds to this kind of treatment. In fact, is there another
fruit that can be treated so abominably by cooks and yet fur-
nish something eatable?

Much expense is put into demonstration lectures to show how
different food materials can be served, and to tempt people to
eat them. It may come to pass that such an effort will have to
be made right here in New England in behalf of the apple, for
we have run too fast after strange culinary gods in the shape
of foreign fruits, which we never get in the perfect state of
natural ripening.

We can have the apple, which grows in Massachusetts
orchards, in its highest state of perfection, but it needs to be
pushed by enthusiastic articles written and illustrated, not in
horticultural publications, nor even in farm journals, but in
the Sunday papers and in the housekeepers' magazines, which
are now taking up food materialsand cookery in a thorough way.

*CONSTITUTION.

ARTICLE I.

Name.

This organization s'hall be called the "Massachusetts Fruit
Growers' Association.

ARTICLE II.
Object.
The object of this Association shall be to encourage the culti-
vation of fruits adapted to this climate ; to collect and dissemi-
nate reliable information on the best varieties of fruits, and
practical methods of cultivation, gathering, packing, storing
and preparation of fruit, for bofh home and foreign markets ;
to investigate diseases, insects and other obstacles to success,
and the remedies best calculated to overcome them.

ARTICLE III.

Officers.

The officers of this Association shall be a President, Vice-
President, Secretary, Treasurer, an Auditor and a Board of
Directors consisting of twenty-four members, two from each
county, as far as practicable.

ARTICLE IV.

iMembership.
Each member shall pay an admission fee of one' dollar, and
an annual assessment of one dollar, which shall be due at the
time of the annual meeting.

ARTIOLE V.

Meetings.

Section i. This Association shall hold at least two regular
meetings each year. The annual meeting, for the election of
officers, s'hall be held in the city of Worcester, on the second
Wednesday of March at 2 o'clock P. M.

Sect. 2 In the election of officers and the transaction of
other business, twenty members shall constitute a quorum ; a
majority vote shall constitute an election. All officers s'hall
hold over until their successors are chosen.

*With revisions to date.

54

ARTICLE VI.
Special Meetings.
The President and Secretary shall have power to call special
meetings of the Association, or of the Directors ; or upon the
written petition of fifteen members they shall issue such call.
The object of these meetings shall be stated in the call, which
shall be issued by mail to each member, at least seven days
prior to such meetings.

ARTICLE VII.

Amendments.

Any amendment to this constitution may be made by a vote
of two-thirds of the members present and voting; a notice of
the proposed change having been given at a previous regular
meeting.

BY-LAWS.

Duty of the President.

1. The President s'hall preside at all meetings of the
Association and perform such duties as pertain to the office.
In his absence his duties s'hall devolve upon t^e Vice-President,
or, in his absenee, upon the director for the county in which
the meeting may be held.

Duty of the Secretary.

2. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to attend all meet-
ings of the Association, and keep a record of its transactions;
conduct all correspondence; keep a list of members of the
Association ; collect the assessments and pay over the same to
the Treasurer ; notify members of their election and members
of committees of their appointment.

Duty of the Treasurer.

3. The Treasurer shall have charge of all moneys belonging
to the Association ; he shall keep a record of all receipts and
disbursements ; he shall pay out money only on bills approved
by the President and Secretary ; 'he shall report in writing at
the annual meeting; he sliall keep a list of members and their
places of residence, and at the close of his term of office turn
over all records and funds in his possession to his successor.

Duty of the Auditor.

4. The i^uditor shall examine and report upon the books
and accounts of the Treasurer ; he shall be entitled to demand
all books, papers and vouchers three days previous to the
annual meeting.

Duties of Directors.

5. The duties of the Directors s'hall be to bring the objects
and interests of the Association to the notice of the people of
their several counties ; to urge their claims and endeavor to
increase the membership ; they shall examine and report on
newly introduced varieties in their several localities, as to their
quality and probable value for general cultivation.

Election of Officers.

6. The President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and
Auditor s'hall be elected by ballot, and the Board of Directors

56

by a majority vote of the members present ; they shall hold
ofifice till their successors are duly elected ; the first five officers
shall be ex-ofUcio members of the Board of Directors.

Vacancies,

7. Vacancies in any office, caused by resignation, death, or
removal from the State, shall be filled by the Board of
Directors for the unexpired term of their office.

Discontinuance of Membership.

8. Any member who shall neglect, for a period of two years,
to pay his annual assessments, shall cease to retain his connec-
tion with the Association, and the Secretary shall have power
to erase his name from the list of members.

In Force.

9. These articles shall take effect and be in force from their
adoption by a majority vote of the Association.

Amendments.

10. These By-Laws may be amended at any meeting of the
Association by a majority vote of the members present and
voting, notice of the change proposed having been made at a
previous meeting.

MEMBERS.

Adams, Erastus, No. Grafton.
Adams, J. F. Medway.
Allen, J. A. Worcester.
Allen, W. O. Northboro.
Anderson, H. W. Worcester.
Andrews, H. J. Fitchburg.
Avery, J. G. Spencer.

Bailey, J. E. F. Lancaster.
Ball, H. S. Shrewsbury.
Barker, Jo'hn, No. Andover.
Barrett, W. M. Westboro.
Batcheller, F. E. Lawrence.
Bates, Edwin, Lynn.
Bill, Ledyard, Paxton.
Blake, C. S. As'hby.
Blake, F. A. Rochdale.
Bliss, Ethelbert, Wilbraham.
Bliss, W. M. Wilbraham.
Bolan, George, Gleasondale.
Bolles, C. P. Wilbraham.
Boutwell, F. M. Groton.
Bowker, J. B. Worcester.
Bowker, W. H. Boston.
Brooks, Ethan, W. Springfield.
Brown, C. H. Fitchburg.
Brown, F. H. Marlboro.
Brown, L. C. No. Natick.
Brown, N. P. Westboro.
Brown, O. F. Hamilton.
Bruce, E. M. Leominster.
Buckley, C. E. Northboro.
Burgess, S. A. Worcester.
Burnap, C. E. Fitchburg.
Burnap, E. S. Fitchburg.
Burpee, W. H. Leominster.
Buss, C. S. Leominster.
Butterick, G. F. Sterling.

Capen, Abraham, Spencer.
Caswell, A. B. Fitchburg.
Chadbourne, A. H. Worcester.
Chamberlain, B. M. Holden
Chase, J. S. iMalden.
Chase, L. M. Holden.
Chickering, J. H. Grafton.
Clark, J. W. No. Hadley.
Coggeshall, H. F. Fitchburg.
Collins, E. F. Southboro.
Cook, F. E. Milford.
Cook, H. A. Shrewsbury.
Cook, H. H. Northboro.
Copeland, E. F. Colrain.
Cornwell, Dean, Lunenburg.
Cruickshanks, G. Fitchburg.
Gushing, C. G. Fitchburg.

Daniels, F. T. Sherborn.
Damon, 'S. C. Lancaster.
Derby, Alden, Leominster.
Draper, James, Worcester.

Fames, Jonathan, Sherborn.
Eaton, C. B. Worcester.
Ellsworth, J. L. Worcester.
Emerson, Albert, Haverhill.
Emerson, E. A. Haverhill.
Emerson, S. J. Lunenburg.
Estabrook, J. D. Westboro.

Farrar, E. R. So. Lincoln.
Fiske, D. L. Grafton.
Fish, C. R. Worcester.
Fitch, Elijah, Hopkinton.
Fletcher, E. S. Thompson, Ct.
Flint, E. F. South Lincoln.

58

Fowler, W. J. Boston.
French, W. A. Hopewell, N. J.
Fuller, H. C. Leominster.

Geer, J. T. Three Rivers.
Gifford, J. E. Sutton.
Gilson, F. E. Groton.
Goldman, M. Pittsfield.
Goodell, J. W. Lynn.
Graham, G. S. Holden.
Green, J. E. Worcester.
Gregory, J. J. H. Marblehead
Grout, Henry F. ]\Ielrose.

Hadwen, O. B. Worcester.
Hall, Walton, Marshfield.
Hammond, F. H. Worcester.
Harlow, H. J. Shrewsbury.
Harlow, Thomas, S'hrewsbury
Harrington, H. A. Peabody.
Harrington, J. L. Lunenburg.
Hartshorn, C. L. Worcester.
Hartwell, Samuel, Lincoln.
Haskell, E. B. Southbridge.
Havener, R. Gardner.
Hawkins, A. C. Lancaster.
Hayes, W. H. No. Andover.
Hayward, C. F. Ashby.
Hersey, E. A. Westboro,
Hill, J. W. Boston.
Hinds, A. J. Townsend.
Hinds, W. D. Townsend.
Hittinger, Richard, Belmont.
Hixon, A. A. Worcester.
Holden, A. B. Westminster.
Holden, S. R. Sherborn.
Hosmer W. H. Leominster.
Houghton, H. R. Lunenburg.
Howe, E. D. Marlboro.
Howes, W. E.

'No. iBellingham.
Hubbard, C. G. Berlin.
Hunt, J. A. Fitchburg.
Hunt, W. H. Concord.

James, G. B. Boston.
Jewett, W. C. Worcester.
Johnson, F. N. Grafton.
Jo'hnson, W. H. Northboro.
Jones, N. R. Billerica.
Kilbourn, W. A.

South Lancaster.

Kingsbury, H. H. Spencer.
Kimball, J. E. Oxford.
Kinney, F. J. Worcester.
Kinney, H. R. Worcester.
Knapp, G. S. Groton.

Lawrence, J. E. Northboro.
Leavens, G. D. Grafton.
Lewis, J. E. Holliston.
Litchfield, J. A. Lunenburg.
Longley, M. W. Shirley.

Maclnnes, J. C. Worcester.
Macuen, A. T. Milford.
Macuen, G. L. Milford.
Manning, J. W. Reading.
Marean, Ambrose, Medway.
Marshall, A. A. Fitchburg.
Marshall, L H. Still River,
^laynard, C. B. So. Berlin
Maynard, L. R. So. Berlin.
Maynard, S. T. Northboro.
McClellan, J. E. Grafton.
Mead, H. O. Lunenburg.
Mentzer, C. H. Northboro.
Mentzer, W. A. Northboro.
Mentzer, T. E. Northboro.
Merrill, A. Wilkinsonville.
Metcalf, A. A. Holden.
Miller, Calvin, Worcester.
Minott, C. W.

West Somerville
Moore, Elliott, Worcester.
Moore, H. W. Worcester.
Morse, G. F. Lancaster.
Morse, Monroe, iMedway.
Mossman,F.W. Westminster.
Munson, W. A. Huntington.

59

Nason, J. H. West Boxford.
Nourse, A. M. Westboro.

O'Connell, William, Worcester.
Overend, W. E. Worcester.

Page, J. N. Leominster.
Palmer, M. P. Groton.
Parker, C. E. Worcester.
Parker, Edmund, Westboro.
Parker, H. L. Worcester.
Perry, A. D. Worcester.
Perry, O. H. J. Jr.

Providence, R. I.
Phelps, A. D. Northboro.
Pierce, J. W. W. Millbury.
Piatt, N. S. New Haven, Ct.
Pow^ell, E. C. Springfield.
Pratt, Augustus,

N. Middleboro.
Pratt, C. S. Reading.
Pratt, H. S. Worcester.
Priest, L. F. Gleasondale.
Prouty, C. N. Spencer.
PufiFer, H. C. Springfield.
Putnam, D. O. W. Sutton.
Putnam, Henry, Worcester.

Race, R. H. No. Egremont.
Raddin, S. H. Groton.
Randlett, N. Nortboro.
Record, S. H. AVorcester.
Reed, J. O. Greenville, N. H.
Reed, S. H. West Brookfield.
Rice, G. C. Worcester.
Rice, L. W. Wilbraham.
Rich, H. E. Worcester.
Rogers, H. O. Holliston.
Ross, W. D. Worcester.
Russell, F. A. Methuen.
Russell, Walker, Northboro.

Sage, C. D. No. Brookfield.
Sagendorph, Noah, Spencer.
Sanderson, T. J.

Westminster Depot.
Sands, C. L. Lunenburg.

Sawtell, J. M. Fitchburg.
Sargent, F. W. Amesbury.
S'herman, A. B. Wayland.
Sharp, A. G. Richmond.
Shaw, E. M. Nashua, N. H.
Smith, G. N. Newton

Lower Falls.
Smith, G. W. Hartford, Ct.
Smith, J. L. Barre.
Snow, F. H. Greenfield.
Stacy, Albert, Griswoldville.
Stevens, A. F. Wellesley.
Stockwell, J. W. Boston.
Stockwell, O. Fitchburg.
Stone, G. E. Shrewsbury.
Stone, H. J. Shrewsbury.
Stowe, A. N. Hudson.

Thomas, C. H.

West Rindge, N. H.
Tuttle, A. N. Warren.
Twitchell, Seth, Fitchburg.

Underwood, H. P.

Gleasondale.
Upton, Edgar W.

Townsend Harbor.

Vincent, i\L H. Conway.

Walker, G. G. Williamstown.
Ward, A. W. Auburn.
Ware, B. P. Clifton.
Warren, S. H. Weston.
Waters, E. A. Shrewsbury.
Watts, Samuel, Natick.
Wheeler, G. F. Concord.
Whitcomb, G. L. Townsend.
Whitcomb. Levi, Northboro.
White, N. B. Norwood.
Whitney, C. A. Upton.
Williams, W. E. Townsend.
Wood, C. AT. Upton.
Wood, E. W. West Newton.
Wooldredge, John,

Lunenburg.

p

POMOLOGY UERAR]

"R^ e p o r t of the

NINTH A N =
NUAL MEETING

>r^^ ~^^ ^^^ ^^^ "^^^ "^~:^'

Massachusetts
Fruit Growers'
Association

Organized March 21, 1895

19 0 3

1 V

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(ORGANIZED MARCH 21. 1895.)

REPORT OF THE

Ninth Annual Meeting

HELD IN

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,

MARCH II and 12, 190^.

WORCESTER, MASS.

PRESS OF F. S. BLANCHARD & CO.

1904.

OFFICERS OF THE

Massachusetts Froit Growers' Association.

1903.

A. G. SHARP, PRESIDENT,
JONATHAN EAMES, VICE-PRESIDENT,
FRED A. SMITH, SECRETARY,
ETHAN BROOKS, TREASURER,
J. LEWIS ELLSWORTH, AUDITOR,

Richmond.

Sherborn.

Ipswich.

West Springfield.

Worcester.

essex county.

Suffolk County.
Norfolk County.
Plymouth County.

Middlesex county.

Hampshire County.
HAMPDEN County,
berkshire county.
Franklin County.
WORCESTER County.

DIRECTORS.

E. A. Emerson, Haverhill; J. J. H. Gregory, Mar-
blehead.

J. W. Stockwell, Boston.

A. F. Stevens, Wellesley ; Monroe Morse, Medway,

Augustus Pratt, North Middleboro; Walton Hall.
Marshfield.

C. F. Hayward, Ashby ; M. P. Palmer, Groton ;
W. D. Hinds, Townsend; C. S. Pratt, Read-
ing; Samuel Hartwell, Lincoln.

John W. Clark, North Hadley; E. Cyrus Miller,
Haydenville.

Ethelbert Bliss, Wilbraham; L. W. Rice, Wilbra-
ham.

George G. Walker, Williamstown ; R. H. Race,
North Egremont.

M. H. Vincent, Conway; E. F. Copeland, Col-
rain.

George Cruickshanks, Fitchburg; O. B. Hadwen,
Worcester; C. E. Parker, Holden ; James
Draper, Worcester ; E. A. Hersey, Westboro ;
S. T. Maynard, Northboro.

PROCE,EDINGS

or THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association,

1903.
Horticultural Hall, Worcester Mass.

The ninth annual meeting opened on Wednesday, March
nth, at 10.30 o'clock, with the President, A. G. Sharp of Rich-
mond, in the chair. Divine blessing was invoked by the Rev.
Inman L. Willcox of Park Church, after which Mr. Oba-
diah B. Hadwen, the venerable President of the Worcester
County Horticultural Society, briefly welcomed the Association
to the city and to their hall. In response to this cordial and
hearty welcome President Sharp replied as follows :

"For these words of cordial welcome we return heartfelt
thanks, and let me further say that we have always received
a hearty welcome from your citizens in the past, and feel under
much obligation for their hospitality shown this Association.
We have admired your beautiful buildings and pleasant sur-
roundings. We always look forward to the annual meeting
and the two days to be spent in your city with anticipations of
pleasure and profit, and have never been disappointed in either."

President Sharp then delivered his annual address, which
follows :

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

Brothers, Fruit Growers and Friends :

We meet at this our ninth annual meeting here to study and
discuss the several problems before us connected with our busi-
ness of fruit growmg and marketing. Since we have been
denied all assistance by the State, we must fight our battles and
win our victories alone, while could we have had the help that
some states give their growers, we could have more speedily
accomplished needed improvements, and given more useful
information to others whom we can not reach at these gather-
ings here.

Connecticut gives its Pomological Society $1000 annually.
Last year their society held fourteen institutes in various towns,
carrying useful information to the very doors of those who
would be reached in no other way. As we all know, every lot
of diseased, or second-class, fruit thrown on the market to be
sold at a loss to the grower injures the sale of first-class goods.
It is for our best interests to have all fruit offered in No. 1
condition.

The excessive moisture during the past season was, to some
growers, more of an injury than a drouth would have been.
Continued rains during strawberry bloom prevented perfect
pollenization, making much imperfect fruit, and later made it
very difficult to gather raspberries in good shipping condition.
Cold, cloudy weather and lack of sufBcient sunshine were evident
in the lack of high tiavor and color in many fruits, and no doubt
helped in breeding fungous diseases in the larger fruits. So far
as I can learn, the sudden cold snap early in December, when
on the 9th the mercury registered twenty degrees below zero
(following a mild November), killed most of the peach buds,
many of the plums, and no doubt injured somewhat the raspber-
ries and small fruits unless well protected in some way. Com-
ing so suddenly before ground was much frozen, or the plants
had become hardened to cold weather, the buds still swollen,
and sap active, and then quickly thawing out afterwards, was
too much change.

I will not weary you with a long address, for we are not here
for that purpose. We want the truth — facts gathered from
practical experience, and we have called those here who can
give them, specialists upon the topics assigned them. Give
attention to their advice, and do not hesitate to question them
upon any point in doubt. Let us also be free to give from our
individual experiences. It is a very poor cultivator who has
not learned at least one new fact during the year that will help
another.

Our greatest need at present is more money in the treasury,
in order to hold more institutes, ghe fuller reports of meet-
ings, and be able to procure more of the best speakers to
address us. Thus far we have been obliged to practice the most
strict economy in every way, in order to keep within our means
and keep out of debt. I hope some way will be devised during
this meeting to meet our needs. Your Secretary has worked
faithfully writing hundreds of letters, for which work he has
not received one cent.

Respectfullv submitted,

A. G. SHARP,

President.

The Secretary, C. A. Whitney of Upton, then read the follow-
ing report, which was accepted :

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

Mr. President and Members of the P'ruit Growers' Association :

As the records of your last annual meeting have already been
printed in the report for 1902, I will not take time now to read
them to you. After spending several days, and a number of
dollars, in a fruitless search for some suitable place to hold our
usual summer field meetings, your Secretary was obliged to
abandon the idea for this year, yet it is to be hoped that in the
future they may be continued, increasing rather than decreasing
in number as our membership enlarges.

If the members in general, and the directors in particular,
would lend a hand and freely make suggestions to the Secre-
tary as to times and places for such meetings, much anxiety
and many a journey would be spared.

You. one and all. have enjoyed the few field days we have
held. Those of you who traveled to Townsend in '98, and those
who made the pilgrimage to Wilbraham Mountain in 1901, will
long remember the delights of each occasion.

If. then, it is a pleasure to you to attend such gatherings,
why not seek to make them of more frequent occurrence in the
years to come? Your Secretary is always ready and eager to
look up any proposed trip that seems feasible, and will ever
thank each and every one of you who ofifers a bit of advice or
information that will promote the ends of our Association.

INSTITUTES.

In the place of the two field meetings usually held during the
summer, we have had two institutes this past winter. The first

of these was held at Lunenburg December i8th, 1902, by invita-
tion of the Lunenburg- Grange, No. 169, P. of H.

In the absence of President Sharp, Vice-president Eames
occupied the chair.

Mr. John Wooldredge, past-master of the Grange, gave a
brief address of welcome, to which Mr. Eames responded. The
hall was well filled with members of the Grange, a goodly num-
ber of our members, and a large attendance of farmers and fruit
growers from surrounding towns. The ladies were out in large
numbers. Several plates of choice fruit were exhibited on a
table just in front of the stage.

The address of the forenoon was given by Prof. Frank Wil-
liam Rane of the New Hampshire College on "Horticultural
Possibilities for New England Farms." It was an earnest
plea for the application of systematic business methods to all
branches of agriculture, and specially to fruit-growing. The
old-fashioned, go-as-you-please, hap-hazard way of doing things
is no longer profitable here in New England.

In order to succeed in horticulture, as in any other business,
we must have a definite purpose in view when we begin ; must
know what we intend to do, and then have the executive al^ility
to do it, and do it at the right time.

Professor Rane gave incidents and illustrations of what had
been accomplished by various persons, under favorable condi-
tions, in the growing of currants, strawberries, sweet corn,
muskmelons, onions, celery, squashes, and other somewhat
neglected crops. His paper was received with marked atten-
tion and the discussion which followed was spirited.

Mr. S. H. Warren of Weston gave a little talk on "Strawber-
ries," and Ex-president Mead of Lunenburg told of his expe-
rience with some of the newer Japanese plums.

Mr. W. D. Hinds of Townsend expressed the idea that the
time had come when the farmer, to be successful in selling his
fruit, must advertise after some such plan as that now pursued
by the manufacturers of cereal products. The questions were
numerous, the differences of opinion many, yet good nature pre-
vailed throughout the discussion. The Grange served a most
excellent dinner at noon, and all were treated to a dish of
squash of a new variety furnished by the veteran seedsman of
Marblehead, Mr. James J. H. Gregory, a former resident of
Lunenburg.

The arrangements for serving the dinner were complete in
every detail, and everything and everybody were provided for.
Certainly, the members of this Grange are past-masters in the
art of entertaining.

At the afternoon session Prof. Samuel T. Mavnard of North-

boro spoke upon "The Best Varieties and Culture for a Com-
mercial Fruit Orchard."

As the first requisite for success he named education. In the
conduct of any business first aim to understand it thoroughly,
and then be honest in your dealings, whether with men or
trees. Do not expect to get something for nothing from the soil
any m.ore than you do from your banker. When selecting trees
for your orchard, confine your choice to three or four varie-
ties that are known to do well in that locality. Appearance
and quality should be considered, and having made your
choice, then endeavor to grow the best of that kind.

Remember that you must have good trees in order to get good
fruit. In the packing of your fruit grade according to color and
size. Let your packages be of standard size, clean and attractive
in appearance, and the contents of the same quality throughout.

Professor Maynard gave much valuable advice about pruning,
spraying, etc., and was kept busy answering questions up to the
hour of closing.

Just before the close of the meeting Mr. A. A. Hixon of Wor-
cester moved a vote of thanks be extended the Grange for
their hospitality. This was carried unanimously by a rising vote.

That this, the first institute ever held by our Association, was
such a pronounced success in every way, was due largely, if not
wholly, to the Lunenburg Grange, No. 169, P. of H.

The second institute was held at G. A. R. Hall, Colrain, on
January 29, 1903, at the joint invitation of the Franklin County
Agricultural Society and the Colrain Grange, No. 76, P. of H.

While we had few members in this part of the State, and only
two in the town of Colrain, yet the fact that this is one of the best
apple sections in Massachusetts led us to believe that a meeting
here would be a success, and we were not mistaken. It exceeded
our fondest expectations. After divine blessing was asked, the
meeting was opened by the master of the Grange, Mr. J. Daven-
port, who gave an address of welcome, after which President
Sharp took charge of the meeting. The first speaker was Mr.
John W. Clark of North Hadley, who took for his subject, "Com-
mercial Orcharding." He first warned all who contemplated
entering this business to first count the cost as carefully as they
would before beginning any other business venture. Select a
good location for the kind of fruit you intend to grow, and then
produce the best in the market. Let your fruit be the standard
by which others are compared, and always demand the top price,
and get it. Right at our door we have the best market in the
world, and on our farms we have the best soil and climate for

8

growing perfect fruit. Mr. Clark showed a plan of his cold-
storage house, and explained its manner of construction.

The audience was a friendly one and free with questions. The
discussion was valuable, and many good points were brought out
in this manner. While the hall was taxed to its utmost capacity
during the forenoon session, yet by some mysterious process the
ladies of the Grange managed to serve a bountiful dinner to all
without delay. A careful count showed that over 300 sat down
to dinner, and all were more than satisfied. Mr. J. H. Hale had
promised to speak at the afternoon session, but owing to illness
was unable to attend. Prof. F. A. Waugh of Amherst gave an
interesting talk on "Spraying," and pointed out many of the
stumbling blocks we so often meet in this disagreeable though
necessary operation. He showed statistics proving that while
there is a profit in spraying once, yet the percentage of profit is
increased by each application. In the case of one experiment,
where the operation was repeated six times, the last application
gave the greatest per cent, of profit.

A number of valuable suggestions were given about mixing
the various ingredients, and also in regard to the kinds of pumps
and nozzles, as well as the care of these utensils.

This meeting was particularly profitable in that the attendance
was from the class of people we most wish to reach, and the fact
that everybody present was ready to help and anxious to be
helped. This willingness to "give and take" advice, as well as
information, the secret of all successful institutes, was noticeable
all through the discussion. A local orchestra furnished most
agreeable music at intervals, and added much to the pleasure of
those present. A rising vote of thanks was given to the Colrain
Grange and to the orchestra for their entertainment. Over
400 were present at the afternoon session. One of the
substantial results of such meetings is the new members
added to our list. Out of the sixty-five names added during the
past year thirty-three can be traced directly to this institute, and
thirty of these are from the town of Colrain.

If we had sufftcient funds to hold such meetings in all the large
fruit centers over the State, we could easily double our present
membership and the future success of this Association would be
assured.

There are so many ways in which money will help along our
work that it has been a serious problem to your officers to decide
just where our limited means will do the most good to the great-
est number. We believe that the summer field meetings ought
not to be abandoned, and these winter institutes, so auspiciously
begun, should be continued in greater numbers.

9

A large membership can be obtained by a series of successful
meetings, and conversely a series of successful meetings can be
held when we have a large membership ; the two elements of suc-
cess go hand in hand ; the possession of the one insures the other.
More dues have been collected the past year than during any
previous year in our history, and a larger number of new mem-
bers have been added, yet there is abundant room and need for
more. The field is white for the harvest. The fruit growers of
our State were never in greater need of organization than to-day.

All other kinds of business are now combining into trusts,
syndicates and mergers, till the small, independent manufacturer
or dealer is swallowed up in one of these "whales" or frozen out
stifif and solid. Cannot the farmer and the fruit grower take
warning and join hands with his neighbor, who is his friend, that
their united forces, in the shape of their brains and their pocket-
books, may defeat the common foe and bring him to terms ?

In union is there strength. The independent farmer has long
been held up as the type of the free and happy man, yet the time
has now come when he can no longer maintain this proud posi-
tion alone and unaided by his brother farmers.

Let us then unite for the common good of all, with the one ob-
ject in view, mutual help.

Respectfully submitted,

C. A. WHITNEY,

Secretary.

The Treasurer made the following report, which was accepted :

TREASURER'S REPORT.

1902.
March 13. Balance on hand,

Annual dues collected,
Badges sold,
Interest at bank,

$333 65

1902.

March 13. Paid stenographer, $20 00

Printing programmes, 18 00

Paid for stereopticon, 12 00

Bill for badges, 7 75

Lecturers and expenses, 88 59

Stationery, postage, etc., 39 05

$85

12

242

00

3

20

3

33

10

Printing reports, 66 oo

$251 39
1903.

March 11. Balance on hand. $82 26

The Auditor, Mr. J. Lewis Ellsworth, reported that he had
examined the books of the Treasurer and found them correctly
kept and proper vouchers for all expenses ; that there was a
balance on hand of $82.26, as shown by the report read.

Mr. A. F. Stevens, chairman of the committee appointed last
year to petition the Legislature for an appropriation, reported
that a bill was presented to the Committee on Agriculture, and
that they were given leave to withdraw. He recommended that
another attempt be made to secure State aid, and advised that a
committee be chosen for that purpose to consist of the President
and Secretary of the Association and three others.

This recommendation was adopted in the form of a motion and
vote to that effect, and the committee selected was Abel F. Ste-
vens of Wellesley, J. Lewis Ellsworth of Worcester, Warren C.
Jewett of Worcester, together with the President and Secretar}-.

Mr. Elliott Moore of Worcester spoke in praise of the efficient
work performed by the Secretary, and argued that justice
demanded he should be paid for his services. He moved that
hereafter the Secretary be paid the sum of $25 a year for his
work. He said he thought it was worth $50, but supposed our
funds would not allow us to pay so high a salary at present.

The Secretary stated that the work had been a pleasure to
him, and he considered it an honor to serve such a body of pro-
gressive horticulturists. He had not charged the Association
anything for his labor or for his traveling expenses, as he did not
believe the treasury would admit of such expenditure.

Mr. C. D. Sage of North Brookfield said it was no more than
right that the Secretary should be reimbursed for his traveling
expenses, in addition to being paid a salary, and he made an
amendment that the Secretary be paid his traveling expenses.
Mr. Moore accepted this amendment, and it was voted that here-
after the Secretary be paid a salary of $25 a year and all neces-
sary traveling expenses.

11

The question of officers being under discussion, Mr. George
Cruickshanks of F'itchburg moved that a committee of five be
nominated from the floor to bring in a list of officers for the
ensuing year and report at the afternoon session. The following
were chosen as Committee on Nomination : George Cruick-
shanks, Fitchburg; Monroe Morse, Medway; Calvin L. Harts-
horn, Worcester ; Prof. S. T. Maynard, Northboro ; Jonathan
Eames, Sherborn.

There being no further business for this session. President
Sharp introduced as the first speaker R. H. Race of North Egre-
mont, who gave a very pleasa'nt and instructive talk upon :

"MY WAY WITH BERRIES."

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :

In treating the subject of small fruits one cannot say anything
new that would be instructive, but where one has made a fair
success at it, I thought it might be well to give my way. Small
fruits are grown over such a large extent of country, and in so
many different climates, and in so many different conditions of
soil, that the experience of one will not cover the ground nor be
of practical value save to those that are situated in like posi-
tions as to soil and climate. My being a berry grower had a
small beginning and as the outgrowth of natural conditions.
The first red raspberries that I sold were picked from^new
ground where they grew wild; that is twenty-six years ago.
My first strawberries were raised in the garden about the
same time, and having more than we could use at home I took
them to the village to sell. They proved to be quite profit-
able, and a larger bed was set. This early setting was done
in the fall, but fall setting did not prove to be very successful,
so I tried spring setting and found that to be the only way for
profit. At first I tfied to carry over the old beds, but the cost
of cleaning them out, together with the decrease in quality of
the fruit on an old bed, led me to give up trying to carry over
an old bed, and now I set new every spring. My farm
is on a slope of a mountain fating the east, and begins with
a meadow of about twenty acres at the foot of the mountain.
Twelve or more of these acres are made land, being the terminus
of a mountain brook. On this field I raise my best strawberries,
although I can grow them on any of my land, which extends well
\\p the mountain, but not as successfully as on this lower ground.
I do not make a specialty of berry growing, as I have a large
farm and it has to be cared for, and I raise lOO bushels rye. 500

12

bushels oats and 800 bushels corn, cutting 75 tons hay, and alsc
have a retail ice trade of 400 tons, yet had I but ten or twenty
acres I would put all of my effort into small fruits, as 1 love the
work and think, yes, I know, it pays the best.

My way of raising strawberries will be best told in describing
the way I grew a tield of one and one-half acres in 1899. Two-
years before I sowed it to Southern sweet corn. When the corn,
was eight feet high, I plowed it under and sowed it to rye. The
next May I plowed the rye in when it was two feet high and
sowed it to clover ; the clover grew very large by fall, then I
plowed it in and sowed rye again with drill and phosphate. In
the spring of 1899 I plowed the rye in and set strawberries, six
rows of Mammoth Beauties and four rows Lovett to fertilize
them ; these two kinds were the main crop. I also had Clyde^
Bismarck, Greenville and Michael's Early. They were set in
rows four feet apart, twelve to fifteen inches in the row, and
allowed to run as much as they would. I covered them in the
ea'rly winter with oat straw ; in the spring I raked the stra^r
between the rows, leaving a matted row about two feet or a
little over ; then I sowed a light dressing of ashes on them,
which was the only fertilizer used, except what was plowed
under green.

From this field I sold 316 bushels of line fruit. Had the
Lovetts yielded as did the Mammoth Beauties, I would have had
500 bushels. Although it may seem this was a costly way to pre-
pare a bed, yet I am satisfied that it is the best way for me, as I
had but little trouble with weeds, and that is a big item. I am
ready to do most any old way to get the best of them if I can get
the berries just the same. I am a very strong advocate of culti-
vating. I keep the cultivator going as long as I can. My prac-
tice is to leave the mulching until the ground freezes, as it is
more convenient to put it on. especially on a large field, but what
little I have done as a trial or experiment, covering about Oct.
20 to Nov. 10, I am fully satisfied that it is the best way, and in
future shall put the mulch on at that time, even if it proves to be
twice as costly. The first freezing and thawing of fall and early
winter, to my mind, are the most damaging of all, suddenly kill-
ing all vines that are not fully matured, which, if they were
covered, the ground being warm, they would not freeze for a
long time ; then the covering would shut out the sun and nat-
urally sto]) the growth, and they would mature before they froze
so as to kill them. Then another thing in favor of
early mulching is. it stops the top growth entirely,
keeps the ground warm, and sets the roots to
growing : and as I have seen plants that were mere buds when
winter set in, to my great surprise, in the spring, were large,

13

healthy, vigorous, splendidly-rooted plants, such as one could
be proud of. This one thing alone, to my mind, fully repays the
extra cost of early mulching. I do mulch only moderately
heavy, as by that I get best results. I think that land that
requires very heavy mulching is not suitable or profitable for
strawberries.

N'ot so with ra'spberries. As I said in the beginning, my
first experience with them was in their wild state. I picked
bushels of them, and sold them in a near-by village, pick-
ing them in eight-quart pans. That not being satisfactory,
I looked for something better, and found in the market quart
strawberry baskets; bought a crate with thirty-two quart baskets,
at a cost of $1.65 ; was the first man in the whole town to own a
berry crate, and soon was known everywhere as "Race, the
Berry-man." I was quite proud of it all, as I was young, and
sometimes only little things make young people elated and
happy ; but after a year or two the berries on the new ground
began to grow less in quantity and quality, and I began to look
around for something better.

When I was in the store of my groceryman and saw a crate of
the finest red raspberries I ever saw there, he said, "Race, if
you could raise berries like that, you would be doing some-
thing." "Where did you get them?" I asked.

'T got them from a man in Richmond," he replied,
and shutting down the cover, I saw a nicely painted
green crate, with A. G. Sharp, Richmond, Mass., in
clear, plain letters. That set me thinking, and set the
old new ground of¥ rather badly. The ncAV ground was
all right so far, but there was something better. The result was
I immediately went to see Sharp, and found a splendid raspberry
garden, and splendid all-round man, too, and one that I am
proud to call brother, not only as a berry-grower, but as a per-
sonal friend. There started a friendship that will never end, as it
grows brighter as the days go by. I made a bargain with him
for plants to set an acre, and got from him a way of cultivation
that has proved the best of any I have ever tried or seen in print
as the experience of others. I have had great success with
raspberries, but have reduced my acreage to one-half acre on
account of an overstocked market at one time. Now I shall
increase again, as the demand for my fruit is increasing.

Now for the way I raise raspberries. I prefer Cuthberts, as
my market is at home. I set them the last ten days of October,
in rows or hills five feet by six, and cultivate them both ways,
and the more they are cultivated the better. I use barn-yard
manure, ashes, and some phosphate. I stake them, cutting out
to six or eight canes in the hill, cutting them back to four and
one-half or five feet. I lav them down the first week in Novem-

14

ber, covering them with dirt. The more they are covered the bet-
ter, but with me if they are covered within one and one-half or
two feet of the buts, it is enough. I take them up in the spring, tie
to stakes with two strings, always cleaning out the old canes in
fall or winter, when the new ones are down. I have never had
occasion to spray either strawberries or raspberries ; my fruit is
always perfect. It is no unusual thing for me to be in the fruit-
store and hear people that come in ask for Race's berries, and if
they don't have them to see them pass out to try some other
store. I always put as good fruit in the bottom of the baskets
as I put on top ; and it doesn't take the consumer long to find out
that they can depend on that. I have a fine apple-orchard, but I
will leave the apple subject for others to consider, as apples
are not berries.

One thing I do want to speak about, a matter of greatest
importance — being on the farm brings one close to nature, and
being close to nature brings one close to nature's God, and
being in fellowship with God, through the Mediator, Jesus
Christ, we have the principle of life that lightens all toil and
care, sweetens our fellowship with each other, makes us simple
in our manner of life, increases our love for each other, and pre-
pares us for a better life to come.

Simplicity makes men great. It was a simple thing to spit on
the ground and make clay of the spittle, then anoint blind eyes ;
but how great the result of the act which gave sight to those
blind eyes. So it is a simple matter to grow berries, but under
the direction and in the fellowship of that guiding hand that
"holds all nature up," we are able to get that which makes our
homes happy homes, and our homes being happy makes our land
a land of freedom, and we berry-growers our Father's best chil-
dren.

In answer to questions, Mr. Race said he picked his berries
directly into the basket just as they were to be shipped to mar-
ket. He did not believe in handling berries twice when once
would answer, if it was carefully done. He usually paid a cent
and a half a quart for picking, and had no dif^culty in getting
good help at that price. Farmers' wives and daughters, and
even some who were considered quite aristocratic by their neigh-
bors, would willingly come and pick strawberries at this price.
It seemed to be more for the pleasure than for the money that
they came, and the result was always good, satisfactory work.

He preferred picking in the morning, beginning as early as
one could distinguish between a ripe berry and a green one,

15

never picking during the heat of the day. The variety that had
been the most profitable to him was the Mammoth Beauty.

Mr, S. H. Warren of Weston, who had grown strawberries for
over fifty years, spoke briefly on the proper way to set out plants,
saying that the whole secret of making strawberry plants grow
was in pressing the earth firmly around the roots at the time of
transplanting. He preferred setting at a good distance apart in
the rows, and had often put them four feet by six, thus prevent-
ing the crowding and consequent small berries. In the covering
of beds for the winter he said he had found it better to put the
mulch on early in the winter or late fall, say October or Novem-
ber, rather than wait till the ground was frozen. His theory
was that early covering, before the freezing of the ground took
place, would prevent the frost from going down so deep during
the winter, and thus the ground would open up earlier in the
spring.

Others participated in the discussion of varieties and ferti-
lizers up to the time of adjournment for dinner.

Afternoon Session — 2 p. ui.

President Sharp in the chair.

The Committee on Nominations, through its chairman, Mr.
George Cruickshanks of Fitchburg, reported the list of officers
for the ensuing year as found on page 2 of this report. It was
voted to accept their report, and also to instruct the Secretary
to cast one ballot for the entire list as reported. This was done,
and they were declared elected.

On motion by Mr. S. H. Record of Worcester, a vote of
thanks was given the retiring Secretary.

President Sharp then introduced as the first speaker of the
afternoon Mr. Grant G. Hitchings of South Onondaga, N. Y,,
who spoke on

"THE NE^V APPLE CULTURE."

Webster defines culture as any means employed for improve-
ment or growth. There are several successful methods of cul-
ture employed. We find, however, by careful analysis, that they
are each based on the same foundation principles. From this
it follows that in order to successfully adopt any method the
fruit-grower must first thoroughly understand these foundation

16

principles and then build up his practice or method by adopting
a plan which, by experience or close observation, proves fo be
best suited for his particular soil and location.

In other words, each grower must conduct his own experi-
ment farm. What are these foundation principles?

1. You must have a constant supply of available plant food
in your soil.

2. You must have a sufficient supply of moisture in your soil.

3. You must maintain a healthy foliage on your trees.

It has been determined by chemical analysis that average
soil contains in an unavailable form enough of the elements
needed for plant growth to last for hundreds of years to come.
The great problem that confronts the modern fruit-grower is
how to liberate most economically this stored-up plant food and
to hold it in such condition that the plants can appropriate it to
their use.

As is well known, plants take their food in the form of a solu-
tion ; hence the importance of a constant supply of moisture
in our soils. An excess of moisture should be avoided as well
as a deficiency. How may we best maintain this proper moist
condition of soil ? It has been found that soil well filled with
decaying vegetable matter or humus acts like a sponge, the
moisture evaporating slowly. A soil without humus is cold
and unproductive, while a soil well filled with vegetable matter
will carry a crop successfully through a very dry season.

Humus, or decaying vegetable matter, not only holds moist-
ure by acting like a sponge, but it also, by reason of its decay,
causes the locked-up plant food to becom.e available. This
decay of vegetable matter is caused by bacterial action in our
soils. These minute bacteria, then, are our most efficient help-
ers, and their work should be encouraged by proper treatment
of our soil.

It has been found that bacteria develop most rapidly in the
presence of heat, moisture and shade, with proper aeration.
Strong sunlight destroys them, and cold suspends their action.
Before adopting a method of culture it is well to understand the
requirements of these co-workers of ours and then adopt a
method in accord with them. It is also necessary to understand
how the tree and its fruit are developed. In the spring a tree
expends its energies largely in making wood growth. In June
the terminal buds form, which indicates a cessation of growth
for the season.

After the terminal buds form, the energy of the tree for bal-
ance of the season is expended in forming and developing fruit
buds for next year's crop of fruit. Being in the business of pro-
ducing fruit instead of producing wood, it early occurred to me
that it was better to stimulate a tree during the i:)erio(l of fruit-

17

bud formation rather than during the period of wood-growth
formation. This has been the keynote of my practice, and so
the whole scheme of this culture is based on the fact that it is
better to encourage the fruit buds rather than the wood-growth
of a tree.

Now I will explain my method in detail and the dangers of
other methods as I see them, and invite your criticisms of my
method, for by comparisons we all learn. It has been the source
of considerable amusement to me to read the comments on the
mulch method by those who have never seen the method in
practice. The mulch or sod method that I practice differs very
radically from the sod method as usually understood, and many
have drawn wrong conclusions from this fact. In selecting a
site for an orchard choose one with a northern exposure, if
possible, for the moisture will not evaporate so rapidly in sum-
mer, and the changes in winter from cold to warmth will not be
so extreme. New ground recently cleared of timber is best ; if
this is not available, choose a soil that is well filled with humus ;
if not already filled, make it so by using stable manure or estab-
lishing a good sod. In selecting varieties choose those that do
well in your locality, for the same variety will vary in different
places.

Now as to the method of caring for the young orchard. After
filling the soil with humus, endeavor to accumulate more while
trees are growing and to be economical in using that already
supplied. The point aimed at is to have the soil when the trees
come into bearing in that sponge-like consistency from abun-
dance of humus that is so beneficial in the production of choice
fruit. Many advise cultivation, but cultivation is a burning-out
process, that is, it destroys your accumulated humus very rapid-
ly. It entails an extraordinary expense in labor, fertilizers,
and in sowing cover crops, to restore or keep up the supply of
needed humus. It is a sort of a hand-to-mouth process that
requires a large capital to carry out successfully. Cultivation
holds moisture by preventing evaporation, by breaking the
capillary attraction of moisture to the surface.

This holds true as long as your soil is full of humus. As
this is burned out, cultivation becomes less and less effective in
holding the needed moisture. In fact that is what's the matter
with a good deal of your New England soil to-day. It has been
cultivated too much without restoring the needed humus. Anal-
vsis shows the needed elements present, but the soil is unpro-
ductive from lack of life-giving organic matter or humus.
Now this new method, or mulch method, aims to supply this
needed humus by establishing a good sod of clover blue grass
and orchard grass, which is mowed each vear in Iiilv and left on

18

surface ; this with the aftermath and the annual crop of leaves
which is held by the sod, makes more than a sufficient supply
of vegetable matter for the best results in fruit, and does it at a
very moderate cost.

Experience has taught me that if you desire to establish an
early bearing habit in your trees you must not force the wood
growth or leaf-bud development. I endeavor to restrict this
growth to some extent by growing my supply of humus in form
of grass during the spring, when wood growth is naturally most
active and at a time when there is an excess of moisture in the
soil from winter's rain and snow.

Having secured a supply, we use it in the form of a mulch, to
hold moisture during the summer and fall, wdien fruit and fruit
buds are developing, and as this mulch slowly decays, plant food
becomes available at a time when the tree needs it most for the
best development of its growing fruit. This mulch, an aftermath
of grass, also forms a nice carpet for apples to drop on, prevent-
ing them from being bruised so that they may be sold to good
advantage.

Take note that those who cultivate must stop during July and
August and grow a cover crop ; while this cover crop is develop-
ing the capillary tubes will form to the surface of the soil, and
away goes your moisture at just the time your tree needs it
most. How often we hear those that cultivate complain that
their fruit lacks color. Now good color indicates perfect develop-
ment. This lack of color shows arrested development of fruit,
caused by the robbing of the tree of needed moisture and plant
food by growing a cover crop at the time the tree needs plant
food most. For it is at this time of year the tree not only de-
velops its growing fruit, but also develops fruit buds for succeed-
ing year's crop of fruit, and its supply of available plant food and
moisture should not be restricted at this time. Bear in mind
that high colored fruit commands the highest price, and mulch
method certainly produces the color.

It has been stated that the new method encourages the
growth of roots near the surface of the soil. This is true for the
feeding roots, and it is just where you want them.

Plant food is prepared for plants in the best known form for
their absorption by the action of bacteria. This bacterical ac-
tion is most active in the presence of heat, moisture, shade and
air, with an abundance of vegetable matter in which to thrive.
The mulch method meets these conditions m a perfect manner
by placing the vegetable matter on the surface of the soil to be
acted upon slowly by these bacteria. The grass not only fur-
nishes shade, but prevents rapid evaporation of the showers
during summer and fall. This retention of the moisture from

19

summer rains, at the surface of the soil, gives the feeding roots
near the surface a chance to absorb the food prepared for them
by the bacteria. These roots are our best workers and should
be encouraged by proper treatment and not mutilated by cul-
tivation.

Dr. Jordan of the New York Experiment Station stated that
several years ago they had eleven inches of rainfall during the
summer in form of light showers. On their cultivated orchard
these rains did not wet down through their earth mulch, but
evaporated in a short time, and their orchard, notwithstanding
their eleven inches of rainfall, was in a serious condition.

Now that same summer the mulch orchards received the ben-
efit of all those rains, as the mulch shaded the surface of the soil
and prevented the evaporation of the needed water.

This resulted in not only a fine crop of fruit, but also de-
veloped strong fruit buds for the succeeding year, which was last
year, when fruit brought high prices. Many make the mistake
of pruning their young orchards too much. This forces wood
growth and retards early fruiting habits. Trees require very
little pruning, and this should be done a little each year for
several years. If you have quite a number of branches in a tree
instead of the usual number allowed, you will find that they will
alternate in bearing to a considerable extent, thus giving annual
bearing, but from different limbs on the same tree. This pre-
vents exhaustion from too heavy bearing.

To protect your foliage it is necessary to spray thoroughly.
First learn the habits of your enemies and then spray in the most
thorough manner. Spray each year as an insurance, and in the
long run vou will come out ahead. When you have secured a
crop, grade it carefully, pack your No. i fruit in attractive pack-
ages and demand a good price for it. As soon as the trade
learns that you can be depended upon you will have no trouble
in securing the highest price.

In this explanation of my method of growing fruit I am not
vain enough to think that it is the only way; I am endeavoring
to observe the foundation principles of fruit-growing in an eco-
nomical manner and am constantly looking for improvement. I
measure success by results. Some of the most valuable lessons
I have learned, came from practical men, who were close ob-
servers. So in this talk if I have dropped some hints that you
can enlarge upon, I shall feel satisfied for the efifort.

At the close of Mr. Hitchings' paper a number of questions
were asked the speaker and he readily answered them.

Benjamin P. Ware of Clifton spoke at some length in a rather
humorous vein which amused and interested the audience.

/

20

While he believed in some of the ideas advanced, yet he said he
differed widely from the speaker in his way of pruning.

Professor A. G. Gulley of Storrs, Conn., the President of the
Connecticut Pomological Society, was then introduced, to speak
upon

APPLE CULTURE FOR NEW ENGLAND.

Mr. Hitchings" methods as explained to us and as proved by
the fruit exhibited at this meeting, are a success with him. He
has produced such fruit so often, and so many have in-
vestigated his operations, that there is no doubt about his doing
all that he claims in his situation. That is probably the explana-
tion of the matter. His peculiar location, and on land so strong
that under any system, or none at all, trees would probably have
done well for years.

As a matter of fact New York apple growers generally con-
cede that even in that State his method would not often be suc-
cessful. It is not probable that here in New England generally,
or even occasionally, the plan could be used with success.
Orchard lands here are not in such condition, and must be fed
and the trees given different treatment. As to growing an
apple tree without trimming, as he advocates, one has only to
look at trees on all sides that have grown from seed up under
that plan to be convinced of its failure in this section. We must
admit the w'hole system is very tempting to those who desire to
save labor.

The actual state of affairs in New England is that a great
share of orchards are high headed trees in grass, m meadows or
pastures or along fence lines, and thirty or more years old. Very
few trees from ten to thirty years of age are to be found under
any treatment, then here and there a still younger orchard that
so far has had good cultivation.

A great many of the older orchards while producing some
fruit cannot be said to be profitable. Most of them have some
value as a source of home supply, but lack of care makes it of
low grade, and the surplus so produced that is sent to market is
a great detriment to the careful apple grower, for it destroys
both market and price for good fruit. Such orchards, receiving
but little care, are dangerous to trees properly treated from the
insects and diseases that propagate and spread from them.
Some of those old orchards, if not too far gone and are of suit-
able varieties, may be renewed to fairly compete with others
grown in a more modern manner. The work must be given
regardless of all other interests. It would be in renewal of top

21

by heavy trimming, good feeding, and, if possible, thorough cul-
tivation. This, with the same spraying given to a healthy tree,
may renew its age. Hogs allowed to run in such an orchard will
do much of the cultivation, and do it well. Some of these or-
chards may be in localities where special uses can be made of the
fruit and not require so much care and harvesting, and so prove
profitable.

Competition in apple growing for profit is resulting in the
same changes as are found in other kinds of business. Fruit
must be produced of high market grade and at the lowest possi-
ble expense. So an orchard not handled from the start, with
this idea in mind, will be worked at a disadvantage. In other
words apples for market will be produced in New England, as
already in other states, by exclusive apple-growers on a
large scale, and not in a small way by the general farmer. Those
specialists will start and continue the orchard as a permanent
investment, with a certainty that with intelligent care it will
increase in value with age. After that any and every means will
be used to cheapen the cost, produce fine fruit, and get returns
in the shortest time.

The principle used will be to fully occupy the land from the
first. Orchards will be planted much thicker than has been the
]:)ast custom, with the idea of thinning the trees when they
crowd. This use of the land will do away with the temptation
to crop the land at the expense of the trees. This plan will per-
mit cropping for two or three years if the land is in good condi-
tion and is properly kept up. However, the nearness of the
trees will so increase the care of the crop that it will soon be
abandoned. This close planting will usually require the inter-
planting of at least two varieties, one-half or three-fourths to be
of a kind that bears young, and can be removed when the remain-
ing trees require more space, the remainder to be of a perma-
nent variety, which will be the orchard in later years. In my
own work of this sort I am planting 16V2X20 feet, wide spaces
east and west, and using three fillers to one permanent tree. A
careful preparation of the land before planting must be followed
by thorough cultivation afterward during the early part of each
season, for several years at least. Land, if not already strong,
must be kept up by furnishing phosphoric acid and potash in
some form, and humus and nitrogen by green cropping the lat-
ter part of the year. Cheap production and good health of trees
must be kept in mind all the time.

Low-headed trees, varying with the variety, will be used by
the orchardist of the future to save expense in various opera-
tions needed for the care of the orchard. With modern tools for
cultivation, this form of tree will be no detriment. For

22

pruning, spraying, thinning, and later, harvesting, it will be a
great advantage.

Of all recent orchard operations that of spraying has become
the most prominent, and possibly the most important. Insects
and diseases are now so numerous and serious that healthy
trees and fruits cannot be produced unless their damage is pre-
vented or checked. Already their remedies and their applica-
tion are so well determined that there is but little excuse for
permitting their damage. One must understand for what he is
spraying, then do the work thoroughly and in season.

Thinning the crop in overbearing years will soon be recog-
nized as a regular part of the work, and it is now by the grower
of stone fruits. By preventing the overbearing the strain on the
vitality of the tree is avoided, and without doubt annual bearing
would be induced in most varieties where it is now an exception.
Operations last year in this line fully demonstrated that from
one to two dollars per tree were added to the value of the crop,
at an average expense of about sixty-five cents each, which ex-
pense was mostly gained at harvesting in time saved in picking
and in grading.

With all previous labor well done, harvesting will be greatly
reduced in time and expense from the better size and more per-
fect fruit to be handled.

In grading and packing there is much chance for improve-
ment over present methods as usually carried out. In no part
of apple growing are skill and experience of as great importance.
To poor grading and packing can be charged up much of the
low prices received by growers. Even here recent changes in
packages are requiring more even-sized grades and more of
them. Boxes in which to ship fine apples have come to stay,
and with them very careful grading.

In addition to the ideas so far advanced, and of which one or
more are already adopted by progressive apple-growers, I am
personally carrying out one more to save expense. It is grow-
ing the orchard much longer in nursery form before planting
out. Trees are procured from the nursery at the usual age of
three or four years, then again planted in the nursery row about
two feet apart and rows about five feet apart, and grown two
years. The trees are then taken up and replanted, given a little
more space and grown two years longer. During the whole
four years the same care in pruning, cultivating and spraying is
given as the trees would have received in the orchard. They are
then set in the orchard four years later than usual. The repeated
transplanting makes the large trees easy to handle, and the total
labor much less than the same care would have been in the
orchard. In addition, the land can be used for crops, or, if nee-

23

essary, put in better condition for the orchard. This method
will result in some loss as to size of trees, but also in earlier
bearing. The whole plan is only what every nursery carries out
in ornamental stock, but in apple trees must be done on the
farm where the trees are to grow, as they would be too large to
transport any distance.

Besides these various factors directly connected with profit-
able apple growing there are some others which have an indirect
efifect. The intelligent grower may find his locality or direct
market will enable him to profitably grow other kinds than
i;sually offered for sale ; this is especially true in summer and fall
varieties. Cold storage is already having its efifect upon varie-
ties used for that purpose, some keeping much better than
others. It may go much farther by allowing the grower to plant
kinds of fine quality, but not naturally late keepers, but which will
store well and be carried far beyond their season to take the
place of others not as good. Other such points indirectly affect-
ing apple culture are often arising.

However, all these ideas advanced are only the means for
carrying out the plan first proposed of cheap production and fine
fruit in the shortest possible time, and putting it upon the mar-
ket in the best manner. From men who use these means will
come a large share of apples marketed in the future in New Eng-
land.

Following Professor Gulley's paper, Herbert W. Collingwood,
editor of the Rural New Yorker, spoke for a few minutes in
favor of Mr. Hitchings' methods. He had seen the orchard, the
fruit ; and he was satisfied that the plan was a success with Mr.
Hitchings. Others had tried it, and so far he had not heard of
anyone who had followed out this method and failed. It was the
only way he knew that would grow Ben Davis apples with a
flavor to them, and any method that would make this apple fit
to eat was to be endorsed most heartily. Prof. F. A. Waugh, of
Amherst, took the ground that it was not a "New Apple Cul-
ture,'' but a lack of any culture at all. And while he could not
dispute the fact that Mr. Hitchings had succeeded in growing-
good apples in this way, yet he did not believe it would prove
equally successful in all sections of the country. The discussion
waxed warm and was brought to a close at 4.30 p.m. on account
of the necessary arrangements to be made for the banquet and
social of the Worcester County Horticultural Society.

24

SECOND DAY.

The morning- session opened promptly at 10.15 o'clock with
President Sharp in the chair. He introduced the newly elected
Secretary, Mr. F. A. Smith, of Hopedale, who thanked the As-
sociation for the honor conferred upon him, and expressed a
hope that all would feel free to ofifer advice and make sugges-
tions to him ; in fact to make him a sort of "clearing house" or
central exchange for the use of all members. •

The first paper of this session was by Dr. Ephraim Porter
I Felt, Albany, New York, State Entomologist, on — ■

SCALE INSECTS.

This is not only an interesting group to the scientist, but it is
also an important one to the farmer, the fruit-grower, and the
man interested in greenhouses. About iioo species have been
described and an industrious friend has succeeded in listing no
as occurring in Massachusetts.

Fortunately, few of these are of importance to the fruit-
grower, and for present purposes, we may limit our discussion to
three forms : the apple-tree bark louse, the scurfy bark louse and
the San Jose scale. The two former are old, well-known pests,
the first mentioned being easily recognized by its brown color
and the elongated, slightly curved scale, widening from a slender
tip to the broad rounded posterior end. The scurfy bark louse
is easily identified by its whitish color, almost snow-white
when the scale is fresh, and by its irregular quadrangular shape
with a slender anterior extremity. The male scales are elongated,
three-ridged and frequently occur in considerable numbers. This
species, when abundant upon a tree, forms a scurfy, whitish or
grayish covering which has given rise to its common name.
These two forms are occasionally very plenty and ma)^ cause
considerable injury, but as both winter in the egg stage and
all the young appear at nearly the same time, namely, during the
latter part of May or early June, in this latitude, it is compara-
tively easy to control these pests by spraying the infested trees
with such contact insecticides as kerosene emulsion or whale
oil soap solution, when the delicate young forsake the shelter
of the maternal scale.

The pernicious or San Jose scale overshadows all others at
present, as is attested by the enormous American literature re-
lating to this species, which already occupies over iioo octavo
pages and is slightly exceeded only by that of the Rocky Moun-
tain locust, with its depredations extending over a long series
of years. The San Jose scale was discovered in 1880 by Profess-

25

or Conistock, who found it abundant in California, and then
characterized it as a pernicious scale. It was first detected in
the eastern United States in 1893 and to-day holds the record
of causing more legislation than any other insect, twenty-eight
states having laws designed to restrict the spread and multipli-
cation of injurious insects, most of these enactments being
caused directly or indirectly by this species.

In spite of all these efiforts, this insect has become established
in many localities in most of the states, has ruined millions of
trees, particularly in the South, and to-day threatens destruc-
tion to many others. This is a very serious condition, the out-
come of which it is impossible to foresee in full. Recent investi-
gations have practically established the location of the original
home of this insect, which is now believed to be northern China,
and Dr. C. L. Marlatt, who investigated that section largely for
the purpose of studying the insect, came to the conclusion that
the San Jose scale was kept in check in that portion of the world
very largely through the agency of a certain lady bug or lady
beetle, which closely resembles our very common, twice-stabbed
lady beetle, familiar to most fruit growers on account of its
intensely black color and the two bright red spots, one upon the
centre of each wing cover. Specimens of this Chinese lady
beetle were secured and shipped alive to Washington, where
they were carefully colonized upon trees infested with the San
Jose scale and large numbers brought to maturity. We were
successful in obtaining a consignment of fifty of these last Au-
gust, and in turn established them upon a badly infested tree in
the vicinity of Albany, where they appeared to thrive very well
indeed, and multiplied at least three-fold before the end of the
season, incidentally destroying hosts of scale insects. It is hoped
that this little lady bug will prove a potent factor in restricting
this very pernicious scale insect, and there is a bare possibility
that the magnificent results obtained in California, when the
Australian lady beetle was imported into that section for the
control of the Cottony Cushion scale, may be duplicated in the
East. It is altogether too early to predict any such results, and
it is certainly far from advisable to await the outcome of this ex-
periment, because in the meantime thousands of trees may be
ruined by this destructive scale insect.

Fruit growers must learn to recognize this pest of the orchard
and be prepared to control it before material damage is inflicted.
Its minute size, comparative inconspicuousness and its prolifi-
cacy, constitute its most dano-erous features. Re very suspicious
of a rough bark covered with dark gray, scurfy patches, es-
pecially if a yellow fluid can be crushed therefrom with the finger
nail or a knife blade, and closely examine any rough places for

26

circular grayish, yellowish gray or blackish scales, each with a
central nipple. If it be this species, it will be found, on cutting
into the bark, that the green tissues directly under the scale have
been dyed a deep red. The fruit is very likely to be infested,
particular!}- in mid-sumnier, and each scale insect is then sur-
rounded by a very characteristic reddish discoloration, which is
also true of green twigs. The insect is so small that even when
full grown it is but 1-16 of an inch in diameter. Any of the
above signs should lead to the submission of specimens to an en-
tomologist, so that the identity of the trouble can be estab-
lished beyond question.

It may seem to the uninitiated comparatively easy to ascertain
the identity of this species by a superficial examination, but as a
matter of fact such is not the case. The scale covering the in-
sect is comparable to the garment covering a man, and within
certain limits varies almost as widely. The matter is further
complicated by the presence of a common, comparatively harm-
less scale insect which much resembles the dreaded San Jose
scale ; and then there are two other species, one recently intro-
duced and the other described within the last decade, which also
resemble the San Jose scale rather closely. It will suffice merely
to name them at the present time, as it is practically impossible
to point out differences between the species which would prove
of service to one unacquainted with these forms.

So much has been written and said about the San Jose scale
within recent years that it is hardly necessary for the writer to
go into any detailed discussion of the life, history and habits
of this species, since in a general way this is quite well known, and
so far as the practical fruit grower is concerned, it will perhaps
suffice if he is posted concerning the extended breeding season
of this species, which is one of the dangerous features. The apple-
tree bark louse and the scurfy bark louse, as previously stated,
produce all their young within a few weeks and it is compara-
tively easy to destroy most of them before they have developed
a thick protective scale covering. Such is far from being true
with the San Jose scale, which begins to produce young in this
latitude about June 20, and may, under favorable conditions,
continue to do so until into November. It should be stated,
however, that the young produced at the very end of the season
hardly ever survive the winter, since they must be partly grown
before they can withstand the rigors of our climate.

We are all more or less familiar with legislation aimed to re-
strict the dissemination of this pest, and in passing, it may be said
that much good has been accomplished by inspection and its
restrictions upon nurserv trade. The San Jose scale, however,
has become so widelv and thoroughlv established in various

27

sections of the countr)- that it is only a matter of relatively few
years before it will make its way into most of our orchards, and
the question of properly controlling it is therefore one of prime
importance at the present time.

The extended breeding season of this insect, previously men-
tioned, has led us to believe that the most successful line of
work is with the so-called "winter washes" or sprays, which
are simply very powerful insecticides applied while the trees
are destitute of foliage. These applications may be made in the
early fall, during the winter, or in early spring, but from data
at hand we are inclined to recommend the early spring treat-
ment as being the one most serviceable, because the trees appear
to be more resistant at that time, and the insecticides, as a general
thing, have very little effect upon the insects during the pro-
tracted winter, a period when there may be considerable wash-
ing and consequently loss of efficacy in the application.

The ideal treatment is fumigation with hydrocyanic gas, a
substance which is probably as effective as any material which
could be advised, but, unfortunately, the great cost of apparatus,
particularly for large tents, prohibits its use except in extensive
orchards of young trees. We would not hesitate to advise its
employment in the latter situations, but for general use in large
orchards we cannot recommend it.

Whale oil soap is one of the earliest and best known of the con-
tact insecticides and one which has been used with considerable
success. Thorough application of this substance, using 2 lbs.
of the soap to the gallon or even as little as i 1-4 lbs. to the gal-
lon, checks the scale very materially. This substance is rather
costly, its insecticidal value is not as great as one could wish, and
consequently other substances have been employed with greater
success.

Crude petroleum, either undiluted or in a mechanical or soap
emulsion, has attracted considerable attention within recent
years and in certain instances has given very excellent results,
while others have succeeded not only in killing the scale insects,
but also in destroying the trees. Our own experience with this
substance has given us great confidence in the mechanical 20 per
cent, emulsion, provided the apparatus is working correctly and
the application judiciously made.

We have used this material with excellent success, not only
upon the resistant pear and apple, but also upon the rather deli-
cate plum and the more tender peach, and in each instance have
failed to cause any material injury, even under very diverse
weather conditions and we have succeeded in checking the
San Jose scale most successfully. At the outset we were afraid
that repeated applications of this material would result in-

28

jurionsly to the trees, but after three years of work and careful
observation, we have failed to see any evidence of material injury,
and, on the contrary, have observed a decided increase in the
thrift and vigor of trees receiving this treatment.

The mechanical emulsion of crude petroleum has not been
reconmiended for summer treatment, yet the speaker's attention
was called last July to a case where a very badly infested peach
orchard was sprayed with the 20 per cent, and 25 per cent, emul-
sions of this oil. The application was made at this time be-
cause the infestation had just been discovered and was of such
a serious nature that it was thought better to risk serious injury
to the trees rather than to allow the pest to go unchecked.
S'omewhat to our surprise, though the entire trees were dripping
with the oil, practically no injury resulted beyond the dropping
of some of the leaves where the foliage was thickest and evapor-
ation presumably much slower. This was particularly true where
the 25 per cent, emulsion was used.

The protracted breeding season, as previously mentioned,
renders the use of summer sprays of comparatively little value,
and at present they are advised only as a makeshift to supple-
ment winter or early spring treatments.

Early experiments with the lime, salt and sulphur mixture in
the Eastga've unfavorable results, and itwasconcludedthatthis
was due to climatic conditions. Later experiments, however,
have been much more favorable and the present indications are
that this substance may, after all, prove one of the most feasible
methods of checking this dreaded pest.

This mixture has a curious history, as is rather quaintly given
l)y a recent writer, who states that it "was originally used in Cali-
fornia as a sheep dip, but as the fruit trees began to drive out
the sheep the application of the compound was transferred to
the trees."

This material, in spite of its history, has proved very success-
ful in California, and its ingredients have been used in widely dif-
ferent proportions in that section of the country. Recent experi-
ments have gone very far toward showing that probably, so far
as insecticidal value is concerned, this wash is just as effective
when minus the salt as when that material is present. The salt
was supposed to increase its adhesive power because such was
observed to be its influence upon whitewash, and it may also
have an additional value in increasing the density of the mix-
ture and thus aiding in keeping the constituents in suspension.
As a matter of fact, Mr. G. E. Eisher obtained the best results
with a lime suli^luir compound, minus salt, it remaining on the
trees well through the summer.

Our experiments with this material last year gave very good

29

results in two instances and in another proved an absolute fail-
ure, so far as controlling this scale insect was concerned. In no
instance were the trees injured. The failure occurred where
the application was made, just prior to a rain which continued
with very few interruptions for three days, during- which time
there fell nearly one-third of the entire precipitation of the
month. This was a very severe test, and we were glad to have
it, because we wished to know something concerning the limita-
tions of this material.

The experiments of Prof. Lowe, of the State Agricultural Ex-
periment Station, Geneva, N. Y., under substantially the same
conditions, were not so unfavorable, while Prof. S. A. Forbes,
State Entomologist, Illinois, states that this material cannot be
depended upon when the application is followed closely by rainy
weather. The formula he advises is 30 lbs. each of lime, salt
and sulphur, to 100 gallons ; the lime to be slaked in five to seven
gallons of water, which has previously been brought to a boil,
and to which the sulphur is added while the material is slaking
vigorously. This material is then boiled and constantly stirred
for an hour until the lime and sulphur have thoroughly entered
into combination, and the mixture becomes thinner and changes
from a deep orange red through several shades of yellow, ending
in a deep amber color. At this stage the salt is added and the
stirring and boiling continued fifteen minutes or twenty minutes
longer, then the whole is diluted with hot water to 100 gallons
and the material applied hot. This wash, prepared as above, can
be applied to the trees very readily and may be the best that
can be made, but from our experience we are inclined to believe
that it may prove better to add a little more lime and we have
tried a formula of 25 lbs. of lime, 20 lbs. of sulphur and 7 1-2 lbs.
of salt to 60 gallons of water. This formula makes up very
nicely and if properly prepared strains without much difficulty,
and we hope will prove just as eiTective as where a larger pro-
portion of sulphur is used. We are also testing this formula
without the salt and expect equally good results. Another mix-
ture we are testing consists of 40 lbs. of sulphur, 20 lbs. of lime
to 60 gallons of water. This is very readily prepared, there
is very little or no residue and it should have excellent insectici-
dal properties, though the thinness of the mixture, owing to the
lime all combining with the sulphur, may prove less valuable
because of its washing.

It is evident that most of the insecticidal value of this mixture
lies in the sulphur and the queston is, how much sulphur can
be used with the lime to best advantage? It does not seem as
though there should be such wide variations in the formulas used
in the eastern states, and we are at present studying this material

30

closely and endeavoring to ascertain which are the best propor-
tions and what the best method of preparation. The prolonged
boiling insisted upon in various formulas consumes considerable
time, and unless large kettles or a steam boiling plant is at hand,
hinders the progress of the work very materially. Our experi-
ments this spring indicate that a much shorter boiling gives a
very satisfactory mixture, and we have every reason for hoping
that it will prove just as valuable as an insecticide. If the Hme
be added to the hot water and the sulphur be mixed therewith
during the process of slaking, thirty minutes' active boiling will
give a very satisfactory combination, which, when strained, sprays
without difificulty. A point well worth noting in this connection,
is the influence of cold water upon the concentrated lime and sul-
phur mixture. It is sometimes very difficult to get this through
any kind of burlapping, and we accidently discovered that the
addition of a little cold water, either to the mixture in the kettle
or poured upon the strainer itself, aided very materially in
carrying it through, and apparently exercises no injurious effects
upon the compound.

The labor of preparing the lime, salt and sulphur mixture is
considerable and efiforts are now being made to simplify the
process. Professor Lowe of the State Agricultural Experiment
Station, Geneva, N. Y., has been experimenting with a mixture
that requires no boiling, and in which potash is used in place of
salt, he recommending about 1-4 pound of the potash to each
pound of sulphur. We have made up one lot of this material
and failed to get a very complete combination between the lime
and sulphur, though it may be that in future work more suc-
cessful results will be obtained. This mixture was applied to a
number of trees, which were examined after a small amount of
rain, and it was found that considerable washing had occurred.
Unless this is obviated in a better prepared mixture, the formula
is hardly likely to be a success.

We are also experimenting with lime and sulphur mixed ; while
the former is slaking violently without boiling and while no posi-
tive results may be obtained, we will at least secure data regard-
ing its value.

This lime and sulphur combination, with or without the salt,
not only possesses insecticidal properties, but it is also of con-
siderable value as a fungicide, and this latter property is in-
creased by the addition of three pounds of blue vitriol to the mix-
ture.

The lime, salt and sulphur mixture is very slow in its action
and its insecticidal value should not be judged too early in the
season. In fact a considerable proportion of its efficiency seems
to lie in the destruction of the young scales when they appear in

31

June, and even later. It adheres to the trees for a long time, and
the speaker has even observed traces of the mixture the follow-
ing November. This slowness of action is another reason why
the application of this material in particular should be delayed
as much as possible.

The dilatory action of this wash has led us to ask the ques-
tion whether, some substance could not be sprayed upon the trees
in early June which would not injure the foliage, but would de-
stroy the young scales, and remain upon the trees practically the
entire breeding season. It may be that nothing of the kind can
be found, and previous to making any tests it is not advisable to
more than mention the matter.

In conclusion, it should be stated that the lime, salt and sul-
phur mixture is rather difficult to prepare, is very disagree-
able to handle, and exceedingly injurious to apparatus, clothes
and temper. Another objection to this material, as compared
with crude petroleum, is the difficulty of thoroughly covering the
trees, it never running around the limb as does the oil, and it is
practically impossible to secure a uniform coating of the sub-
stance on the smooth, glossy tips of the small limbs.

It is one of the cheapest mixtures we have at hand, possesses
some fungicidal properties, at least, and when applied with or
without blue vitriol, may save one spraying for the orchardist.
It is still early to pronounce positively regarding the value of
this material in the eastern United States. If we can find a
mixture which will stay upon the trees, and kill the insects, even
though the application is followed closely by protracted rains, it
will be a general remedy for these scale insects in the East, but if,
on the contrary, we must have several days of clear weather, or
our spraying counts for nothing, its value will be seriously
marred.

Finall}', we must remember that the key-note of, and almost
the only essential in fighting scale insects, is thoroughness in
treatment. The most modern apparatus and the very best in-
secticides amount to little if not used with thoroughness.

Jonathan Eames, of Sherborn, asked how the ordinary farmer
could detect the presence of scale insects upon 'his fruit trees,
and what was the distinguishing peculiarity of the San Jose scale.

Dr. Felt went on to say that it was principally by the general
appearance of the tree, and also of the fruit it produced. When-
ever there is anything unusual in the appearance of a tree, it is
time for the owner to become suspicious. Sometimes the scale
is found on the old wood near where it joins the new, and fre-

32

quently the leaves show the presence of insects by their sickly
appearance. In order to be sure what kind of scale is found, one
should examine it with a good strong pocket lens, and usually
when it is circular, and has a prominent apex or nipple, it will
be found to be the San Jose scale.

Dr. Felt considered crude oil preferable to refined oils. On
some trees he had found the refined oil killed the tree before it
killed the scale, while the crude petroleum was generally more
satisfactory, and less liable to injure the tree. He did not un-
qualifiedly endorse either crude or refined oil, but stated that at
present they seemed to be the best protection we have against
the San Jose scale.

Fruit growers should experiment carefully with some one
grade of oil obtainable, and notice the results. When they
fintl the proper amount that can be used with safety to the tree,
and yet kill the scale, then follow up this treatment. The apple
and pear will stand a stronger spray than the peach and plum.

Dr. Felt spoke at some length on the need of nursery inspec-
tion and fimiigation of all trees and shrubs before planting.

The second speaker of the forenoon was then introduced by
President Sharp, and spoke as follows :

A TRADES UNION FOR MASSACHUSETTS.

Arthur A. Brigham, Ph. D.

At the present day, with numberless object lessons before us
of successful and profitable co-operation in busine«!S, there would
seem to be no need of argument to induce the fruit growers of
Massachusetts to unite in a practical plan for selling their fruit
crops.

The alert Secretary of your live association asserts that a
number of your members are earnestly desirous of establishing
what may, for lack of a better term, be designated a Trades
Union of Massachusetts Fruit Growers. To-day you wish to
know what can be done. Partly to answer this point, let us con-
sider what ha's been done in Massachusetts and elsewhere by
farmers in this line. An example of successful, progressive,
financial co-operation of farmers is right here in your midst.

The Grange Insurance Company, in the year ending Dec. i,
1902, wrote $407,608 of insurance on farm buildings, no one
risk exceeding $1500. The receipts for premium were $3272.36.

33

The losses form in number $150. To get at the heart of this
business, we quote from the report of Secretary Elmer D.
Howe :

"Notwithstanding the eminently satisfactory condition of the
company, which these figures clearly indicate, it is almost amus-
ing to find that they are criticised on the one hand by the over-
cautious as showing too large a business being done on too
small a margin, while on the other hand, the parsimoniously
inclined are inquiring, 'What are you going to do with all your
money ?'

"To the first, we would say, in proportion to the business we
are doing and the plan upon which we are doing it, the amount
of cash on hand is larger than that of three-fourths of the mutual
companies doing business in the state ; while, if comparison is
made on the basis of losses in proportion to premiums collected,
not one of the twenty-six largest mutuals makes so favorable
a showing as we do.

"It is now nearly two years since we announced our belief that
selected farm risks were a class by themselves, and ought not
to bear the burdens of insurance which rest upon farm property
as a whole. The old line mutuals, with no means of picking out
these selected farm risks, have watched our experiment with a
good deal of incredulity, and for the first year utterly refused
to have anything to do with us,

"Toward the close of the second year, two of the oldest and
strongest of them have virtually admitted our contention by
offering to write a concurrent policy on any property our com-
pany sees fit to accept."

So much for our cautious brother, who has thus far hesitated
to patronize a company that wants to help him demonstrate that
his risk is above the average for safety. Now just a word for
the other who, not satisfied with a safe insurance at less cost than
he can get it elsewhere, wants to be assured of a big dividend
beside.

You, my brother, represent a large number of our members,,
and so we want to answer your objection or criticism at some
length. In the first place, you will probably admit that unless
you feel sure a policy will be paid in case of loss, said policy
would not be worth the paper it is written on. The only thing
which gives value to a policy is the assets of a company, over
and above its liabilities. Now, the assets of a company doing
business on the plan we are following, are its actual cash and its
deposit notes.

Even the dullest financier can see that the larger the amount
of actual cash, the smaller is the liability of an assessment on
these notes, aiid so long as the actual cash collected is sufficient

34

to pay expenses and losses, the notes never will, nay, further,
never can be assessed.

This point is carefully guarded by statute law. Hence, we be-
lieve our policy holders, as a rule, will favor the plan of carrying
a fairly large amount in the treasury, and thus avoid all assess-
ments, if possible, rather than declaring such dividends as shall
keep the treasury constantly on the verge of an assessment. At
the same time, if such good fortune as has been ours for the last
two years shall continue, we shall certainly be able to pay back
some of the money now being collected.

But, remember, the first thing we want is insurance.

From a letter of Siecretary Howe, we quote : "Our insurance is
a success, not because there has been a clamoring for it, nor be-
cause there was spontaneous willingness on the part of our
members to help one another. It is wholly due to the push of
about half a dozen who are simply compelling our members to
take hold. So far, good fortune has been ours in the matter of
losses, and the work is getting easier, but the true test will come
when we have a run of hard luck. An assessment would pick
out the true co-operators with unerring certainty. In addition
to the report inclosed, I have to say that we have written since
Jan. I, about $100,000, and our losses continue light."

You will say this is not selling fruits. What example is there
of successful co-operation in selling fruit in the Old Bay State?
None that I know of, and it remains for the Association to make
an example.

For examples of successful sales by union of growers' inter-
ests, w^e go to the middle western states, and to California,
where Massachusetts men are showing us who are left behind,
how to solve a great many agricultural problems with success.

We ofifer the following items which your busy Secretary has
gathered, concerning a Fruit Growers' Association in one of the
states near the Great Lakes. This union is incorporated, hav-
ing paid $20 in attorney's fees in order that its articles of in-
corporation, its constitution a'nd by-laws should conform to the
State laws.

Five years ago this Association organized with 15 members,
and now has 150, controls 500 acres of small fruits, sales first
year Siooo at a cost of 7 per cent, of gross receipts. Last year,
1902, sales $45,500 at a cost of 2 8-10 per cent. The able Secre-
tary of this Association says : "Much depends on your general
manager. A man that knows good fruit, grower or not. Good
bookkeeper. Understands law. A hustler. Busy season, 5 a.na.
to 9 or 12 at night, $150 per month, three helpers in office, also
salesman, besides two or three helpers, two or three hours every
evening; 200 to 1000 cases at evening besides daytime.

35

"Manager full charge of fruit, filling all orders and shipping
to best merchants. Get orders from 75 to 100 different parties
daily in the rush. General manager collects all money ; turns it
over to bank. General manager writes checks, and not the
treasurer. Payments once a week to growers, less 10 per cent,
of money collected ; less charge to express account. Two
years ago did not lose a dollar out of $25,000. Last year lost
$60 by one assignment ; may get 20 per cent, of that yet.

"Special low rates on express by railroads. Stock $200 per
share a life member. Fruit Growers' Association at San Jose,
Gal., like ours, sells hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth
every year, of prunes and dried fruits. Train loads sometimes
ship direct to New York, Boston and Europe. Get 3 cents per
lb. for prunes, when before i cent to 1V2 cents. One grower
sold $10,000 worth of prunes on the trees last year.

"If a success, a great saving. First two years we sent our
general manager out two or three weeks before berry season to
solicit orders and introduce Association to the trade. Since that
our business increased, so there is no need to. Fruit advertised
itself. Well located, eighteen or twenty miles from Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Over 400,000 population. Dispose of surplus if
some to soft to ship."

In general, peach growers in the Eastern States are very care-
less, almost indifferent, as to the manner of shipping fruit to
market, and the result is that such fruit, while often of a very-
superior quality, rarely brings as good prices as inferior fruit
put up with special pains to make it attractive. The baskets in
general use in the Eastern States are too large for retail trade.
Growers of peaches on a large scale in New Jersey, Delaware
and Maryland seem to think that they cannot handle their vast
quantities of fruit in small baskets. Growers in Michigan and
California have learned better and send their fruit out in much
more attractive form, the result being that they get better prices.
Florida fruit also comes to market in good shape, and the Florida
crate is one of the best.

The choicest grades of peaches should never be sent to mar-
ket in large baskets, but each peach should be wrapped sepa-
rately and sent with as much care as eggs, if the best prices are
desired. For the canning house and the wholesale trade, the
Delaware basket is undoubtedly one of the most convenient
forms for shipment. Inferior fruit should be kept at home and
dried or fed to the pigs. The unprofitable handling of a large
part of such fruit might be avoided by thinning, as already
suggested.

In years of great abundance another serious cause of loss is
due to what are known as slumps in the market. Most eastern-

36

grown peaches find their way to a few large markets, where
prices necessarily break down when a large quantity of fruit is
suddenly thrown upon them. At times when a glut exists, even
the best fruit will scarcely pay for the baskets in which it is
shipped, much less for transportation, picking, packing, etc., and
this may happen several times during the season. This ruin-
ous state of affairs is not attributable to overproduction, but to
mal-distribution. The crying need in the Eastern States is for a
system of distribution which will prevent gluts in the market.
It is well known that at the very time when these slumps occur
in New York and other large centres, hundreds of smaller towns
in the interior cannot procure peaches at any price.

The writer has frequently paid five cents apiece for quite ordi-
nary peaches in interior towns in New York and Pennsylvania,
and farther west when the finest peaches could be scarcely given
away in New York and Philadelphia. This suggests that much
loss could be avoided by a well-organized system of distribution.
Just how this shall finally be brought about is a dif^cult problem
to solve, but it is certainly one of the things which peach growers
must study to accomplish. It is worth the earnest consideration
of pomological associations, boards of agriculture, and all who
are interested in growing peaches.

It would seem that there might be some arrangement with the
local dealers in many of the smaller towns in the eastern United
States, and with large dealers in the cities, wherebytelegraphic
advice could be sent every day during the season to some central-
ly located place in each peach region, and thence communicated
to all growers. In this way it would be known where the market
was full and where empty, and shipment could be arranged ac-
cordingly. Co-operation is the keynote of success. Indeed,
without hearty co-operation and compact organization, little or
nothingcanbe accomplished, andyettosecure and maintain such
organization presents the chief difficulty. Home consumption
is another way to avoid gluts in the market ; also the judicious
use of canning and drying houses.

Without co-operation and organization, the marketing of fruit
is largely a gamble dependent upon luck. To form a success-
ful organization, all that is needed is for the fruit growers to
agree upon the essential principles. Make an agreement and
stick to it. Put all jealousy and ill-feeling one side. If you
must quarrel, select some one outside of the organization to
quarrel with. Be sure to pick out the right man for manager.
Don't make a man manager just because he wants the job.

You can find plenty of men to take any job in sight, but they
are not the men you want. Get somebody you know and have
confidence in. Don't select a man who has made a failure of his

37

own private business, for he will be just as likely to make a
failure of your business. Pick out a first class successful man.
Such men may say they have no time to devote to anything
but their own business. Offer them such inducements as will
make them accept your ofifer, and you will find the money is
wisely expended.

Don't try to secure a capable manager for $1.50 a day, for you
can't find one who will work at that price. If any three large
fruit growers in this section should combine their interests, an
effective organization could be immediately started, provided
the smaller fruit growers were willing to co-operate in the plan.
Fruit growers and farmers will eventually find they must organ-
ize or be driven to the wall, for single handed they cannot hope
to cope with the powerful business, and financial combinations
which they encounter to-day on all sides.

Following this paper there was a very general discussion of the
subject, and Dr. Brigham's ideas were quite generally indorsed.

Secretary Whitney said, combination and consolidation was
the order of the day in every line of business. The farmer and
the fruit grower must organize into some sort of a union to
successfully carry on his work. The Western fruit growers are
outstripping those here in the East, and the most humiliating
feature of it all is that these very men are, for the most part,
New England Yankees who have gone West and are now
showing their brothers at home how to do business.

No better apples can be raised anywhere in the country than
here on your own rocky hillsides, where the soil and climate
will produce the best colored and the best flavored fruit that
ever grew. Yet, the greatest need of the farmer to-day is
system. Having raised his fruit, he must dispose of it at once,
and usually places his entire crop in the hands of a commission
man. The result you all know from experience. Your fruit and
your confidence generally go together.

George T. Powell, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., spoke interest-
ingly on the decadence of the New England apple industry. He
said Western buyers had no confidence in the fruit from this
section, and until conditions were changed, they would not
handle it. Mr. Powell said that a policy of absolute honesty in
packing accompanied by organization would bring about great
improvement in the apple trade. After some further discussion

38

by many of the members, Mr. C. E. Burnap, of Fitchburg,.
brought the matter to a point by moving- that a committee of five
be appointed by the President, to investigate the advisability of
forming a co-operative fruit sellers' association, and report its
findings to t'he Board of Directors. If possible to accomplish
anything in this line, to organize in time to handle the crop of
this year.

Secretary Whitney suggested that the Board of Directors was
such a large and unwieldy body that it was difficult to get even
one half of them together, save at the time of the annual meet-
mg, and he thought it better to let the committee report to the
Association at their next meeting. He also favored giving the
committee full power to act in the matter, even to the extent of
handling trial shipments packed under their supervision. He
said three men could do as much in this way as five, and very
likely do it much quicker,

Mr. Burnap accepted the suggestion, and made his motion to
cover these points. At this juncture the meeting adjourned till
2 p.m.

Afternoon Session.

President Sharp in the chair.

The subject for the afternoon lecture was, "Intensive Orchard-
ing" and the speaker, Mr. George T. Powell of Poughkeepsie,.
N. Y. This proved to be one of the best things on the program.
Mr. Powell spoke for an hour and a half without notes, and
illustrated his ideas of pruning trees before setting them out, by
taking two trees fresh from the nursery, and pruning them before
the audience to bring the tree into the shape he desired.

An abstract of his address follows :

INTENSIVE ORCHARD CULTURE.

By Geo. T. Powell.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : In discussing the sub-
ject of "Intensive Orcharding" I shall not give consideration to-
the exceptional conditions that exist on many farms in New Eng-
land, but treat the subject from the standpoint of a commercial
proposition, and this means choosing the most favorable loca-

39

tion for orchards, and the best land that can be devoted to the
business.

I know that your State, together with other New England
States, has many steep and stony hillsides upon which apple
trees are now standing, and while these may be made valuable,
I shall not recommend such land for orcharding where better can
be afforded, for the problem of competition enters into considera-
tion, and we shall have to meet this from all sections in the
future.

I would not advise farmers to attempt to raise wheat on these
hills, for it cannot be done profitably in competition with the
level land of the West, where machinery and men can be used
to the best possible advantage. Neither would I advise planting
apple orchards on land that is better adapted to the growth of
forest trees.

You have many thousand acres of land that are well adapted
to orchard purposes, and the high value of fruit products war-
rants the use of the best land you have upon your farms.

New England soil is by no means exhausted of fertility even
after a century of production. There is not an acre of ex-
hausted soil in New England, but much of it is in what might
more properly be called a depleted condition. Its mechanical
condition is poor and hard, and after many years of continued
cropping, its organic or vegetable contents have been largley used
up, hence I shall consider first the needs of your soil from the
tillage point, and later the building up of its organic matter.

The first process of soil improvement must begin with good
tillage. The soil may be abundantly supplied with plant food,
yet unless it is in such condition that plants can obtain readily
what they require for their development, it is of little value.

The most defective part in all of our farming operations is
our lack of thorough tillage, and in the first and most important
part that of plowing. Plowing means vastly more than turn-
ing under, or destroying one kind of vegetation, that we may
grow another. Its purpose is to prepare the soil in such manner,
and to produce such conditions that the crop to follow may
obtain from it the nourishment required for its best develop-
ment.

In purchasing a plow, many farmers will try the one that
sihows 'the lightest draught, and with least resistance will
turn the smoothest furrow, and leave the land in the most even
condition. That is considered the best plowing. This is by no
means the real object to be obtained in plowing. In a plow we
need the different parts, the shear, the land side and the mold
board so constructed, that from the first breaking and move-
ment of the furrow slice, until it finally turns over, every particle

40

of the soil is broken, twisted and ground in the most thorough
manner. This will not leave the soil in a smooth, finely finished
level form that is generally considered the best plowing, but will
put it in the best possible shape for further preparation of the
crop. As a rule, furrows are cut too wide, and turned over too
flat. We are too much in a hurry to get over a large piece in a
day. As we need to put the soil in the finest condition mechan-
ically, a jointer is valuable to use, as it assists in the breaking
process. This first breaks and begins to turn the furrow, and
with a narrower cut the entire furrow is rolled, and more
thoroughly broken and crushed. This will leave the soil in
ridges, and when the harrow is used, it will tear and break the
soil very much more completely than where it is thrown over in
wide and broken slices. I will here illustrate upon the black-
board the difference in the form of the furrow slices as I have
explained, and the difference in the condition of the soil where
the jointer is used and where it is not.

Harrowing should be done not once or twice, but until the soil
is reduced to a proper condition of fineness, if it should require
ten times going over to obtain this. The Cutaway and the Acme
harrows should be used as additional implements in the operation
of tillage.

All of this has a direct bearing on the elements of fertility in
the soil which are still abundant, but need to be made more
readily available by more refining processes in tillage. This is
the process necessary in preparing soil for orchards, and it calls
for land that can be so tilled, for working short of these intensive
methods will not give the best results in fruit culture.

The second important principle in soil improvement is the in-
corporation of organic matter. This can be done while the pro-
cess of production is going on, especially in cultivated crops,
such as orchard trees, some of the small fruits and corn. The
green crops most valuable are clover and peas, but buckwheat,
oats and rye can be used for this purpose.

It is well known to every farmer at present that when he
plows in a clover sward, he usually gets a satisfactory crop of
whatever kind it may be. There is seldom a failure recorded in
any crop, regardless of the character of the season, when it can
be grown upon a clover prepared soil. It furnishes a larger
amount of humus, which holds water abundantly. It also sup-
plies nitrogen chiefly, while its roots penetrate the soil deeply,
bringing plant food from the sub-soil to the surface, and at the
same time they are giving good mechanical condition by making
many openings for the admission of air, and for the more perfect
drainage of water.

In our orchard methods we push cultivation vigorously from

41

the earliest possible opportunity in the spring. We desire to
get wood growth as early as possible, as fruit buds do not begin
the most active development until wood growth ceases. The
evaporation of water from the soil is very rapid during the spring
months, and during this period the most vigorous growth of the
tree takes place. It is when the water supply becomes largely
reduced that wood growth ceases, and flower buds develop most
actively. For this reason I do not like grass or grain crops in
orchards. They take up water too largely, and to the detriment
of the trees.

While Mr. Hitchings' sod system may give him good results on
his rich moist land, it would not be practical on the dryer land,
with which the great majority have to deal. Grass will eliminate
water from the soil more rapidly than most any other plant. On
a bright, sunny June day, an acre of grass will take up from the
soil and pa'ss off into the atmosphere over loo tons of wate**,
and this in an orchard would be, and is, disastrous on most
soils.

Clean soil and frequent tillage does two important things. It
liberates and makes more readily available plant food, while at
the same time it conserves soil moisture, and is especially valu-
able when early drouglits occur, as they frequently do.

About July I St, we cease cultivation in orchards, sowing from
twelve to fifteen pounds of crimson and medium red clover
mixed, which makes a good cover crop for the winter, prevents
loss of nitrates liberated by intensive tillage, saves soil from
washing away during rains a'nd adds all the nitrogen needed
for the trees and fruit. This is plowed in early the following
spring, and the same system of tillage is continued.

The next important operation in starting an orchard, is in
securing the best trees possible. For twelve years I have been
making careful experiments along the line of the selection o<^
scions and buds from trees having certain characteristics. In
pruning apple trees, I discovered that the Northern Spy had ex-
ceedingly hard wood, was free from all forms of disease, and up-
on two year old trees of this variety, I set scions of the King,
from specially selected trees at Ithaca, N. Y.

The King is constitutionally defective, and is easily attacked
by apple canker, which destroys trees before they reach a profit-
able bearing age. By inserting scions from the most perfect
trees to be found in these hardy Spy stocks, we have at
present a very productive and entirely healthy King orchard, that
has borne fruit regularly since six years from the top working.

We have spent millions of dollars for the importation of fine
stock that has been bred along definite lines for many years, yet
for as many years we have planted orchards that represent as

42

high price products as live stock, and have done so without
recognizing the value of this principle of the individual charac-
teristic of trees, or of the buds upon the same tree. To illustrate
this principle, I will show you upon these trees (samples shown)
the operation of top working.

I asked Mr. Nelson Bogue, of Batavia, N. Y., to send me these
trees for this purpose. They are American seedlings worked on
French roots, and are remarkably strong and fine. The trees
should be set in the autumn, in all but extreme cold sections, and
in the following August, buds selected from vigorous bearing
trees of the varieties desired, and inserted in the branches that
are left. I will prune this tree, taking out the centre branches,
leaving it with four branches that make the permanent tree. Up-
on these four branches insert the buds, and in the following
spring cut away the wood beyond the buds, and upon such trees
as these with good culture, fruit will begin to appear in three or
four years, and steadily increase thereafter. By no means leave
on any fruit, but keep it cut ofif until the trees are suflficiently
developed to carry the crop. It is desirable to develop the bear-
ing quality, but when done control it.

I believe New England has possibilities in land value not yet
understood. There will yet be a demand for the deserted farms
of which we have heard. For the past third of a century the
best blood has been getting away from New England soil, the
tendency of population has been to concentrate in large cities,
but this has its dangers, and is not for the best interests of
our country.

When the safe and conservative element of our rural com-
munities is lost in the affairs of legislation, and cities rule the
nation, then we shall feel the first real danger to safe and just
government. The recent revelations in several large cities,
where crime and vice were not only licensed, but their un-
licensed pursuit, actually sold for private gain and wealth, are not
only astounding, but are an indication of the dangers that
threaten our entire social fabric and the perpetuity of good
government. The present tendency of great corporate interests
to over-capitalize their business is not in the best interest of
these masses. A few may amass great wealth in a short period,
but if the masses are impoverished at the same time, or at least
have to struggle for existence, it is only a question of time when
the foundations of the strongest government will be shaken. It
is only when the agriculture of a nation is fostered and prosper-
ous that other industries have stability and are prospered.

There are unmistakable signs that a movement from our cities
back to the country has begun. New England farms will again
be in demand. New England soil will again be populated by an

43

intelligent, sturdy type of people, such as have contributed in
the past so largely to the building up of the best government
that history has recorded. This future growth will, however, be
along the lines of horticultural development, as in this is larger
value, and it calls for the exercise of a higher degree of knowl-
edge and skill. There is certainly to come to New England a
higher development in agriculture than has yet been known in
any period of her past history.

Many questions were asked Mr. Powell, and he answered
fully. He advised planting apple trees from 35 to 40 feet apart,
according to soil and varieties.

Nelson Bogue,Batavia,N. Y.,the nurseryman, who raisedthe
small trees used by Mr. Powell in his demonstration of pruning,
spoke in the highest terms of the apples exhibited in the hall,
and said the New England farmers did not appreciate the value
of their hillsides for orcharding, or the financial returns that
could be derived from them by proper care and cultivation.

He also explained the methods employed in growing such
hardy, straight, well-balanced trees as those he brought to the
meeting. They were grown on French roots, which are much
superior to any we can grow in this country. He also told of a
series of experiments he conducted in France.

After Mr. Bogue resumed his seat a rising vote of thanks was
tendered the Worcester County Horticultural Society for its
courtesy and kindness in providing a hall for the meeting, and
also extended to the speakers for their efforts.

There being no further business the meeting adjourned at
4.20 p.m.

CONSTITUTION,

ARTICLE I.

Name.

This organization shall be called the "Massachusetts Fruit
Growers' Association."

ARTICLE II.

Object.

The object of this Association shall be to encourage the culti-
vation of fruits adapted to this climate ; to collect and dissemi-
nate reliable information on the best varieties of fruits, and
practical methods of cultivation, gathering, packing, storing
and preparation of fruit, for both home and foreign markets;
to investigate diseases, insects and other obstacles to success,
and the remedies best calculated to overcome them.

ARTICLE III.

Officers.

The officers of this Association shall be a President, Vice-
president, Secretary, Treasurer, an Auditor and a Board of
Directors consisting of twenty-four members, two from each
county, as far as practicable,

ARTICLE IV.

Membership.

Each member shall pay an admission fee of one dollar, and
an annual assessment of one dollar, which shall be due at the
time of the annual meeting.

*Wiih revisions to date.

46

ARTICLE V.

Meetings.

Section i. This Association shall hold at least two regular
meetings each year. The annual meeting, for the election of
officers, shall be held in the city of Worcester, on the second
Wednesday of March at 2 o'clock p.m.

Sect. 2. In the election of officers and the transaction of
other business, twenty members shall constitute a quorum; a
majority vote shall constitute an election. All officers shall
hold over until their successors are chosen.

ARTICLE VI.

Special Meetings.

The President and Secretary shall have power to call special
meetings of the Association, or of the Directors ; or upon the
written petition of fifteen members they shall issue such call.
The object of these meetings shall be stated in the call, which
shall be issued by mail to each member, at least seven days
prior to such meetings.

ARTICLE VII.

Amendments.

Any amendment to this constitution may be made by a vote
of two-thirds of the members present and voting; a notice of
the proposed change having been given at a previous regular
meeting.

BY-LAWS.

Duty of the President.

1. The President shall preside at all meetings of the
Association and perform such duties as pertain to the office.
In his absence his duties shall devolve upon the Vice-president,
or, in his absence, upon the director for the county in which
the meeting may be held.

Duty op the Secretary.

2. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to attend all meetings
of the Association, and keep a record of its transactions ; con-
duct all correspondence ; keep a list of members of the Associa-
tion; collect the assessments and pay over the same to the
Treasurer; notify members of their election and members of
committees of their appointment.

Duty of the Treasurer.

3. The Treasurer shall have charge of all moneys belonging
to the Association ; he shall keep a record of all receipts and
disbursements ; he shall pay out money only on bills approved
by the President and Secretary ; he shall report in writing at the
annual meeting; he shall keep a list of members and their
palaces of residence, and at the close of his term of office turn
over all records and funds in his possession to his successor

Duty of the Auditor.

4. The Auditor shall examine and report upon the books and
accounts of the Treasurer; he shall be entitled to demand all
books, papers and vouchers three days previous to the annual
meeting.

Duties of Directors.

5. The duties of the Directors shall be to bring the objects
and interests of the Association to the notice of the people of
their several counties ; to urge their claims and endeavor to in-

48

crease the membership ; they shall examine and report on newly
introduced varieties in their several localities, as to their quality
and probable value for general cultivation.

Election of Officers.

6. The President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and
Auditor shall be elected by ballot, and the Board of Directors
by a majority vote of the members present; they shall hold
ofifice till their successors are duly elected; the first five officers
shall be ex-ofRcio members of the Board of Directors.

Vacancies.

7. Vacancies in any office caused by resignation, death, or
removal from the State, shall be filled by the Board of Directors
for the unexpired term of their office.

Discontinuance of Membership.

8. Any member who shall neglect, for a period of two years,
to pay his annual assessments, shall cease to retain his connec-
tion with the Association, and the Secretary shall have power to
erase his name from the list of members.

fN Force.

9. These articles shall take effect and be in force from their
adoption by a majority vote of the Association.

Amendments.

10. These By-Laws may be amended at any meeting of the
Association by a majority vote of the members present and
voting, notice of the change proposed having been made at a
previous meeting.

MEMBERS.

Adams, Erastus, No. Grafton.
Adams, J. T. Medway.
Allen, J. A. Worcester.
Allen, W. O. Northboro.
Anderson, H, W. Worcester.
Andrews, H. J. Fitchburg.
Avery, J. G. Spencer.

Bacon, E. P. Spencer.
Bailey, J. E. F. Lancaster.
Ball, H. S. Shrewsbury.
Bardwell, W. H. Colrain.
Barker, John, No. Andover.
Barrett, W. M. Westboro.
Batcheller, F. E. Lawrence.
Bates, Edwin, Lynn.
Bill, Ledyard, Paxton.
Blake, C. S. Ashbv.
Blake, F. A. Rochdale.
Bliss, Ethelbert, Wilbraha'm.
Bliss, W. M. Wilbraham.
Bolan, George, Gleasondale.
Bolles, C. P. ' Wilbraham.
Boutwell, F. M. Groton.
Bowker, J. B. Worcester.
Bowker, W. H. Boston.
Brigham, Clarence, Colrain.
Brooks, Ethan, W. Springfield.
Brown, C. H. Fitchburg.
Brown, F. H. Marlboro.
Brown, L. C. No. Natick.
Brown, N. P. Westboro.
Brown, O. F. Hamilton.
Bruce, E. M. Leominster.
Buckley, C. E. Northboro.
Burgess, S. A. Worcester.
Burnap, C. E. Fitchburg.
Burnap, E. S. Fitchburg.
Burpee, W. H. Leominster.
Buss, C. S. Leominster.
Butterick, G. F. Sterling.

Ca'pen, Abraham, Spencer.
Caswell, A. B. Fitchburg.
Chadbourne, A. H. Worcester.
Chamberlain, B. M. Worcester.
Chase, J. S. Maiden.
Chase, L. M. Holden.
Chickering, J. H. Grafton.
Clark, J. W. No. Hadley.
Coggswell, H. F. Fitchburg.
Collins, E. F. Southboro.
Cook, F. E. Milford.
Cook, H. A. Shrewsbury.
Cook, H. H. Northboro.
Coombs, Edwin, Colrain.
Coombs, Robert, Colrain.
Copeland, E. F. Colrain.
Cornwell, Dean, Lunenburg.
Cromack, Frank, Colra'in.
Cromack, H. C. Colrain.
Cruickshanks, G. Fitchburg.
Gushing, C. G. Fitchburg.
Cutting, Edward, Colrain.

Daniels, F. T. Sherborn.
Damon, Isaac, Wayland.
Damon, S. C. Lancaster.
Davenport, C. E. Colrain.
Davenport, Jno. Colrain.
Dennison, Arthur, Colrain.
Derby, Alden, Leominster.
Donelson, C. L. Colrain.
Draper, James, Worcester.
Drew, G. A. Amherst.
Dunnell, F. A. Colrain.

Fames, Jonatha'n, Sherborn.
Eaton, C. B. Worcester.
Ellsworth, J. L. Worcester.
Emerson, Albert, Haverhill.
Emerson, E. A. Haverhill.
Emerson, N. W. Boston.

50

Emerson, S. J. Lunenburg.
Esterbrook, ]. D. Westboro.

Fairbanks, Chas. Colrain.
Fairbanks, Oscar, Colrain.
Farr, G. H. Oxford.
Farrar, E. R. So. Lincoln.
Fish, C. R. Worcester.
Fisk, D. L. Grafton.
Fiske, G. B. Holliston.
Fitch, Elija'h, Hopkinton.
Fletcher, E. S. Thompson, Ct.
Flint, E. F. So. Lincoln.
Foskett, A. J. Westminster.
Fowler, W. J. Boston.
French, W. A. Hopewell. N. J-
Fuller, H. C. Leominster.

Geer, J. T. Three Rivers.
German Kali Works,

New York city.
Gififord, J. E. Sutton.
Gilson, E. F. Groton.
Graham, G. S. Holden.
Green, J. E. Worcester.
Gregory, Edgar, Middleton.
Gregory, J. J. H. Marblehead.
Grout, H. F. Melrose.
Gunn, L. O. Miller's Falls.

Hadwen, O. B. Worcester.
Hall, Walton, Marshfield.
Hammond, F. H. Worcester.
Harlow, H. J. Shrewsbury.
Harlow, Thomas, Shrewsbury.
Harrington, H. A. Peabody.
Harrington, J. L. Lunenburg.
Hartshorn, C. L. Worcester.
Hartwell, Samuel, Lincoln.
Haskell, E. B. Southbridge.
Havener, R. Gardner.
Hawkins, A. C. Lancaster.
Hayward, C. F. Ashby.
Hersey, E. A. Westboro.
Hill, J. W. Boston.
Hillman, Charles, Colrain.

Hinds, A. J. Townsend.
Hinds, W. D. Townsend.
Hittinger, Richard, Belmont.
Hixon, A. A. Worcester.
Holden, A. B. Westminster.
Holden, E. J. Sherborn.
Hosmer, W. H. Leominster.
Houghton. H. R. Lunenburg.
Howard, J. Hal. Colrain.
Howe, E. D. Marlboro.
Howes. W. E. No. Bellingham.
Hubbard. C. G. Berlin.
Hunt, J. A. Fitchburg.
Hunt, VV. H. Concord.

James, G. B. Boston.
Jewett, W. C. Worcester.
Johnson, Everett, Colrain.
Johnson, W. H. Northboro.
Jones, N. R. Billerica.

Kemp, Harvey. Colrain.
Kemp, Walter, Colrain.
Kendall, H. P. Sterling.
Kendrick, F. L. Colra'in.
Kilbourn, Wm. So. Lancaster.
Kimball, J. E. Oxford.
Kingsbury, H. H. Spencer.
Kinney, F. J. Worcester.
Kinney, H. R. Worcester.
Knapp, G. S. Groton.

Lawrence, J. E. Northboro.
Leavens. G. D. Grafton.
Lewis, J. E. Holliston.
Litchfield, T- A. Lunenburg.
Longlev. M. W. Shirlev.
Lyford; W. C. Natick.

Maclnnes, J. C. Worcester.
Macuen, A. T. Milford.
Macuen, G. L. Milford.
Magoon, H. B. Lunenburg.
Manning, J. W. Reading.
Marean, Ambrose, Medway.
Ma'rshall. A. A. Fitchburg.

51

Marshall, I. H. Still River.
Maynard. C. B. So. Berlin.
Maynard, L. R. So. Berlin.
Maynard, S. T. North'boro.
McClellan, J. E. Grafton.
Mead, H. O. Lunenburg.
Mentzer, C. H. Northboro.
Mentzer, T. E. Northboro.
Mentzer, W. A. Northboro.
Merrifield, F. L. Colrain.
Merrill, Arthur, Wilkinsonville.
Metcalf, A. A. Holden.
Miller, Calvin, Worcester.
Miller, E. C. Haydenville.
Minott, C. W. West Somerville.
Moore, Elliott, Worcester.
Moore, H. W. Worcester.
Morse, G. F. La'ncaster.
Morse, Monroe, Medway.
Mossman, F, W. Westminster.
Munson, W. A. Huntington.

Nason. J. H. West Boxford.
Nourse, A. M. Westboro.

O'Connell, Wm. Worcester.
Overend, W. E. Worcester.

Page, J. N. Leominster.
Palmer, M. P. Groton.
Parker, C. E. Worcester.
Parker, Edmund. Westboro.
Parker, H. L. Worcester.
Parker, J. M. Medway.
Perry, A. D. Worcester.
Perry, O. H. J., Jr.

Providence, R. L
Pevear, H. A. Lynn.
Phelps, A. D. Northboro.
Pierce. T- W. West Millbury.
Piatt, N. S. New Haven, Ct.
Powell. E. C. Springfield.
Pratt, Augustus, N. Middleboro,
Pratt, C. S. Reading.
Pratt, H. S. Worcester.
Preston, E. O. Grove, Vt.

Priest, L. F. Glea'sondale.
Prouty, C. N. Spencer.
Puffer, H. C. Springfield.
Putnam, D. O. West Sutton.
Putnam, Henry, Worcester.
Putnam, O. J. Leominster.

Race, R. H. No. Egremont.
Raddin, S. H. Groton.
Randlett, N. Northboro.
Raymond, O. B. Westminster.
Record, S. H. Worcester.
Reed, J. O. Greenville. N. H.
Reed, S. H. West Brookfield.
Rice, G. C. Worcester.
Rice, L. W. Wilbraham.
Rich, H. E. Worcester.
Rogers, H. O. Holliston.
Root, H. D. Colrain.
Ross, W. D. Worcester.
Russell, F. A. Methuen.
Russell, Walker, Northboro.

Sage, C. D. No. Brookfield.
Sagendorph, Noah. Spencer.
Sanderson, T. J.

Westminster Depot.
Sands, C. L. Lunenburg.
Sargent, F. W. Amesbury.
Sa'wtell, J. M. Fitchburg.
Sharp, A. G. Richmond.
Shaw, E. M. Nashua. N. H.
Sherman, A. B. Wayland.
Smith, Fred A. Ipswich.
Smith, G. N.

Newton Lower Falls.
Smith, G. W. Hartford. Ct.
Smith, J. L. Barre.
Snow, F. H. Greenfield.
Stacey, Albert, Griswoldville.
Stacey, William, Colrain.
Starr, James, Pepperell.
Stetson, Archie, Colrain.
Stetson, Edga'r, Colrain.
Stevens, A. F. Wellesley.
Stewart, Chas. Colrain.

52

Stockwell, J. W. Sutton.
Stockwell, O. Fitchburg.
Stone, G. E. Shrewsbury.
Stone, H. J. Shrewsbury.
Stowe, A, N. Hudson.
Stowe, J. P. Colrain.

Temple, E. S. Colrain.
Thomas, C. H.

West Rindge, N. H.
Tuttle, A. N. Warren.
Twitchell, Seth, Fitchburg.

Underwood, H. P. Gleasondale.
Upton, E. W.

Townsend Harbor.

Vincent, M. H. Conway.

Wakefield, A. C. Orange.
Walden, Frank A. Colrain/

Walker, G. B. Williamstown.
Walton, H. L. Worcester.
Ward, A. W. Holden.
Ward, S. D. Shrewsbury.
Ware, Benj. P. Clifton.
Warren, S. H. Weston.
Waters, E. A. Shrewsbury.
Watts, Samuel, Natick.
Waugh, F. A. Amherst.
Wheeler, A. B. Berlin.
Wheeler, G. F. Concord.
Whitcomb, G. L. Townsend.
Whitcomb, Levi, ^Northboro.
White, N. B. Norwood.
White, Thomas, Colrain.
White, W. H. Lowell.
Whitney, C. A. Upton.
Williams, W. E. Townsend.
Wood, C. M. Upton.
Wood, E. W. West Newton.
Wooldredge, John, Lunenburg.

Report of the

1 0th and 1 1 th
ANNUAL MEETING

4^^^^^^^^^^^

Massachusetts
Pruit Growers'
Association

Organized March 21, 1895
1904 and 1905

/*"

MASSACHUSETTS

FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

(ORGANIZED MARCH 21, 1895.)

REPORTS OF THE

Tentli and Eleventh Annual Meetings

HELD IN

Horticultural Hall, Worcester,

MARCH Sand 9, 1904,
and MARCH 9 and 10, 1905.

WORCESTER, MASS.

PRESS OF F. S. BLANCHARD & CO.

1906.

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association

1904.
Horticultural Hall, Worcester, Mass.

The first session opened at 10.30 o'clock, Wednesday,
March 9th, with Vice-president Eames in the chair. Prayer
was offered by Rev. S. H. Record of Worcester, after which
Mayor Blodget gave an address of welcome to the city as
follows :

It gives me very great pleasure to come here this morning
and welcome the Mass. Fruit Growers' Association to our
city, and I am sure that the Worcester Horticultural Society
is very glad to have you come, and I know that the city of
Worcester is as glad as they are.

This organization has been of great interest to me because
I am in the same line of business that you are, and I have
spoken before this organization several times.

The fruit industry is a growing one in this country and it
seems as if more was raised than can be used, but the country
is growing so fast we can keep up with it. When we think
that one little state out West is to ship 30,000 boxes of or-
anges, we can realize the immense amount that is used, and
when we think of the hundreds of thousands of barrels of ap-
ples which are raised in this country and shipped, then we can
imagine something of what this country is doing in the busi-
ness of fruit raising.

I did not come here to make a speech, but just to welcome
you and I expect to be with you again this evening. I am

4

sure that your meeting will be full of interest and we assure
you a hearty welcome whenever you come.

In the absence of the President, A. G. Sharp, the response
to this welcome was made by Vice President Jonathan Eames,
the presiding officer, as follows :

In the absence of the President it becomes my pleasant duty
to acknowledge this hearty welcome which has been extended
us as we meet here for our tenth annual gathering ; we have
learned to look forward to the time of our annual meeting
with much pleasure.

It was with the aid of the Horticultural Society that our
association was started and they have given much aid from
that time.

The address of President Sharp was then read by Vice
President Eames.

PRESIDENT SHARP'S ADDRESS.

Brother Fruit Growers and Friends :

I very much regret that I cannot be with you at this our
tenth annual gathering, for I consider it a great loss to any
fruit grower to miss one of these meetings, and especiallv
when we have on our program such men as Mr. Collingwood
and others, who are to address you to-day and to-morrow.

We have held no field meetings during the past year, mainly
because there seemed to be no special fields of fine crops to
view. Owing to the cold, wet season, most of the small fruits
were nearly a failure. Many of the larger fruits, cherries and
plums were failures as well. Apples were fine, and heavy
crops were gathered in some localities. These, where well
cared for, properly sprayed, thinned and then carefully
handled, have brought the owners good prices either for
export or fancy trade at home.

The light crops of the past two years have discouraged
many of the growers of small fruits, though prices have ruled
high compared with previous years, and they are likely to
remain so for a few 3'ears to come. This therefore is just the
time to go ahead in that line.

As if is, "he who endures to the end obtains the crown," or
wins the prizes. The apple seems to be the king of fruits for
New England, when properly grown.

However, with the San Jose scale and many other injurious
insects and fungous pests, it has become a severe battle to

raise any extra fine fruit, requiring something more than a
knowledge of varieties, cultivation, fertilization, etc., though
these are necessary as well as business methods in marketing
the fruit.

Careful study and constant watchfulness, not only of your
own, but of your neighbors' orchards, is necessary, until
we can have laws that will make all careful of harboring and
spreading disease and insects. Let us pay strict attention to
the speakers we have called to give us instruction from their
experience, and special study of these problems which we
must meet and solve, if we succeed in our calling. I have
found it well to take a few notes at these meetings for future
reference, lest I forget them.

Some of the greatest needs of our association are more
members and more money, that we may be able to hold more
institutes and get the most practical instruction possible, as
well as to wake up those who are careless and neglectful, to
the necessity of helping themselves by better culture and
thorough work.

I would not weary you with a long address, but cannot close
without an expression of gratitude for the honor given me in
placing me at the head of this association for the past two
years, and I appreciate it as such as well as the help given
me in this service by the brothers of the association. My
chief regret is that I have been so situated that it was not in
my ]iower to do more for the welfare of the association during
my term of office.

I have found that more perhaps depends upon having a
good and efficient secretary than even upon the president.

We are exceedingly fortunate in having so good a place to
hold our annual meeting. We appreciate the kindness of the
Worcester Horticultural Society and are greatly indebted to
them for this and the many past favors shown us here.

With the best wishes for the future prosperity of all, I am
cordially yours,

A. G. SHARP,

President.

Report of the Secretary, Fred A. Smith of Ipswich, read
and accepted.

Report of Treasurer, Ethan Pirooks of West Springfield,
read but not accepted, as some bills had not been paid. On
motion of James Draper, voted that the acceptance of this
report be postponed until all bills for the year had been paid.

6

Worcester, March 9th, 1904.
TREASURER'S REPORT.
Dr.

1903.
March 8. Balance on hand,

Received for annual dues,
Interest from savings bank.

Cr.

Paid speakers for annual meeting,
Paid for printing, stationery, etc.,
Paid for printing report,
Paid F. A. Smith, expenses, etc.,

$82

26

106

GO

2

80

$191 06

Balance on hand,

$54

00

15

29

65

90

14 24

$149 43

$41

63

ETHAN BROOKS.

Treasurer.

Chairman: "Are there any committees to report? I think
there is a Legislative Committee."

Abel F. Stevens of Wellesley, chairman of the committee,
reported for this committee as follows : "It was the unani-
mous opinion of your committee that, looking the ground all
over, it would not be wise for us to put in a bill to the Legis-
lature this year. Retrenchment seemed to be in the air. We
put in a bill a year ago asking for $300 for special printing,
and it was turned down by the Ways and Means Committee.
This year we looked the ground over very carefully and found
that any bill that we might present asking for a special
appropriation would be turned down, and rather than make
a football of our association, it was the judgment of your
committee that the matter be deferred to another season. It
looks as if a member of our committee will be a member of the
Senate Committee another year, and we think a bill for appro-
priation for our association will stand a better chance than
to put it in this year only to have it turned down, so we think

it is better to let the matter lie over to another year."
Report accepted.

Elliott Moore of Worcester: "It is our custom to elect
officers at the afternoon session of this meeting. I move that
a committee of five (5) be appointed to bring in a list of
names for the election of officers." Motion carried. Com-
mittee to be appointed by the chair.

Abel F. Stevens of Wellesley: "Mr. President — I will
move that a committee be appointed by this association on
new fruits and new plants. That this committee look over
what new things come up during the year and make an annual
report. My idea is that we have a committee of three or five
appointed to look into all the new questions and methods that
are always coming up and that they report at our next annual
meeting. I make a motion that such a committee be ap-
pointed." Motion seconded by Mr. Moore. Voted that a
nominating committee of three be appointed by the chair to
bring in names for a committee on new fruits, same to be
voted for at afternoon session.

HOME-GROWN NURSERY TREES.

Prof. George O. Green, Amherst.

I realize in coming to you and giving a talk on this subject
that some of you will not agree that a home-grown nursery
is a good thing. Of course the idea of a nursery at home is
not new ; it is like the method of our grandfathers. There
are many reasons why we should foster these home-made nur-
series and select the stock from varieties grown on the farm.

Some will argue that the farmers need orchards and vine-
yards more than they need a knowledge of nursery stock.
The average farmer in growing apple trees is a little back-
ward about laying out a lot of money for first-class trees, but
would not be so backward if he could grow the seedlings
himself.

Here in Massachusetts I realize that, with the many factory
people in our towns, we have local markets ; we also have
many seaports to take off any excess of fruits. The farms
of New England need fruit trees more than anything else.

It is not every farmer who can grow nursery stock. He
must have some love for the work; must know each individ-
ual tree and give it special training; and one argument in

8

favor of home-made nurseries is that the farmer has the
chance to train the tree from the beginning. The farmer is
apt to be backward about pruning, and the result is that a few-
branches come out at the top of the tree, are not pruned, and
hence the roots are strained and never take hold of the soil
as they should.

The nursery agent who sells us trees buys where he can
buy the trees cheapest. One of his arguments against home-
grown nurseries would be that the farmer could not grow
trees as cheaply as he can. The farmer can grow trees as
cheaply as they can be grown in a nursery, but few farmers will
give the care which is necessary at just the right time. The
only reason the farmer will not give as much care as the nur-
seryman is that he is busy about other matters and cannot
give his undivided attention to the matter. Many tree ven-
ders will bring you trees that are not what were ordered at
all, and the farmer loses the investment and loses a number
of years in growing the trees, and for this reason feels a little
backward about planting another orchard. If a tree possesses
the characteristics that the farmer wishes it to possess and
the expenditure is $i for each tree, he has made a good invest-
ment. An orchard is considered as an investment ; it is a
long-time investment, a simple business proposition. If you
buy nursery stock where you can buy the cheapest you will
kick the nurseryman afterwards.

Some of the best reasons for the farmer propagating his
own nursery stock are :

First, he may select his own scions and will not have
diseases brought from other places. You will notice some
of the widest variations in orchards. Take, for example, the
apples which come from the crab. The only requirement
the nurseryman makes is that the scion shall be in the right
condition to bud, paying no attention to the stock, while the
farmer can select his own stock, adapt it to the special
requirements and needs and advantages of his farm or orchard
and can tell on what stock to graft. This it is not practicable
for the nurseryman to do.

What is true in selection of stock is also true regarding
selection of seed. It has been proved by experience that he
must select seed from the best of fruit of any variety, as we
cannot get good stock from poor selections. You must select
strong-growing, healthy stock. In every neighborhood some
individual shows varieties better than others. We often find
one branch showing better apples than other branches, so
that on one side of a tree there will be remarkable fruit, on
the other side ordinary. It is impossible for the nurseryman

9

to select trees and branches from the different trees in the
neighborhood; this is the privilege of the orchardist. Sup-
pose % of 1% of the trees from the nurseryman are barren.
He does not know when selecting that he is taking from bar-
ren trees. The farmer in selecting from his trees knows what
he is selecting. The nurseryman, however, does not always
select his trees in this way. He very often has a scion or-
chard, that is, an orchard cut back each year to produce as
much wood as possible. In such an orchard there is a wide
variety and the farmer giving a small order runs the risk of
getting what he does not want.

Trees from nurseries bring in many diseases and insects.
It is only within a few years that the San Jos^ scale has come
in. and it was introduced through the nurseries. Nearly all
the nurserymen fumigate, and thus have overcome the evil
to a great degree, though in some places this inspection is
done by typewriters, and the inspectors never leave the office.
Another case of distribution of insects is seen in different
plant diseases. On trees obtained from nurseries and planted
at the Agricultural College at Amherst, there was found, after
they had been there about a year, something with the same
look as black knot. On examination it was not possible to
determine just what this was, but on sending to Washington
it was found that there was another place in the South where
this disease was known. In a few days some came from one
of our correspondents with the same disease. These were
bought from the same nurseryman and all came from near the
same locality in the South. This is an illustration of how
fast the nurseryman may spread disease over many localities.

This talk seems to be a "grind" on the nurserymen. I don't
want you to understand that they are all humbugs, though
some of them are. There are some honest nurserymen who
use all the knowledge they have to give the very best trees,
but the nurseryman cannot be sure and the buyer runs some
risks and the ordinary farmer may get better trees if he prop-
agates them himself.

Discussion on ab6ve paper : —

Professor Waugh of Amherst : "Concerning this matter of
selecting the best grafts, experience shows that in many cases
unfair grafts of standard varieties have been secured in that
way. There has been an important case of Gravenstein
apples. Mr. Clark knows of this and I think it would be of
interest if he would give us information about that case."

Mr. J. W. Clark of North Hadley: "A farmer bought 150

10

Gravenstein trees from a nursery and planted them out, and
that is about all he had. He planted them in 1891. About
1898 he had some fruit. Well, those that began to bear first
did not bear Gravenstein apples. He sent for the man who
sold him the trees. They looked them over and the nursery-
man advised top grafting. It takes the Gravenstein apple
two or three years longer to come with bearing than other
varieties. This man had the apples grafted; the nurseryman
paid the bill. He, the nurseryman, wrote the man when he
got the order that he had no Gravenstein trees, but would
send and get them from other sources. The nurseryman
thought that this had settled the business, but two or three
years after he was sued for $350 for damages. He came to
me and wanted me to go and look at the orchard. We went
over every tree and made a note of it. Four out of five of the
trees were Gravensteins, and in this lot of trees there were
places not for 150 but for 171 trees, so that they were not all
trees that the nurseryman sold. Prof. Powell said that they
were Gravensteins. Last summer Mr. Adams wanted me to
go up again. This man had furnished the grafts himself, and
we saw no other apples in that orchard last August except
Gravensteins and the case was given to the nurseryman.

"The trees had not been seen to. They varied from about
two inches in diameter to nine inches in diameter — weresetout
at the same time, with about the same conditions. The man
claimed that two years before he broke up the land and cul-
tivated it. The trees were set in the spring of 1891. Accord-
ing to the contract the man was to break up this piece of
ground and fit it for an orchard. The trouble was this :
The trees had not been seen to, and for this reason, did not
bear good fruit, the apples being only about one-third the
ordinary size. There must be something wrong locally in
that soil, or perhaps the soil was too wet. There was some
local cause why these trees did not bear good Gravenstein
apples. I am glad the case was decided in favor of the nur-
seryman."

Mr. James Draper: "I am glad that that thing has been
decided as it was. It is a pretty important matter for the
nurserymen to be arraigned for the neglect of the individual,

11

especially in the case of Gravenstein apples. No apple will
show neglect more. We do not get the same fruit from rich
soil as from places in the orchard that are gravelly. You
cannot size up exhibition apples and grow them in the way
Mr. Clark has spoken of."

Mr. Moore : "Will the speakers turn around. Let us have
live talk. Those back of the centre of the hall cannot hear
what is said. Will the speakers come forward to the front of
the hall?"

H. O. Mead, Lunenburg: "I bud my own trees, selecting
best possible varieties. Last year I budded a small tree.
Nearly all these buds set last year, and it bore five apples this
year. It seems hardly possible that a bud would grow so
fast."

Mr. Wallbright : "If you want to raise apples like the Wil-
liams, you can grow your trees very much better if top-
budded. In four or five years I have as nice a tree as I desire.
This year I top-budded some trees that had been set four
years. By growing this way I can get a larger, prettier tree
and more fruit. Can make more money by top-budding, and
an expert can set a good many buds in a day, and you have a
large bearing orchard and an orchard that is thrifty. You
must have rich land and give them something to eat."

Mr. Draper: "Would ask about the annual report of last
year. The bill has come in for it. Why has it not been dis-
tributed at this meeting?"

Secretary: "It is in the printer's hands. I am responsible
for the delay. It will be distributed this afternoon."

Mr. Moore : "Would ask Mr. Mead if he pays any attention
to the side of the limb on which he inserts the bud."

Mr. Mead : "In budding trees I generally cut them back

pretty well, enough so that I can bud into a growth of some

years ; it is best to bud on the shaded side. If budded on the

side, put in two or three only. When you are budding, you

are really building the tree and should bud where you want

the limbs. If you want a limb on top, bud on the top. It is

simply a matter of judgment; you want your tree of good

form and shape. These buds (if the tree is growing well)

each grow anywhere from twenty inches to two feet in a
year.

12

"Last year Gravensteins, set four or five years, were hurt a
little by the winter. This last winter only one other variety
was injured. At the base the Gravensteins were hurt more
than any other trees. Take Gravensteins, bud upon good
Northern Spy stock about four or five feet from the ground,
then you have the buds where the limbs should be."

Mr. R. H. Race, North Egremont : 'T want to ask if any-
body knows what is the condition of fruit buds and the condi-
tion of nursery stock. My idea is that fruit buds, apples and
pears, are dead, and I think that the nursery stock is also
dead. Would like to bring that before the meeting."

President: "Has anybody made an investigation?"

Mr. Moore : "Four weeks ago I cut some buds and they
have lived and blossomed. I can bring them down, and a
prettier bouquet you seldom see."

Mr. Fisk : "Three weeks ago I cut a lot of peach branches,
also apples and plums, and put them in water. The peaches
did not grow, but the apples were all right ; also the plums
and cherries. I do not know as there is any other way of
knowing whether the peach bud is all right. I had supposed
I could tell by cutting them open, but find I cannot."

J. W. Clark : "I examined peach buds, apple buds,
Japanese plums and pears about two weeks ago.
Found no live peach buds. Believe the buds are all
right in high orchards. Found buds of Bradshaw
plums, good ; Monarch, quite a number of the buds dead ;
Burbank, alive ; October purples, alive ; pears, several varie-
ties not dead."

Mr. Hale, Westboro : "I examined a month ago peach buds
that grow on high land and found one-half of them good. I
think that apples and pears must be all right."

Chairman announced the following committees :

Nomination —

Elliott Moore, Worcester.
George Cruikshank, Fitchburg.
H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.
A. N. Tuttle, Warren.
James Draper, Worcester.

13

New Fruits —

Abel F. Stevens, Wellesley.
E. A. Emerson, Haverhill.
J. L. Rice. Wilbraham.

Questions from the floor : —

"Is there any way to produce trees that will grow fruit that
will keep?"

Professor Greene : "It has always been claimed that the
dilTerence between the keeping is the time of ripening. The
tree that ripens the fruit a week ahead will not keep as long
as one that ripens later. This long keeping is characteristic
of certain trees. It may be from stock; it may be
from position. This difference will be found from one year
to another. It may be that propagation of late ripening trees
might have some effect."

Mr. Brooks: "I would like to air my theory
about producing trees that grow fruit that will keep.
I believe in gathering seeds from apples that are
on trees the day before the ground freezes up. Plant
these in rows north and south, and bud them on the
north side so that they will not be affected by the sun. Then,
when you bud these trees, go to trees that produce fruit that
stays on the tree and will keep. In this way you can get
trees that produce fruit that will keep. An old gentleman in
my town, when I was young, suggested this idea to me, that
when I found a tree that held its fruit, to select seed from
that. I have thrown this out as a hint. I think a good deal
of this home fruit-growing. I was asked, 'Where do you buy
your trees ?' I don't buy them."

Mr. Mead : "A good deal is said about stock. Well, I know
that stock makes a good deal of difference, but still it depends
also on what you feed. A neighbor of mine had a fine farm
and had lots of manure. He used this on his orchard, and
had one of the nicest apple crops — good, large Baldwins.
He decided not to sell them in the fall, but to keep them until
later in the season, but the apples did not keep. The man
who is going to raise fancy fruit wants plenty of potash, not
too much nitrogen."

Meeting adjourned.

14

Afternoon Session — i.^o p.m.
ELECTION OF OFFICERS.

The following list of candidates foi

• officers for the ei

year was reported :

President, Jonathan Eames,

Sherborn.

Vice-pres., C. A. Whitney,

Upton.

Secretary, S. T. Maynard,

Northboro.

Treasurer, Ethan Brooks,

West Springfield.

Auditor, J. L. Ellsworth,

Worcester.

Directors —

Essex County :

E. A. Emerson,

Haverhill.

J. J. H. Gregory,

Marblehead.

Norfolk County :

Abel F. Stevens,

Wellesley.

Monroe Morse,

Medway.

Plymouth County :

Augustus Pratt,

Middleboro.

Walton Hall,

Marshfield.

Middlesex County :

C. F. Hayward,

Ashby.

M. P. Palmer,

Groton.

W. D. Hinds,

Townsend.

C. S. Pratt,

Reading.

Samuel Hartwell,

Lincoln.

Hampshire County:

John W. Clark,

North Hadley.

E. C. Miller,

Haydenville.

Hampden County:

Ethelbert Bliss,

Wilbraham.

L. W. Rice,

Wilbraham.

Berkshire County:

Geo. G. Walker,

Williamstown.

R. H. Race,

North Egremont.

Franklin County :

M. H. Vincent,

Conway.

E, F. Copeland,

Colerain.

15

Worcester County :

George Cruikshank, -Fitchburg.

O. B. Hadwen, Worcester.

C. E. Parker, Holden.

James Draper, Worcester.

E. A. Hersey, Westboro.

It was voted that the Secretary be instructed to cast one
ballot for the entire list of officers as brought in by the Nom-
inating Committee. This was done, and the foregoing
officers declared elected for the ensuing year.

On motion of A. F. Stevens, voted that the term of the
officers of the Association terminate at the close of the
annual meeting.

J. W. Clark of North Hadley presented the following reso-
lutions :

Resolved, that the sympathy of this Association go out to
our President, A. G. Sharp, and family in their sad affliction.

Resolved, that a copy of this resolution be sent Mr. Sharp
and family, and also be recorded in the transactions of this
Society.

Adopted, with the amendment, that thanks be extended Mr.
Sharp for his faithful services as President of the Associa-
tion.

E. A. Emerson of the Committee on New Fruits submitted
the following names :

Prof. S. T. Maynard, Northboro.

Henry Rich, Worcester.

Abel F. Stevens, Wellesley.

John W. Clark, North Hadley.

H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.

H. O. Mead: 'T wish to decline serving on this committee
in favor of Mr. Emerson." The Secretary was instructed to
cast a vote for the committee as reported, with the exception
that Mr. Emerson's name be substituted fot Mr. Mead's.

The above committee was declared elected.

President Eames : "Professor Fernald of Amherst has a
paper on the 'San ]os6 Scale.' I take pleasure in introducing
Professor Fernald."

16

Professor Fernald : "Mr. President, Gentlemen of Massa-
chusetts Fruit Growers' Association — I will say that so far as
I can recollect I have never before come before an audience
with an apology, but for the first time in my life I find it
necessary for me to apologize for what I shall have to present
to you this afternoon, because, unfortunately, I am just up
from a week of the grip, which not only interfered with the
preparation of what I wish to present, but left me in no condi-
tion to address you.

"I am also sorry to say that the operator of the stereopti-
con has not arrived, and the pictures to be used for illustra-
tions will be shown later."

THE SAN JOSE SCALE.

A learned Frenchman once wrote five large volumes on a
subject in which he was much interested, and his opening sen-
tence began: "Everything has already been said." Many
have been the volumes which have been published on the San
Jos^ scale, and it is now almost a common saying that "the
San Jos^ scale and the poor are always with us." But while
the appearance and the habits, and the injuries caused by this
pest are now familiar to nearly every one, the last word as to
the best methods by which it may be controlled has yet to be
said, and may perhaps remain unsaid for many years to come.

I had not thought to give any attention this afternoon to a
consideration of the scale itself, but after consulting wrtii
your Secretary it has seemed best to take a few moments of
the time at least, in that way, to bring out certain points
which have a bearing on the methods of treatment which are
to follow.

It now seems probable that this insect is a native of China,
and credit for the discovery of this fact should be given to the
Division of Entomology of the United States Department of
Agriculture. It was first found in this country in California,
then by the unconscious aid of two New Jersey nurseries it
was scattered all over the United States. It was at first con-
sidered doubtful whether it could survive our Massachusetts
winters, except perhaps in the Connecticut valley and near
the coast, but it is now evident that it can resist the coldest
winters which we can bring against it here, and that we must
regard all parts of the State as exposed to its attacks.

In appearance it is not unlike several other scales which
are native to this country, some of which also are found on- our

17

fruit trees, and for this reason it does not follow that when a
scale having a circular outline is discovered upon a tree, it
must be the dreaded San Jos6. It is rare, however, to find
any of these other scales so abundant as to have killed a tree ;
in fact, I can recall but one such case that I have seen in this
State. In case but few suspicious scales are present, there is
no certain way in which to tell whether they are the San
Jos^ scale, except by means of microscopic mounts, and in
such cases it is generally better to send specimens to the
Experiment Station at Amherst, where work of that kind is
constantly being done.

The reason why this particular scale is such a serious pest
is that it increases with astonishing rapidity. The first young
appear about the middle of June, and in about a month are
themselves producing young, and this continues until hard
frosts put an end to all activity of these insects. The 3^oung
are born alive, some appearing every three or four days,
and as the life of an adult is about one month it follows that
the last young from one individual will be but little, if any,
older than the first young of those which were first born.

The consequence is that there are young nearly all the
time between the middle of June and the last of November,
and the total number of descendants from a single individual
during this time has been calculated at 3,216,080,400. As all
these millions obtain their food by sucking the sap from the
plant they are on, it is not to be wondered at that a tree which
in the spring was apparently in good condition, may be nearly
or entirely dead by fall.

The young when first born, though very small, have six
legs, and move about freely till they find a place on which to
settle down and feed. The time during which they move, of
course, varies, some settling within a few hours after birth,
while others may not settle for two or three days ; but 100
hours is believed to be about the limit of this stage. After
settling, the scale, which is partly a secretion of wax and
partly moulted skins of the insect, soon forms, and as this
entirely covers the insect over, and at the edge fits tightly
against the bark, it is now well protected against its enemies
and against man.

Another reason why this insect is so serious is that it feeds
on a large number of plants. Britton, in a recent list of these,
enumerates seventy-two hardy trees, shrubs or vines, which
are corpmonly or badly infested, and sixty-seven which are
occasionally or rarely infested. This means that while the
scale may not be seriously injurious to trees outside the
2

18

orchard, it can live on those trees in most cases and spread
from them into the orchard itself.

The scale is carried from place to place in three ways : ist,
by setting- out trees already infested ; 2d, the crawling young
may be caught by gusts of wind and taken some distance ;
3d, the crawling young may get onto the feet of birds or
larger insects which light on infested trees, and crawl off on
some later lighting place.

The facts already stated all have their bearing upon the
treatment which this insect requires. As the San Jos6 scale
feeds by sucking the sap from the inner bark, no application
of any poison which has to be eaten in order to kill, such as
arsenate of lead or paris green, is of any value. The only
treatments which our present knowledge supplies under these
circumstances are fumig-ation and contact poisoning.

For fumigation only one substance has thus far proved suc-
cessful. This is hydrocyanic acid gas, made by adding sul-
phuric acid to potassic cyanide. Results obtained by the use of
this treatment are far ahead of those obtained in any other
way, and the more it has been tried the higher the value
which has been placed upon this method. Unfortunately,
however, it has its limitations, which prevent its use in many
cases. In the first place it is necessary that the tree to be
treated be enclosed by an air-tight tent, and with trees more
than ten or twelve feet high and six feet across, the cost of a
tent becomes considerable. A frame tent 6 x 6 x 10 feet,
made in the spring of 1902 at Amherst, cost $20, and even
after pruning back thoroughly, it is only small trees which
can be covered by a tent of this size. A second objection to
this treatment is that the chemicals used must be of a certain
grade, and be used in definite proportions if reliable and cer-
tain results are to be obtained. This means the possession of
and knowledge how to use balances, graduated measures, and
the metric system. Under such conditions as these it is prob-
ably not reasonable to expect that fumigation of orchards will
be a general practice during the lifetime of any of those here
present.

Turning, therefore, to sprays and spraying methods we find
that extended experiments have been, and are being made to
find which are the best for the San Jos^ scale. The sprays
naturally divide into those with soap as the basis, those with
oil, and those with lime. Many forms of each of these have
been tried. Of the soaps those most commonly tested have
been Good's potash whale oil soap No. 3, and Good's tobac-
co potash whale oil soap, made by James Good of Philadel-
phia, and Bowker's tree soap, made by the Bowker Tns^cti-

19

cide Company of Boston. These soaps are made with potash.
A soda whale oil soap is also manufactured, but has thus far
proved less efficient.

It has now been proved to the satisfaction of all who have
used them that Good's potash whale oil soap and Bowker's
tree soap will kill most, if not all, of the scales the spray-
reaches. But just as the efficiency of our forces in the Span-
ish War was due to "the man behind the gun," so here the
result of the spraying must, in a very large measure, depend
on the man at the nozzle. Poor spraying will make of little
value the best spray that was 'ever discovered, and I some-
times think that good sprayers are born, not made, and at
times doubt if they are even ever born ! But this is an objec-
tion vv^hich will hold for all sprays. Whale oil soap, it now
appears, cannot always if ever be used with safety in fall or
early winter, or after the buds have opened in spring — a limit-
ation which somewhat reduces its value. It seems to be most
effective when applied warm, which it is often difficult to do;
it is an unpleasant material to use, and it is not the cheapest
of the treatments now available. In its favor it may be said
that where no large amount of spraying is to be done the fact
that it can be obtained read}^ for use by dissolving in the right
amount of hot water gives it a strong claim because of its
convenience.

If, then, but few trees are to be treated, and facilities for
making other sprays are limited, Potash whale oil soap
seems to be one of the more convenient treatments to use.

The oils which have been used for the San ]os6 scale are
crude petroleum and kerosene. The former is rather too ex-
pensive to apply pure, even if it were safe to do so, and it has,
therefore, been usually used in the form of an emulsion with
water. This emulsion is obtained by a two-tank pump, with
pistons drawing from both the oil and the water tanks at the
same time, the pressure forcing the two liquids to mix either
in the hose or at the nozzle, so thoroughly that the mixture
does not separate for some time.

It is certain that good results have been sometimes
obtained by this treatment. Against it, however, we have
the following facts : It requires a special pump for the work ;
the pump is supposed to be adjustable, so as to regulate the
percentage of oil given out, but the adjustment is so unre-
liable that it often varies 50% or more within five minutes
of steady pumping, with serious results to the tree if it runs
too high ; the oil, in order to be safe for use on trees, must
test 43° Beaum^, or more, and it is often difficult to get oil

20

which will meet this test, and in fact it is considerable trouble
to obtain crude oil of any strength.

The same methods of application and the same difficulties
as with crude oil hold with kerosene, and this material has
sometimes been applied for these reasons in the form of a
soap emulsion rather than emulsified by means of the pump.
This modification does away with the necessity of having a
special pump, but it is not always easy to make a success of
the soap emulsion. As a whole, then, though we may recog-
nize that the oils will sometimes do good work, the difficulties
of manii)ulation and cost are such that as long as other mate-
rials, which give as good, or even better results, are to be had,
costing as little, and no harder to handle, it does not seem
advisable to use either kerosene or crude oil.

The lime, salt and sulphur wash was introduced on the
Pacific coast as a sheep dip originally, it is said, and by some
happy chance was tried on the San Jos^ scale when this insect
became a pest there. Its success was such that ever since
that time it has been a standard treatment for the scale in the
West, and when trouble came in the East, was one of the first
things tried. Who or what was to blame for the result we
shall probably never know, but for some reason it proved a
failure at this first test, and -was at once given a "black eye" as
being a treatment which, though successful in the West, was
of no value in the East, probably because of differences of
weather conditions in the two regions. For the last three
years, however, it has been retested, and the results have been
so good that the use of whale oil soaps and the oils has in most
places been dropped.

Numerous formulas for the lime, salt and sulphur mixture
have been proposed, most of which seem to possess value;
repeated tests of the mixture have also shown some facts
about it. It seems now to have been proved that the salt is
not necessary for the success of the mixture ; that a longer
boiling seems to improve its quality somewhat ; and that the
time will come when we shall have a modified mixture more
easily made and easier to handle, which will be as effective or
more so, than our present mixture. Just what this will con-
sist of it is too early to say, but some of the modifications at
least have not proved of any advantage. One such is the
addition of copper sulphate. The result of this has not been
at all satisfactory anywhere in the East, so far as I can learn.

Let us now consider the different formulas a little, in a
comparative way. (I have taken this table from a Virginia
bulletin) :

21

California Wash

U.S. Dept. Agr., Cir. No. 42

Md. Bull. No. 46

N. J. Bull. No. 162

111. Bull. No. 41

111. Bull. No. 41

Oregon Wash

Diamond Orchard, Salem, Va.

o 3

lbs.

lbs.

15

gals.
80
60
60
150
50
50
100
360

Right amounts

per 100 gals.

of water

Lime Sulphur

lbs.
50
50

66%
33/3
30
30
30
22

lbs.
25

33'A
33'A
33A
30
30
30
16%

Length
of time
cooked

hrs.
3

2

IX

iX
iX

I

This table gives us some of the main variations which have
been used in the preparation of the lime, sulphur wash during
the last year or two, together with the older formulas. The
last one of these given is an example of a number of experi-
ments which have been made to see if lye is a substitute for
the salt, or in addition to it would be of any advantage. This,
it has not proved to be, however, and when caustic soda or
caustic potash has been made use of, it has been at a prohibi-
tive cost for anything besides experimental purposes.

From these facts, then, we draw the conclusion that at
present almost any of the standard formulas for the lime, salt
and sulphur mixture will be satisfactory, leaving out the salt
entirely, and that the addition of sulphate of copper (blue-
stone), lye, caustic soda or caustic potash is of no advantage.

Now how can this substance be best made? Here, too, we
find differences, but these seem to vary chiefly according to
the conditions under which the work must be done. As to
the materials, the lime should not be air-slacked, but be good,
fresh, stone lime, taken from lumps rather than from the
finer contents of the barrel. Britton of Connecticut recom-
mends using finishing lime as being purer, slacking more com-
pletely, and containing less dirt than the other grades. The
slacking should be begun with hot water, enough being added
to prevent any air-slacking, and the whole being thoroughly
stirred. In the slacking the object should be to get and keep
the lime as fine as possible, in order that no lumps shall
remain to clog the nozzle during spraying later. During the
slacking the sulphur may be added, keeping the whole well
stirred all the time. The sul])hur should be either in the form
of flowers of sulphur or of sulphur flour, but it must be very
finely divided in any case. The cooking should be done in
an iron kettle, copper or tin being acted upon by the mate-
rials used.

22

Probably as good a way as any in which to proceed is to
place about five gallons of water in the kettle and add the
lime, slacking it as it is added, and after this has been well
begun, work in the sulphur also; the result should be a thick
paste, and hot water may be added as needed for obtaining
this. Now add water enough to make ten or twelve gallons,
and boil for about three-quarters of an hour. The result of
my own work leads me to the belief that the result is likely to
be better if the mixture be cooked for double this time — in
other words, I believe in a long boiling rather than a short
boiling. When the boiling has been completed, the mixture
is dipped out of the kettle, and measured, and is then poured
through a strainer, burlap being very good for the purpose,
into the spraying tank ; then water is added to dilute to the
required quantity.

It has been claimed that the lime-sulphur mixture is most
successful when applied hot, but anyone who has had practical
experience in spraying knows that however hot the material
may be in the tank, the action of the nozzle breaks up the
liquid into such fine droplets that by the time they are a foot
from the nozzle they are entirely cold, and that while spraying
when the liquid is warm will do no harm, it is impossible to
have it reach the tree in that condition. On the other hand,
the lime-sulphur mixture does not appear to remain very long
chemically unchanged, and should be applied the same day it
is made.

One great advantage in using this mixture is that no un-
usual apparatus of any kind is needed with which to apply it.
Any good spray pump with brass fittings is all that is neces-
sary, and any nozzle of the Vermorel, Cyclone or Riley type,
producing a fine mist, will be sufficient. With this equipment
the tree should be well coated with the spray, and then left
to dry for a few minutes while another near by is treated.
Then a glance at the one first treated will show what parts, if
any, have been missed, as the lime-sulphur spray turns white
on drying.

It has been generally supposed that this mixture could only
be used with safety during the early spring months before the
buds opened, without danger of injury to the trees, but recent
tests indicate that it is also possible to use it late in the fall,
and that in a weaker form it can also be used as a summer
wash. How far this last statement is correct it is too soon to
say, as these tests are still only in the experimental stage.

It should be kept in mind that there are weak treatments
which will destroy the crawling young scales which the spray
reaches. One such is ordinary kerosene emulsion, used as

23

for plant lice, which is what these young practically are so far
as delicacy and resistance power go while in this stage. The
difficulty with this plan of treatment comes from the fact
already mentioned, that the young which can be destroyed in
this way do not all appear at the same time, as do those of the
other common scales, but are born at intervals of a few days
from the middle of June till late in November, and that a
week after their birth they have formed scales over them-
selves thick enough to protect them from these sprays. In
order, then, for treatment with ordinary kerosene emulsion to
be effective, it would be necessary to apply this about once a
week during a period of over five months ; a treatment which
is evidently not a practical one under most conditions.

One of the agricultural papers has recently presented treat-
ment with caustic soda as the probable coming treatment for
the San Jos^ scale. The directions given are to dissolve ten
pounds of 78% caustic soda in fifty gallons of water, and
spray. I am not able to recommend this spray, as I have not
yet tried it, but it has long been known that caustic soda is
something of an insecticide, and it may prove to be of value
for this insect. There can be no question, however, that it
will prove a disagreeable material to spray, on account of its
caustic properties. It is certain to be tested on a large scale
during the present spring, and by next year we should have
definite facts available as to its real value.

Another recent method of destroying the scale which has
been urged upon the public is the use of the gasoline torch.
This apparatus is guaranteed to destroy the scales effectually
without hurting the trees upon which they may be. Its
merits have been persistently pushed by the manufacturers,
and it has had quite a large sale. That fire will destroy the
scale everybody knows, but whether it will not at the same
time injure the tree is not so certain. After a number of
tests of this apparatus. Professor Forbes decides that "the
gasoline torch has at best only a very limited application in
the treatment of trees infested by the San Jos^ scale." "It is
probably the most dangerous to vegetation of any insecticide
apparatus which has ever been brought forward for common
use." With such statements as this against the torch I can-
not advise its use under any conditions.

And now a few words as to nature's methods for the con-
trol of the scale. Occasionally we find a scale which has
been killed by a fungus which has lived in it ; unfortunately,
however, this fungus has been known for a number of years,
and is no more abundant now than when it was first discov-
ered, or at least appears to accomplish no more than it did

24

then. One or two tiny parasitic insects are also known which
lay their eggs in the scale insects, and the young from these
eggs feed upon and destroy them. But these, too, have thus
far failed to accomplish any important result. There are also
two or three lady bugs or lady birds, which feed upon the
scale insects and do some good, but not enough to make them
of great value.

Studies on the San Jos^ scale in China indicate that it is
there held in check by a lady bug very similar in appearance
to one of those found in this country, and the United States
Department of Agriculture has made an attempt to introduce
some of these Chinese lady bugs into the United States in the
hope that they may become as effective here as in their native
regions. It is too soon as yet to determine how successful
this idea may be, but thus far the results cannot be said to
have been entirely what were hoped for. An attempt to
obtain specimens with which to establish a colony in this
State was met by the department authorities by conditions
impossible of fulfillment, and the result is that Massachusetts
must wait for a supply of these insects until they can be
obtained from other states rather than from the United States
government.

Our present knowledge of the San Jos^ scale and of the
treatment for it might perhaps be best expressed in the form
of the following brief statements :

1. For trees which are so badly infested as to have partly
died there is no better place than the brush heap, for while it
might not be impossible to save those trees their condition
would prevent their being of any great value for years.

2. For small trees fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas is
the most efifective treatment, but it is not often in an orchard
that it can be made to pay enough better than spraying to
make it advisable.

3. The best spray yet found is the lime-sulphur mixture.
The addition of salt, bluestone or caustic soda to it is of no
advantage.

4. This mixture should be prepared by using the best stone
lime and powdered sulphvir, slacking the lime with water in
an iron kettle, and adding the sulphur, then boiling for at
least three-quarters of an hour, then straining it into the tank
of the pump and adding water to make the right strength.

5. The mixture can be applied by any good pump, and the
nozzle should throw the spray in the form of a fine mist, some
form of Vermorel being the best for this purpose.

6. This can be done at any time after the leaves fall, and

25

before the buds open in spring, but the best results seem to
have come from spring- spraying.

7. One such treatment thoroughly made will usually be
sufficient for at least two years, and it may be that spraying
every third spring will be sufficient.

8. The man who has the most success in spraying for the
San ]os6 scale will be the one who never forgets that it is
only those scales which are actually touched by the spray
which will be destroyed; in other words, a first-class man at
the nozzle is worth more than all the rest.

9. When , done spraying, wash out the tank well with
water; then pump out more through the pump to clean it and
prevent injury to the apparatus while it is standing unused.

SOME COMMON FRUIT TREE INSECTS.

Professor Kirkland of Boston.

I am sure if I could do as well as Professor Fernald has
done, I would gladly plead sickness, but I cannot even plead
loss of appetite.

I have had the question asked me several times why insects
are more numerous now than they used to be. I think the
English sparrow has been responsible for many insects.

The scientists have what they call the balance of nature,
that is, forces which tend to preserve life and then tend to
keep it down. I wish to speak on this because it is now
found to be true.

Everything that preys has other things that prey upon it,
which work to the injury of its type. We find certain insects,
as the army worm, doing a great amount of damage. When
this insect gets very abundant, its enemies feed upon it. The
result is that the following year there will be very few army
worms left, but there will be a large number of the insects
that feed upon them. The next year the parasite dies off and
the army worm works along until they get up in sufficient
numbers and then the next year we have an army worm out-
break. Now this theory holds good in considering any of our
insect pests. Some years they will be plentiful, and some
years scarce ; it depends in a great measure upon the scarcity
or abundance of their parasites, and explains the abundance
in some years of some of our common pests. The pest of the
army worm breaks out at intervals of ten or fifteen years,
sweeps through grass lands and grain fields, and even does
serious damage to truck crops found in its line of march. It
then disappears almost as suddenly as it appeared, and for

26

years nothing- is heard of it. Yet this insect is always with
us. It breeds in marshy lands, upon the coarse grass grow-
ing there. Its numbers greatly increase from year to year,
until in a season favorable to them the fall brood of moths
flies forth in great swarms to lay its eggs in nearby grass and
grain fields. The next spring the millions of eggs yield mil-
lions of caterpillars, and the army worm outbreak is on in full
force. The half-grown insects march in great numbers, de-
vouring nearly every green thing in their path. The abun-
dance of army worms g-ives the birds, parasites, and other
natural enemies of the insects just the conditions suited to
their development. An enormous amount of good food is
provided for the birds, and to the places infested bv the army
worms they fly in great numbers, while certain little parasites
breed rapidly in the army worm colony. As a result, the army
worms by the end of the season are either destroyed bodily or
so thoroughly parasitized that the following year there are al-
most none left. Then the parasites, not findingtheir chosen food,
die ofi^, the birds turn their attention to other more abundant
forms of life, and the few surviving army worms have a
chance to multiply slowly until, after a lapse of years, the bal-
ance shifts again, and the army worm once more becomes
numerous.

This shifting relation of an insect to its enemies holds good
to a greater or less degree in the case of all insect pests, but
the farmer cannot wait for parasites to stamp out his insect
pests. He must have a profitable crop from his orchards and
fields each year, and to secure this insecticides and spraying
outfits are indispensable. The most successful farmers to-
day are those who, by keeping in touch with the discoveries
of the experiment stations, are able to do the right thing at
the right time by all of their crops.

About thirty slides were shown to illustrate dififerent insect
pests, some parasites that destroy them, and the best methods
of spraying fruit trees for the destruction of insect pests.

Discussion following the last two papers : —

Dr. E. Porter Felt, state entomologist of New York, spoke
briefly as follows :

'T am no stranger here. I am a native of the soil, so to
speak, and it is not at all strange that I should happen to drop
in here while on a visit to my family. I have enjoyed sitting
here listening to the talks given this afternoon. It has been

27

my pleasure to meet many graduates of your Agricultural Col-
lege as I go from one part of the country to another, and the
agricultural life of the country is being determined by these
men. I hope that every citizen of this State will stand back
of that institution. There is a great demand for its graduates,
and it is difficult to get hold of them.

"I do not know how I may say one thing of interest to the
men here from my own standpoint without conflicting with
what Professor Fernald has said, that is, in relation to the
San Jos^ scale. It is in this State, and we have arrived at
some of the conclusions that Professor Fernald has arrived at.

"It may interest you a little to know how we are making
that lime mixture in our own State. It seems that we have
as simple a method as any.

"We have in our State a great many small growers in the
Hudson River Valley, men who can easily obtain an iron
kettle holding from ten to fifteen gallons, and we found that
if we took a few gallons of water, seven or eight, warmed it
up pretty well, put in some good lime, and just as soon as the
lime began to slacken turned the sulphur in, that there is soon
a boiling mass of material. That by boiling this about thirty
minutes we had a mixture that stood up well and is just as
good as if it had been boiled two hours or longer."

"What would Dr. Felt recommend as a spray to those
people who have but few trees?"

Dr. Felt : "Whale oil soap solution. Kerosene and petro-
leum will injure the trees unless used very carefully. The
first can be used by any one. Regarding crude petroleum I
am becoming convinced that continuous use is injurious to
trees. I do not want to be responsible and I do not want to
be regarded as advising its use year after year."

Professor Fernald : "Dr. Felt's remarks have given me
great pleasure because he has substantiated the remarks that
I have made ; also, his remarks regarding whale oil soap for
those who want only two or three gallons for spraying.
Whale oil soap is much more convenient to use, but for the
man who wishes to spray on a large scale I think the lime and
sulphur would be better. As regards one or two conclusions

28

that I made in my paper, I wish to say that they have not in
all cases been sustained, but your Secretary, in asking for my
paper, requested the latest methods and,, conclusions."

Thursday Morning Session — lo O'Clock.

NEW AND OLD METHODS IN PLANTING AND
CARE OF TREES.

H. W. Collingwood, editor of "The Rural New Yorker."

The subject I am asked to talk about this morning is a very
simple one, and I am going to talk about it in a very simple
way. This farm of mine that" I am going to talk about is not
a model farm, nor is the system I have adopted in running it
a model system, but I am going to tell about it just as it is.

I firmly believe that fruit growing in the future is coming
down to this : every man is going to study his own ground,
and fit that ground and that market with whatever is suitable
to make it progressive. As a young man I had a hard time
up to the age of twelve, and said that if I ever had the chance
to have a home I would make something out of it, and I will
show you with my pictures how I have succeeded.

I bought an old farm in New Jersey for $4500, which was
hilly and grown up to bushes and covered with stones and
rocks. Six generations before we had tried to raise rye and
all had failed. They discovered that the crops would not
come, but did not discover why.

I figured that no piece of ground is ever exhausted or worn
out, and yet was not inclined to pick up all the stones and
cut all the bushes, but decided to cut down the largest trees
and set out others in their places. The farmers and fruit
growers around me predicted absolute failure for me. I have
been trying to get something more than a dollar out of my
land. I have been working along two lines, the development
of the soil and the possibilities of cultivating fruits by boys,
women and men who have missed their opportunities in other
lines of work.

I bought 700 June budded peach trees and cut them back to
eighteen inches above ground, and cut off the roots till the
tap-root looked like a lead pencil. Then I punched holes with
a crowbar and set out the trees, taking a cup of sand in one
hand and a cup of water in the other, and fixed the trees in
position. J. H. Hale of Glastonbury, Conn., one of the great-

29

est authorities on peach culture, said I would not get trees
that way.

There were loo Mountain Rose trees in the lot, and they
were blooming- when I bought them. I cut them back and
set them out. Of this lot, 92 died, and I decided there should
have been more roots left on them. Of the other 600, 593
lived. Later, I dug up 30 to see what they were doing under
ground, and I found the tap-root was going down in four
branches, and there were no side roots. The sand and water
shut them off on the sides. The trees lived through the win-
ter, but in March of the following year I found 25 trees which
had been thrown out of the ground by the frost. The tap-
roots hung, but there were no bracing roots. This did not
kill the trees. I have gathered fruit from some which were
lying down. I learned from the action of the frost that
mulching was the necessary thing. I concluded that the
crowbar method was not good, as there was not sufficient
bracing for the trees. The high winds twisted them around
and made funnel-shaped holes around them.

I found on my farm many apple seedlings, and knew by
that it was a good, natural apple soil. Last year I ordered
1000 peach trees and 400 Kieffer pear trees. I cut them back
and set them out. Many people say it is a good way to plant
pits where the trees are wanted, but I think the better way is
to dig up the soil and work it so as to get a better bed for the
roots. I pulled out my dead Mountain Rose trees, and put in
older ones, and they did well. I do not believe in pruning
much on soil such as is on my farm, for I figure that where
trees are situated like mine they can take care of themselves.
Besides this, I want trees low enough so I can pick the fruit
easily, and spray the trees economically. I have left my 1000
trees to head themselves. I am trying to grow
fan-shaped trees with the edge of the tree toward the north-
west, from which direction most of the winds come. The
mercury went to 28° below zero the past winter, but my trees
have lived through it well. They are now full of buds. Fast-
growing trees enter the cold season with softer wood and
open pores and are more accessible to the frost.

(Picture showing a section where apple trees were set out,
where corn had been and rye was sown. The rye grew,
harmed the trees, was cut by a machine, thrown around the
trees as a mulch and the trees thrived.)

After the mulching the trees grew more than three feet dur-
ing the remainder of the season.

In one section, where alfalfa would not grow, I put in timo-
thy. Then I put in my apple trees, spaded the hole a trifle

30

larger than the bulk of the roots, and packed the earth hard
around the roots. I do not believe in digging a hole as big as a
hogshead, dancing the tree up and down and throwing the
earth all around. I do not want to advocate laziness, but I
try to save work. My little boy as an experiment took fifty
trees, and when planting them tamped the dirt down as hard
as he could with a fence rail.

I believe in fall planting for apple trees ; do not believe in
it for peaches, but for apple and pear trees I think it best.

I believe that a man in any situation who can get hold of a
piece of land has found the best place in which to invest
money. Let him invest in a farm instead of in a trust, a cor-
poration or in a mining stock. Put money in the land.

I have a little mound of earth around the tree, and then put
stable manure around it, pounding the earth down to keep
the mice away, and putting the mulch on the outside. Here
is a picture showing result obtained by planting apple trees
in the fall. They were put in a hole made with a shovel, and
no manure put in it. They have close heads, are easy to cul-
tivate and easy to spray. Another picture shows the growth
of trees when mulched through the summer with rye straw.
About the middle of April the ground around the tree was
leveled down and mulch packed close around the tree for the
summer. I kept throwing mulch — grass, weeds, etc., — around
those trees with some fertilizer. I shall feed those trees and
feed them heavy. Some think that while the trees may make
a good growth the first year with mulching, they will not
afterwards. These show that they will grow after the first
year.

I will now tell you of my plan for renewing an old orchard ;
I call it hog culture. I had an old orchard of four or five
acres on my farm. I wanted to cut those trees down. They
were old and there was no soil for them, but my wife would
not let me cut them, as she wanted them for a grove near the
house. I ploughed it and several of the trees died ; then I
seeded it down with orchard grass and red clover. I put a
wire fence around it and put the hogs in it. You must feed a
hog well. Don't put him in and tell him, "Root, hog, or die."
I fed them well, and let them go into the orchard and eat
every apple. I sold between three and four thousand pounds
of pork. Never cut down an orchard. I would not sell that
orchard to-day for any money. I renovated this old orchard
by letting the hogs root the soil, feeding them well at the
same time. I sowed a mixture of rape and red clover. The
rape comes up and makes feed for the hogs during the sum-
mer. This is the hog system.

31

Talk about apples ! We have been selling our apples in
baskets called scant half-barrel baskets, but hereafter I shall
use boxes. In sending the apples by express it is too great a
temptation to the expressmen to help themselves. When
packing apples in boxes or baskets, I do not believe in putting
the large fruit into them. This is an error. The best trade
is a family trade, and when apples are too large, often there
are not enough of them to go around among the children, but
when they are of fair size every child in the family gets a
whole apple, and there is better satisfaction and better sales.
The children are the best customers. The apples should be
packed so that every apple will be a recommendation for your
farm. I started with six customers, and each brought me
two more right away. My business kept growing, and now I
ship apples from Florida to Maine.

I believe in advertising on the farm. I keep a big sign-
board on the front fence of my farm, on which I set forth
whether I have pigs, apples or other products for sale. I
believe it pays, as I get a good deal of business from passers-
by. Have a signboard on your farm, and interest the chil-
dren in it.

This picture shows an onion nearly as large as a child's
head that was raised on Hope Farm. People come from
everywhere to buy them.

A picture of Hope Farm is the closing one. Here we have
turned the old farm on the hillside into an orchard. How can
anyone remain healthy better than by taking an old farm and
making it pay? I believe that there are many farms on these
hillsides that can be worked by the poor men or elderly men
and women and children, people who have no property, if we
show them how they can take the old land and make it profit-
able.

I believe that there are opportunities for men and women
to go out, and with strength of arm and fair capital take hold
of the soil and learn to live on it, and to take men and women
and children with them, and not only save the farms, but save
men and women.

Discussion of above paper : —

Professor Waugh : "Why do you not raise onions by the
mulch method?"

Mr. Collingwood: 'T tried it and it does not work well.
The onion by nature should grow on top of the ground.

Mr. Maynard: "What is the subsoil of your land?"

32

Mr. Colling-wood : "The subsoil of my land is mostly rock.
(Laughter.) The deepest soil is only about 3^ feet deep,
which is one reason why this mulch method does better with
me than the others. The soil would bake in summer, so in-
stead of cultivating I put on a mulch of straw and manure."

Mr. Warren : "This land was in the first place underbrush
or mere forest, was it not?"

Mr. Collingwood: "The land was about half and half. It
had not been ploughed for over thirty-five years, and there is
a lot of underground rocks."

Professor Craig: "How old are the oldest trees planted?"

Mr. Collingwood : "The oldest trees are four years planted.
There were a few two-year-old trees, peach trees, when I put
them in. The first year's and second year's growth is always
disappointing. They seem to be worthless. The growth is
from the lowest root right down. Later the branch roots
begin to grow and then they grow with a jump. I have kept
runt trees to see if they would do better than runt calves."

Mr. Warren : "One reason why Mr. Collingwood succeeds
so well is because he has put his trees in virgin soil. There
is something about virgin soil that we cannot seem to supply
with anything we may put in. One of my neighbors ploughed
up a piece that had never been ploughed, and everything grew
in profusion. I think it was all caused by this virgin soil."

The Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Agri-
culture, J. Lewis Ellsworth, was asked by President Eames
to preside, as the next speaker. Professor Craig, came under
the auspices of that board.

Mr. Ellsworth : "I hardly think it is necessary for me to say
anything in praise of these lectures, they are so full of true
value and it is such a rare opportunity for you to get these
men before you, but I wish to say that the lecture that has
just been given may waken you up to realize that some may
be wasting opportunities that they may have on their farm
lands. If what you have is very poor, it still has real merit
in it."

33

A MODERN SYSTEM OF ORCHARD MANAGEMENT.

Prof. John Craig of the Horticultural Department of
Cornell University.

It is with pleasure that I find myself before you this morn-
ing, and also with a good deal of diffidence. When your Sec-
retary extended to me an invitation to speak before this asso-
ciation, he suggested that I should speak upon the "Modern
System of Culture." It occurred to me that I had nothing
new to offer, and I was relieved to have this reply, "I have
labeled it, 'A Modern System of Orcharding,' " but we know
that it is the same old stuff.

After coming here and hearing the excellent address of
Mr. Collingwood, so full of fact and fun, my feeling of diffi-
dence has greatly increased. I am inclined to tell the story
of the two colored boys, between whom there was a competi-
tion for making out a bill of fare, the boy making the best to
receive a prize. The first named 'possom, sweet taters and
watermelon. "Sho ! Sho ! Dat dar nigger gone covered de
whole ground," exclaimed the other. So / have only what is
left, and this calls to mind a man who failed in business and
called his creditors together. He said to them, "I have failed
and have absolutely nothing. I have called you in to tell you
of my condition. I have only my body, which you can take
and divide."

"Well," they asked, "what about that fine house on Main
Street?"

"O," said he, "that belongs to my daughter."

"But," said they, "you have another fine residence."

"That belongs to my son."

"But you surely have a large and valuable farm," they ex-
claimed.

"Yes," he replied, "that belongs to my wife."

"Well," said a Hebrew creditor who was present, "if you
divide his body, I will speak for his gall."

There are three important points in orchard management :
first, necessity of tillage ; second, necessity of planting trees
at proper distances ; third, desirability of keeping trees in
proper condition and protecting them from their enemies. We
have been practicing tillage and found it successful, and it is
necessary in order to prove this absolutely to get the facts.
Three months were spent in making a survey of the apple sec-
tion in New York.

One of the greatest detriments to successful apple raising
is the renting of orchards. Of 300 orchards examined that
3

34

were cared for by owners, the yield was 261 bushels per acre.
Of 321 orchards examined that were worked by renters the
yield was 192 bushels to the acre. These figures are for a
section of the State in which apple growing is the leading
industry. The orchards managed by owners are away ahead
in point of yield of those managed by renters. There is a loss
of about 5%, and this represents 208,221 bushels of apples,
and cuts down the yield. The ownership question is an im-
portant difficulty as bearing upon orchard management.

The next thing of practical interest is the influence of drain-
age. It is impossible in the first five years of the life of an
apple tree to measure the damage of too much water, but
results are more and more apparent as the tree grows older.
The drainage question may be called a great one.

The first picture represents what is meant by good tillage
on orchard lands. This orchard is situated near Lake Onta-
rio.

The second shows the drainage of trees that lost their
leaves about midsummer. What is the trouble? It is down
below the ground in the soil, the interspaces being filled with
water so that the roots of the trees are unable to feed.

The third shows a little area in the centre of an orchard
where the trees suddenly died.

The fourth shows a small part of an orchard undrained,
where the trees will die. In any modern system of orchard-
ing, the first thing to do is to prepare the ground so that
drains will take off the surplus water.

The next enemy of the apple tree is the tree itself. When
the trees are set too near together, it is, after a certain age,
only a question of the survival of the fittest. As a result the
sunlight is shut out, and the fruit cannot develop unless the
sun shines on the leaves. We must have svmlight and water,
and these can only be obtained by planting the trees some
distance apart. The man who will not plant his trees far
apart finds his trees at the end of twenty-five or thirty years
resembling forest trees. If a tree is properly developed, you
have a maximum of bearing surface and the tree is like one-
half a sphere. Most planters set their trees farther apart now
than formerly. The average distance between the trees pre-
vious to 1880 was 2^^ feet. Those set since average 40 feet
apart. Pruning is necessary and should be attended to an-
nually, and not occasionally. Cut close if vou wish the wound
to heal quickly. In seven or eight years the place from which
a branch is cut will be covered and its loss is not noticeable.

Have here picture of an orchard where the trees were
planted a little more than 50 feet apart. The fewer the trees

35

the more fruit. The figures bear out this statement. The
trend of planting since 1884 has been to place the trees farther
and farther apart.

The several methods of cultivating orchards : By one
method no crop is taken ofif the soil except the grass. In cer-
tain cases this plan can be adopted, but as a rule it does not
pay. The soil must be top-dressed and have an abundance
of food.

Another method is a combined system of tillage and mulch-
ing. Clover may be grown each side of the trees ; the spaces
between the trees devoted to some crop. One object is to
keep the ground well protected. The system that gives the
best results year after year is tillage — cultivation. We show
by our charts that tillage is necessary, and that it is beneficial
to the trees. The chart showing the yield for the county
indicates that there has been an increase from 132 bushels
when kept in sod to 264 bushels when tilled. Have here an
example of tillage carried on over a number of 3^ears by a nur-
seryman who had two orchards — one tilled for thirty years,
and the other not tilled for that length of time. The soil was
the same in both, but the trees of the tilled orchard show
beautiful foliage, and there is a great difference between the
trees of the two.

In most orchards tillage begins in early spring. We see
the effect of tillage on the soil and the effect of cover crops.
Tillage of itself is not sufficient. If that only is used, the soil
washes down if we do not get a good cover. The roots of
plants used as cover crops go down and improve the soil ; it
has more moisture in it. Alfalfa roots go down into the
ground a long distance. If we would grow alfalfa success-
fully, it must be sown thick. In a comparison of cover crops
it is shown that alfalfa will give the largest crop to the acre.
These crops return a large amount of nitrogen to the soil.
Cow peas are sometimes used with profit, but are not always
satisfactory. Grow cover crops in rows and thus save mois-
ture. This is a good plan for a peach orchard.

Rape is one of the best crops to grow if the trees are near
together, and there is much shade.

The evolution of spraying: We in New York do not think
of managing an orchard without spraying. The first instru-
ment was an old broom ; now the. power engine is used. It
requires 100 to 120 pounds of pressure to spray effectually.
Trees should be thoroughly sprayed in the spring. When the
work is done thoroughly, the trees well cared for and tilled
and sprayed, then the crops will come. Then the orchardist's
reward is sure.

36

Discussion of Professor Craigf's paper : —

Mr. Fletcher : "What is considered the best soil in which
to put alfalfa?"

Professor Craig: "The ideal soil is one that is comparative-
ly loose, with a deep, open subsoil, but success depends not
entirely on the condition of the soil, but also on the intro-
duction of essential bacteria that promote the growth of
alfalfa. Soil from a section where it is successful has been
shipped to other parts of the State to inoculate the soil. I
took up plants and found them covered with nodules, show-
ing that the bacteria had increased."

Mr. Stockwell : "Would it do to put it on a piece where the
water is but three feet below the surface?"

Professor Craig: "It would not. You might get a crop for
one year. Crimson clover would be better."

Question: "Will alfalfa stand our weather?"

Professor Craig : "Yes ; no question about that."

Mr. Cockburn : "Are clover bacteria and alfalfa bacteria
the same?"

Professor Craig: "No."

Mr. Fiske of Grafton: "I would like to know more of cover
crops. What are the relative values of rape and other kinds
of cover crops ?"

Professor Craig: "There are two classes of cover crops to
be used. One will consume just enough nitrogen to grow
themselves. The other class are nitrogen collectors — clovers,
vetches, peas, beans, etc. No plant will collect as much
nitrogen as the vetch and give as much back to the soil.
It is estimated that a cover crop of vetch would give back
$30 to an acre, cow peas only $13 or $14 and rape but $7 or $8.
Vetch is four times as valuable from a nitrogenous standpoint
as rape. As to the danger of its becoming a weed — there is
no danger of that at all. If sown in the spring it will prob-
ably die the second season. We have found it possible to
keep the same ground seeded year after year by allowing the
seed to ripen, fall to the ground and then scratch it in. The
price of the seed of vetch is very high. Rape does not go to
seed when planted in midsummer."

37

Mr. Warren : "Can this vetch be grown profitably in New
England?"

Professor Craig: "I have not seen any place in New England
where it will not grow. Have seen it growing at the Am-
herst Agricultural College."

Mr. Warren : "How about cow peas ?"

Professor Craig: "These will not grow so well in cold sea-
sons as in warm, but they will grow almost everywhere."

Mr. Warren: "You spoke of it as a cover crop. What do
you mean by that?"

Professor Craig: "Two things — ^something that will protect
the soil and promote the physical condition ; primarily, to
cover land in the fall. I am an advocate of clean tillage
during the time the plant is growing, but object to it the latter
part of the season ; a cover crop is put on the ground at that
time to cover it up, save the soil and protect the roots."

Question: "When is it best to sow vetch? 1 sowed some
that did not work well."

Professor Craig: "Cover crops should be sown early unless
the fruit ripens late in the season. The vetch does not ripen
soon enough for this purpose for peaches."

Question : "How about retaining underbrush for covering
over?"

Professor Craig: "You lose some in its decay. The true
way to make use of it is to turn it under and let it break up
as soon as possible. The plant food in this form is the best
type to give the plant. This is from the chemical point of
view. The physical condition of the soil is of as much im-
portance as the plant food which it contains. This cover
crop should be turned under in the spring as soon as possible.
This is an important point. Turn it under while it is crisp
and juicy. It breaks up more quickly and becomes absorbed
more rapidly."

Mr. Ware : "What do you mean by the physical condition
of the soil?"

Professor Craig: "Fineness of the soil. The plant gets
more food from the small particles, because the plant takes
food in liquid form."

38

Question : "Would the length of the season permit you to

sow vetch in the cornfield and have it mature soon enough

to turn it over?"

Professor Craig: "It does in New York."
Question: "Is vetch better than crimson clover?"
Professor Craig: "It is in the cooler parts of the country.

The seed is. larger, germinates with more certainty and is

not so easily winter-killed."

President O. B. Hadwen of Worcester Horticultural Society
presiding: —

Pres. Hadwen : "I feel especially gratified at the success
of the fruit growers' meeting, at such large and intelligent
audiences and such interesting speakers. The Horticultural
Society are to take charge this afternoon, and I have the
pleasure to present to you Mr. Clark, who will address you
upon the subject of 'Cold Storage.' "*

Mr. Clark: "I do not come here to talk cold storage as you
have it in cities. I refer to cold storage for the grower at his
own place or in the neighborhood."

Discussion on Mr. Clark's paper: —

Question : "Will the temperature of such a house as you
mention vary with the outside temperature? Suppose there
should come a warm wave and the thermometer get up to
50°. what would be the result?"

Mr. Clark : "It would not make much difference in the tem-
perature of the house. There is no trouble that moisture will
gather on the apples if I take care of the house properly."

Question : "How small a quantity of apples would you
build a cold storage house for?"

Mr. Clark: "For eight or ten hundred barrels."

Question : "If everyone had cold storage would not that
make a more uniform price for apples the year round?"

Mr. Clark : "That is what cold storage is doing. It evens
or regulates prices. There is a longer time in which to dis-
pose of the fruit."

Question : "\A"ould you advise such a house to be built
partly under ground?"

' Mr. Clark's paper was printed in the Proceedings of the Worcester Horticultural Society.

39

Mr. Clark: "They are best built above ground, because the
heat of the ground makes it harder to control the tem-
perature."

Question: "In case one has a cellar cannot ice be used?"

Mr. Clark : "Certainly it can, but it will require more ice."

Mr. Hixon explained the cold storage processes used in
Boston.

Mr. Hixon : "If you never have seen a cold storage plant
it would pay you to go and see those in Boston. From some
of these the cold storage is taken in pipes just as water or gas
is taken.

"It is said the great trouble Avith the fruit grower is that he
thinks he can take most any old thing, put it in cold storage
and it will come out first rate. You never will get anything
better when you take it out than when you put it in. Take
pears, for example. If pears are left on the tree long enough,
until ripe, they will come out in pretty good condition, but if
picked too early, they will, when taken out of cold storage, be
just about as good as so much cork.

"I am not down on cold storage, because it is the salvation
of the fruit grower, but whatever you put in cold storage, see
that it is in fairly good shape before it is put in. Don't put it
in until it is about fit to eat, then it will come out all right.
Bartlett pears that were just beginning to be mellow were
kept sucessfully in cold storage from September to about the
first of April.

"I found that various kinds of fruit were kept at a tempera-
ture of 32 degrees. Fish at 8 degrees below zero. Butter
10 degrees below.

"There are two kinds of refrigeration — direct and indirect.
For eggs and fruit the indirect is generally used. There is a
large fan that blows the outside air across long coils of pipe
full of brine mixture. Cold air is forced into the building
and goes to the different rooms. The direct is piped about
the room and the pipes in some cases will be covered with
from two to six inches of frost. The walls and stairways are
aKo covered with frost.

"The rooms should be kept entirely clear from anything
except what you are going to use them for. Eggs kept with

40

m

lemons taste so strong- of lemon that you could make lemon
pie of them without using any lemons whatever.

"I say again, if you put anything into cold storage, put in
what will be worth something when you take it out. Don't
expect it will improve there, and be very careful not to put
fruit near anything that will contaminate it."

President Eames : "If any one has in mind a place which
will be suitable for a field meeting in June or September, let
the Secretary know about it. I want some field meeting the
coming season."

C. A. Whitney of Upton: "I move that a vote of thanks
to the Worcester County Horticultural Society be adopted."
This was done by a rising vote.

Mr. Rich of Worcester: "If the finders or growers of new
fruits will send them to Secretary Hixon with somthing about
them, they will be displayed on the tables of the society and
looked into by a committee."

Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association,

Eleventh Annual Meeting.

Wednesday, March 8, 1905—10.30 a.m.

The first session of the eleventh annual meeting was called
to order by President Jonathan Eames of Sherborn. Presi-
dent of the Worcester Horticultural Society, Hon. O. B.
Hadwen, delivered a short address of welcome.

In response to this address. President Eames said: "We
thank you, sir, for the kind welcome which you have extended
to us. We have learned to look forward to these meetings
with pleasure. They have always been profitable to us and
we hope and expect that this one will not be an exception to
the rule which has existed since the formation of our society."

PRESIDENT'S REPORT.

President Eames then presented his annual report as
follows :

Brother Fruit Growers and Friends :

We are called together to-day on this our eleventh annual
gathering in this spacious hall in the beautiful city of Wor-
cester.

We are much indebted to the Worcester County Horticul-
tural Society, which has so cordially welcomed us here to-day,
for this place for holding our annual meetings. No city in
the State is more centrally located or has better railroad con-
nections. We have found these meetings with their lectures
and discussions, and the field meetings with the practical
knowledge they have given us, to be of great benefit and of
much value to us as fruit growers. The experience of many
years of those who have made a close study of fruit growing
along many different lines, has been given us in a plain and

42

practical way that has enabled us to benefit by the labors and
experiments of others and save us perhaps years of effort on
our own part.

In these days of rapid transit of telegraph and telephone
connections, market conditions change much more rapidly
than in the days of the four-horse stage coach and slow mail
delivery. Another change which may be of great importance
to us, is the tendency to consolidate and combination of in-
terests in the trades and other lines of business. If these com-
binations have proved to be for the best interests of those con-
cerned, why may not the fruit growers, by united effort, bet-
ter their condition, and enable them to reach larger and more
distant markets, than could be possible to the small grower
or independent farmer? These and many other questions
may furnish us food for thought, and subjects for lectures and
discussions.

Many more of the fruit growers of this old Commonwealth
should receive the benefit of these annual meetings, and be-
come members of the society. I hope more institutes in dif-
ferent parts of the State can be holden, so that those who have
not attended our meetings may learn the object of our society.
With a larger membership and more money in the treasury,
more of these lectures and institutes would be possible. You
will notice the programme that is given to us to-day is from
the standpoint of the practical fruit grower, and I hope these
lectures with the discussions following may be of much in-
terest and profit to all who have met with us.

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

The report of the Secretary was then called for. The
Secretary responded :

"I regret to say that in packing my bag the report of the
last annual meeting was left out. The papers pertaining to
that meeting, however, are now all collected, though it was
with difificulty that I obtained them. If you will excuse me
until to-morrow morning, my report will then be here."

Report of Treasurer Ethan Brooks read and accepted.

Mr. Brooks: "Mr. President, I wish to say that as Treas-
urer of this association, I have found the responsibilities not
very great, the temptations not overpowering, but I feel that
I have held this oflice quite long enough, and I therefore beg
to say that I shall not under any conditions be a candidate
for re-election."

1904.

March 8.

March 9.

43

TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1904.
Dr.

Balance on hand, $41 63

Received for membership dues, 19 00

Received for membership dues, 3 00
Received for interest from savings bank, 2 75

Received for membership dues, 61 96

Received for badges, 80

$129 14

Cr.

Paid bill for printing.

Paid stenographer.

Paid expenses, lectures, express, postage,

etc.. salary of Secretary ($15),
Paid President Eames,

Balance on hand,

$16
13

43
50

66

50

$96

80

$32

34

ETHAN BROOKS,

Treasurer.

It was then voted that the chair appoint a committee of five
to nominate officers for the ensuing year.

President Eames selected the following committee :
H. O. Mead, Lunenburg; J. ^^^ Clark, North Hadley ; Monroe
Morse, Medway ; Ethan Brooks, A\^est Springfield, and R. H.
Race, North Egremont.

President Eames : "Our first lecture is, 'Foreign Markets
for Our Apple Crop', by George A. Cochrane of Boston. Mr.
Cochrane was not able to be present, but has sent his paper,
which I will ask our Secretary to read."

FOREIGN MARKETS FOR OUR APPLE CROP.

Under this caption there is a great deal to be said, much
more than I shall have time to allude to or you to listen to.
Were it not for the large and increasing outlet for our apples
in the several markets of Europe, the great bulk of what is
produced this side would be almost worthless. It is to be

44

deplored that this large outlet for onr fruit has been so
wretchedly catered to. It is safe to say that one-half of what
is shipped, annually, should never have left the orchards that
produced the fruit. We hear so much about growers being
robbed by sending consignments of their fruit to foreign mar-
kets, but it is very rarely that growers sending fine, well-
selected and well-packed fruit fail in having satisfactory re-
turns.

The outlet for a part of our apple crop in Europe is increas-
ing every year, as there they are growing less yearly and can-
not produce many of the varieties that can be successfully
cultivated this side of the Atlantic. As a matter of course
there are occasional seasons, like that of last year, when thev
have fairly good crops in Europe, but their fruit, as a rule, is
of a dark color and of inferior varieties, and ])rices being low
makes it unprofitable for shippers of American or Canadian
apples during such periods. In such years, it is unwise to
shij) any of our green or yellow varieties from this side ; only
the choicest red varieties will sell at anything like decent
prices. The season drawing to a close has been a very un-
satisfactory one to all concerned. Speculators have made
little or no money, notwithstanding apj^les ruled low during
the early part of the season, in fact there has been a great deal
of money lost. The api)le industry, in New England, can
never be brought up to a i)rofitable basis until the standard
of growers is greatly improved.

T think I am reasonably safe in the assertion that one-half
of the apple trees in New England are positively worthless
and should be cut down and burned. Orchard after orchard
contains trees anywhere from fifty to seventy-five years old
that have never experienced the results and effects of a saw
or a ])runing knife, let alone occasional spraying, and are to-
day simjdy hives for all the vermin that live on fruit. It
would be impossible for man's inventive genius to construct
anj'thing to cultivate and perpetuate the growth of these para-
sites of fruit life that would do the work better than these
old trees. There is not a section of any country in the world,
outside of New England, that would permit their existence,
and so far as trying to realize anything for the fruit grown on
such trees, it would be considered cupidity of insanity. In
rare instances I have known these old trees, by thorough trim-
ming, spraying and other methods of cultivation, being
brought up to a fairly good condition, but the time and expense
in doing it would have been far more profitable in setting out
new trees and i)racticing cultivation from the start. It is
absurd for a man to set out an orchard and expect it to amount

45

to anything- without cultivation, but this has 1)ocn the rule in
the past; the trees have been planted and allowed to grow up
rank, and whatever they yielded in fruit was marketed, and if
it happened to be a year of a light crop, fairly good results
would follow, but, as a general ndc, the results realized have
not paid the expense of picking, packing; and other charges.
F'erhaps another statement I make will astonish you still
more, and that is that the amount of apples produced of late
years thoughout the whole country is greatly over our home
requirements as well as any foreign demand on anything like
the basis of standard of marketable (juality of New England
growers. The ])erio(l has passed when anything in the shape
of an api)lc can be j^icked, ])acked and sent to markets. Fruit
that has sold for something heretofore, after this will bring
nothing, or so little it will bring the grower into debt in his
attempt to market it. A higher standard of cultivation must
be practiced by growers as well as that of grading fruit for
market in order to make the business at all jirofitable. A
great deal of the fruit ])roduced in New England cannot be
shipped to Germany, as it certainly would be confiscated l)y
the authorities and not permitted to be landed, not only for
being- unfit for food but princi]:)ally from fear of introducing
into the country the parasites that are in the fruit. There
are a few growers in New England that take pride in their
orchards, raise fine fruit, pack it well and obtain remunerative
prices, but they are the exception and not the rule. On mar-
ket days, here in Boston and in the market districts, you will
see fruit ofifered in bushel boxes and unheaded barrels that
ought to make the man blush that stands by and acknowledges
he is the owner of the same. Much of it is only fit for hogs,
and there is not a market in Euro])e that a grower dare make
such an exhibit : firstly, from a matter of ])ride, and secondly,
for fear of the clutches of the law, yet this goes on year after
year with us in lioston. If you want to realize how low is
the standard of apple growers generally in New England, just
look at other sections of our country in the matter of cultiva-
tion, grading, and packing oranges in Florida and Califor-
nia,— lemons, i)lums, pears, peaches, ajMMCots, in fact everything
grown in California; when have you ever seen a case of or-
anges with one orange as big as your fist and another one
along side of it not much larg-er than a marble, then another
one with a big scab, or several on it, and another all railroaded
with insects? This you never see, but right here in New Eng-
land we do not know enough to grow fruit in the manner
they do, and in most cases too indifferent or lazy to learn how
to change the order of things, i often hear it stated that it

46

does not pay to select apples so fine and pack them in cases.
How is it that in the Antipodes, within a very few years, they
have got onto apple culture, and Tasmania sends yearly now
hundreds of thousands of cases of apples packed just exactly
as snug as our oranges or lemons are, and every piece of fruit
perfect, and they are 13,000 miles away from their principal
market, which is London? I sometimes think we ought to have
legislation on the matter of grading fruit, especially apples,
making it a punishable offence for a grower to attempt to mar-
ket an apple under 2^ inches or any showing signs of disease
whatever. Apple growing on true business principles is
profitable and is demonstrated by lots of growers In New
York State, especially those along the shores of Lake Ontario,
where there are those engaged in this business that raise, in-
dividually, tens of thousands of barrels a year and make good
money, year in and year out. There are a great many small
growers of apples throughout New England that their total
production will be, we'll say, from 20 to 50 barrels and con-
sisting of several different varieties. Their attempting to
market their product is generally unsatisfactory, and my ad-
vice to those in sections where there are many of this small
class of growers is that they should coalesce and pool their
crops, having one of their number, the brightest one, to super-
intend the grading, packing and marketing of the fruit, and
when the product is sold and realized on, a settlement could
be made, pro rata, per pound, to the contributors to the pool.
Say, for instance, there are a certain number of farmers in a
neighborhood that together would have a matter of 500 to
1,000 barrels between them, whereas, individually, the highest
number would not be over fifty. Is it not to be seen that by
such pooling there would be a matter, we will say, of 200 or
300 Baldwins, 100 to 150 Greenings, 100 Northern Spys, too
Harveys, and so on, making decent sized lots of each variety,
which always command much higher prices than small lots,
especially in foreign markets, as they attract the large buyers,
who think nothing of taking a block of 1,000 barrels at a time,
but who would not look at a small lot of forty or fifty with
a dozen varieties in the parcel? These small lots, and of such
numerous varieties, attract the attention of the lowest class
of buyers, generally hucksters, and like all hucksters, they do
not scramble over one another to see who will pay the most
to secure the rubbish.

I would call attention to the fact that Boston is the best
equipped city in the United States to handle the fruit business
for export. The improvement in the construction of steamers
the past five years has been most rapid and marked. x\ll the

47

steamship lines are reached by the different railways, and
when fruit is in car-lots they are shunted to steamers' dock,
and the apples are taken right from the cars into the steamers.
This saves cartage and wharfage, a matter of ten cents a
barrel and much unnecessary handling. These steamers, in
most cases, are swift, some of them making the passage in
seven and eight days, very few taking over nine in decent
weather. They are thoroughly ventilated and most of them
have electric fans that keep up a circulation of pure air during
the voyage, and so far as the care of the fruit during transit
is concerned, it is simply perfect. There is no danger, like
of old, of the vessel heating the fruit during the v03^age, and
the landing condition of well-selected and well-packed fruit
is as perfect as the day it was shipped. No other port offers
equal facilities, and all that is wanted to make the business
profitable and more satisfactory to all concerned is a decided
elevation of the standards of growers. Until this can be
accomplished we will have to go through the same unpleasant-
ness that is so frequent each season between growers, ship-
pers and buyers on the other side.
It is up to you, Mr. Grower.

Discussion of Mr. Cochrane's paper: —

Professor Maynard : "There are two sides to this question.
Mr. Cochrane has made a pretty bad picture of apple growing
in New England, but we certainly do grow a good deal of good
fruit, and perhaps the reason why we do not get good prices
for it is because we do not put it up as we might. At the
same time we are greatly at the mercy of the dealers on the
other side. Apples sent to English or European markets
must be sold at once and cannot be held for better conditions
as they can in many of our own markets."

]\Ir. Elliott Moore of AVorcester : "It was my pleasure to be
in Liverpool a year ago last fall and see the apples as they
came into the market. They are taken from the boat to a
wholesale warehouse and they are sold at auction in the morn-
ing at half past three. Two barrels are taken from each lot
and turned out for inspection and the whole lot is sold from
this sample, but in selling, the sample does not go with the
lot. I was interested with the idea of consolidation as
brought out in the paper by Mr. Cochrane, namely, that all
fruit growers bring their fruit together and pool their issues.

48

The idea that we put in too much poor fruit is correct. If
everybody was devoid of selfishness what success in fruit
growing we might have. The time never has been when good
apples would not bring in a year of poor production from $3
to $4 a barrel."

Mr. Race, North Egremont : "A good many things in that
paper were very interesting to me and ought to be discussed
here. I would be in favor of destroying one-half the apple
trees — don't know but I would put it three-fourths. Many
trees are the nursery for all kinds of insects, and we may
spray as well as we can, in a few da3^s after a whole flock
of insects will come from the seedling fruit trees that grow
on the old farms. This ought to be brought before the Legis-
lature. Spray as I may and do the best I can, I shall get a
flock of insects from the neighbors which will come and de-
stroy my trees.

"About a month ago I shipped some apples to New York.
I put my apples up carefully — thirty-eight barrels. When I
got to the depot with them a friend of mine said, Tut your
apples in with mine.' When I saw his, I was almost ready to
take mine off, for his were not so good as mine, and instead
of my apples selling for $2.25, which I should have received
for them, they sold for $1.70. I had beaten myself out of 55
cents a barrel because I put mine in with my neighbor's.

"We ought to get together and let the 'other fellow' look
over our apples, and not look them over ourselves, for we
are likely to favor ourselves and the other fellow would not
do that. Self-interest would be thrown entirely out, and bet-
ter fruit be placed on the market as a result."

President : "A good point — where people pool their crops it
should be packed by one man."

Mr. Mead, Lunenburg: "In order to get good
prices, you must have good fruit in the barrel,
and anyone who gets fruit from different orchards
understands that there is a difference in the value of fruit
grown upon different land, even with the same cultivation. I
have two orchards on entirely different land and the fruit
varies in quality.

49

"We are, in a measure, at the mercy of the buyers. I don't
care where the fruit is sent. In the long run, if you give your
commission merchant honest treatment, you will get the
same, but if you try to play a snide game he can do the same.
If you wish to have honest treatment yourself, you must give
it. If you have square goods, there is no trouble. The man
who has a reputation can get more for his goods than the man
who has not. If a man has a reputation, and a box of fruit
is marked with his name, it will sell for a higher price than if
marked with the name of a man who' is unknown.

"A great deal has been said about shipping apples. I do
not care how many apples you put up — put up apples that run
alike, s6 that any barrel of a lot may be turned out and be a
fair sample of the lot. I have seen apples dumped in Boston
just as they are in Liverpool. A salesman said to me, 'I
don't calculate to sell stufif that I don't know about. We
know what we are doing.' "

J. W. Clark, North Hadley: "Take good apples and poor
apples — most of us have both. There is no trouble at all to
get rid of good apples ; the question is what to do with the
poor ones. Take a fall like last fall, when the wind took off
most of our apples — what will you do with them? Now, so
far as I am concerned, I try to get enough out of my seconds
to pay for handling my fruit. By putting them up so that
every barrel runs the same the dealers know what they are
and then they will handle them. Too much second-class
fruit already goes to the market. What shall we do' with it?
Three-fourths of all the trees, as has been said, ought to be
cut down ; then our market would be better and the price
would be better. The call from the market has been for
good-sized, well-colored fruit."

Moore : "What are the prospects for canning our poor
fruit?"

Clark : "I do not know. It seems to me one must do quite
a business to come out even. I wish I could evaporate them
and get my money back. I am trying to hunt up some way.
I won't make them into cider — ^will let them rot on the
ground first."
4

50

Secretary: "Our President has started a little enterprise in
this line. Would like to know his opinion."

President Eames : "For three years we have tried canning,
but to make it pay would take a large capital. Then the
same amount of heat cannot be applied for the different
varieties of apples. If different kinds of apples are put into the
same canwhen subjected to heat, one kind will cookmuchmore
rapidly than the other, so the different kinds must be kept
separate, but I think that in any case to can successfully one
should have a large plant."

II a. m.

HOME MARKETS FOR OUR APPLE CROPS.

A. Warren Patch, Boston.

The market is made by the quality and condition of apples
placed upon it.

If I were asked what vocation was less filled than most
any others, I would answer there were plenty of good open-
ings for young men in the noble calling of horticulture, in the
growing of first-quality of fruits for New England markets,
not necessarily the large cities, but also in the towns. The
people are eating more fruit ; their taste desiring the finest
quality has increased more rapidly than possibly their desire
for the fruit itself. I would say to the young men, start an
apple orchard, and if you fail to make it pay while in this
world, you will get your reward in the next one.

Friends, I might say right here that many a farmer lad in
Boston working for ten to twelve dollars per week, out of
which must come his room-rent, board and washing, has
often wished he was back on the farm. I have had them say
to me, "The farm was not the worst place, and I would like to
be there." I surely believe if they could or would return to
the country home and grow fruits, they would be much
happier, and I know they would not work near so hard.

The horticulturist, and the same applies in agricultural
pursuits, like the commission merchant, seldom becomes a
millionaire, but by working in harmon}^ with God and nature
instead of having to please on the one hand the shipper and
on the other hand the buyer, always gets more enjoyment out
of life. I do not make this assertion as a reflection on the
commission merchant, for he also is engaged in the noble
work of finding markets for what the horticulturists produce.

51

I truly believe that after the commission merchant's ac-
count sales are all rendered, and his final statement is made,
there will be "a light in the window and a mansion in heaven
for him."

The growing of apples, like other branches of business, has
' its drawbacks. Some will succeed better than others. But
there is no vocation in life in which a man who has philoso-
phy, poetry and sentiment in his composition, can get as
much happiness and contentment. He who plants a tree,
plants hope, joy, love and good will. He works not for him-
self alone, nor for the time in which he lives, but for the good
of his fellowmen, and the future as well.

Whittier says :

"That he who blesses most is blest,

And God and man shall own his worth,
Who toils to leave as his behest
An added beauty to the earth."

The wonderful love of the Lord for Israel is expressed in
"I raised thee up under an apple tree."

The growing of good fruit and good vegetables is the first
thing. Different soils produce different results, or, I might
say, no results. For instance, the Marshall strawberry,
which leads all other varieties in the Boston market at the
present time, will not produce good fruit in all soils.

I suppose you have been advised regarding the best meth-
ods to pursue in the growing, spraying the trees, loosening
the soil, frequent cultivating, and ploughing in of cow peas,
clovers, etc.

We as a people are largely influenced in our tastes and
desires by color : a bright red apple certainly is more attrac-
tive than any other. Its appearance invites our attention and
often induces us to eat it ; therefore, you will find apple deal-
ers advocating the colored fruit for all markets. The eye is
oftentimes a greater factor in making a purchase than many
imagine.

A dealer having white currants or white raspberries might
be more unable to dispose of a hundred quarts of them than
he would twenty hundred of the reds. We in Massachusetts
have been brought up, so to speak, with many varieties of
apples, and all are appreciated to a certain extent, some much
more than others. When I was a boy, I knew of every
mother apple tree within a mile of my home, yet for a com-
mercial apple it is no good ; in fact, commercially there are
altogether too many varieties of apples.

52

Speaking of varieties let me ask you to consider what an
apple salesman has to contend with. Last August the
Growers' Union of Oregon, in estimating the yield in that
State, figured on sixty-two different varieties, and to give
you an idea of what they are growing permit me to say that
Newtown Pippins came first in quantity ; Spitzenberg, second ;
Ben Davis, third ; Baldwin, fourth ; King, fifth ; Gravenstein,
sixth ; the balance of the varieties was in much smaller quan-
tities, to be sure, but think, please, that one-half of the kinds
would be unknown, if not to all dealers, certainly to many,
and most assuredly to the consumers.

Only last year I received a letter from a professor in one
of the State agricultural colleges wherein he said he had
examined many of the generally known varieties, but gave
me names of 179 other varieties, and asked if I could assist
him by obtaining as many samples of the 179 as possible,
that he might investigate and learn of their merits or de-
merits. Why gentlemen ! there are names mentioned that
no dealer in Boston ever heard of. What could a salesman do
with carloads of those odd and unheard-of apples?

A year ago I asked ten apple dealers in Boston what varie-
ties they would set out if desiring an orchard of a thousand
trees for market purposes. One answered he would put out
nine hundred of them Baldwins ; thinking for a few seconds,
he added, "And then I'd put out the other hundred in Bald-
wins." Nearly similar answers came from all.

Only last week I was talking with one of our largest apple
dealers about the varieties that had best be grown in Massa-
chusetts. He answered, "Eighty-five per cent, of Baldwins,
sure." One can say that everybody likes a Baldwin. Its
coloring is inviting. It stands to-day the king of all apples
in the markets of the world, therefore it behooves the fruit
growers of Massachusetts to produce the very best Baldwins.
Yet did the Greening have the color, and did it have the
keeping qualities of the Baldwin, it would be the most popu-
lar apple in all markets of the United States, and perhaps in
the whole world. It is true that every autumn apple opera-
tors in all the western cities ask for Greenings and Belle-
flowers from the East because of their known good qualities,
getting the former generally from western New York and
the latter from Maine ; but just consider the immense number
of Baldwins those western men purchase in New York State
and in New England.

The excellent and perhaps extraordinary keeping qualities
of the Ben Davis, with its bright and cheery color, are very
largely what make its commercial value in the western- mar-

53

kets, or as a shipper to foreign ports. Rarely an apple
handler is found who mentions any other good quality. I
am not saying anything against the merits of many other
varieties of really good apples, but to sell them and get their
relative value as compared with the ideas of the growers is
near an impossibility. They are not well enough known to
be in demand, and having only a few barrels no dealer cares
to bother with handling them, with perhaps a few exceptions
of high-colored table apples, such as Spitz and Nodheads.

The odd varieties, in order to make a sale, are sold at re-
ductions, and generally to the lower class of traders. Con-
sumers and dealers prefer purchasing those varieties of
which they can procure more ; dealers have not the time nor
inclination to explain the virtues of fruits. They want an
article that is known to the consumer.

I wrote this question to a party in New York, another in
Philadelphia, another in Cincinnati, another in Chicago :"If
you were situated so you could receive all the known varie-
ties of apples, what six would you first select for commercial
purposes? Place them in order as you would prefer them."

Cincinnati answers : "Baldwin, Spy, Greening, Russet,
King, Rome Beauty and Belleflower."

Chicago answers : "Instead of six varieties should name
eight : Baldwin, Greening, Spy, King, Russet, from the East ;
from the West, Ben Davis, Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Willow
Twig."

Both cities say providing the conditions were all equal,
that means price and quality, the preference would be given
to Baldwin, having to work about five times as hard to sell
the Ben Davis.

Philadelphia writes: "Should name Baldwins, Kings, Spys,
Greenings, Spitzenbergs, Ben Davis."

New York says : "The Baldwin is preferred above all other
varieties as a general market apple, and as the next five
would name Greening, Rome Beauty, King, Ben Davis, Spy."

For Massachusetts I would confine myself to the growing
of Baldwins, Greenings, Wealthy, Mcintosh Red,Gravenstein,
Spy, King and Roxbury Russet, the latter three in a limited
quantity. For small quantities of very early apples I would
grow the Williams, if I resided within fifty miles of the Bos-
ton market. They are aways a handsome apple, suitable for
eating or cooking, if picked a little before getting ripe. With-
out doubt, a Red Astrachan is the next best of the very early
ones. These two varieties usually bear every year, and in
good quantity. The Hubbardston would follow, if one
required quick cash to pay the taxes. Get the apples into

54

barrels as soon as possible after picking. It has been clearly
proven that apples will keep longer, if to be put in cold stor- i
age, if put in barrels immediately they are taken from '
the trees. The old idea of heaps under the trees, or a sweat-
ing process in barrels in the barn or under a shed, must be
relegated to the past if apples are intended for storing, or if
intended for market at once; they also stand up longer and
look better. The marketing of the apple dates from the time
Eve made the first shipment to Adam, and as a result of her
first deal there came the clothing and millinery business. As
boys we were told that William Tell had a large interest in
the apple.

To-day the barrel stands ahead of any other package in all
the eastern markets, and without any doubt it has the prefer-
ence in all the western ones. And, gentlemen, don't deceive
yourselves in using any but a standard size, which is a barrel
of the capacity of the flour-barrel, which is 17^ inches in
diameter of head, 284 inches in length of stave, and bulge not
less than 64 inches outside measurement.

Thankful you all may be that apples in a good flour or
second-hand, regulation-sized barrel will bring as much
money as if in an absolutely new barrel. Have your second-
hand barrels free from all flour or any foreign substances.
Always sweep them out ; even wash, if necessary. The
second-hand barrel, if clean, is not an objection in any mar-
ket in the world. Although it is true the speculators in some
of the large western centres have made the remark that
"they wished New England apple operators used new bar-
rels," but if the quality is there, I am safe in saying no higher
price would be paid. When packing, put the bottom row
stems down, so that the stems will show pointing upward
when the lower head of the barrel is opened later on by the
man who is to sell them. There is no deception in this "fac-
ing." It is not the largest apples that are desired for that
purpose, but face with a fair sample of your stock. Have the
balance of the apples in the barrels as good as those shown
on the top, and you will never regret it.

Medium-sized, if honestly packed, are no objections.
Please remember I am addressing you on packing for home
markets. You understand, of course, that includes the
southern and western ones. When packing your apples,
place the barrels on some hard substance ; the earth is not
hard enough. You cannot get apples solidly packed in bar-
rels shaken on the ground. Probably very few of you
realize the quantities of farmer-packed apples that come to
market slack-packed. The stock inside becomes bruised, the

55

keeping quality is affected ; the good appearance is damaged,
and consequently more or less unsalable. Shake the barrel say
four times as you are filling it. Then have the apples pressed
in so that there can be no possible looseness. Such, my
friends, command the top prices in any market, and once in-
troduced those brands will forever be in demand by name,
and are always half sold before arrival. Have your stock
and quality what it claims to be. Quality counts, and from
now onward will be the first thing considered. For English
markets one has a choice of making No. i throughout the
barrel, or I's and 2's mixed. That means 2's as far as size.
It does not mean 2's as generally spoken of among the trade,
for wormy and defective fruit is not wanted by our cousins
over there any more than it is here.

Whether it pays a grower to pack seconds is a question
each must answer for himself. True, they sell for something,
but when we consider the time used in packing, the price of
the barrel, the freight charges, I am forced to think that
apple growers had better not put up any No. 2's. They can
be loaded into cars in bulk, and forwarded to market.

Such action indicates they are intended for immediate sale
at whatever price can be obtained. In my opinion the grower
had better sell for cider, feed to stock, or, better still, he
might evaporate them. There seems to be a growing de-
mand for evaporated apples in foreign markets. While
quality counts, and will always count, a cheaper grade of
evaporated apple has given very satisfactory results. It is
strongly believed that not in the distant future regular buy-
ers will purchase no seconds. Every large speculator is hop-
ing the time will come when there will be fewer or no sec-
onds grown.

The people in the world each year are getting more partic-
ular. The so-called poorer classes are wanting the best, and
when they cannot get that quality, sometimes go without. On
a recent trip in Cuba the apple dealers in Havana very plainly
told me that only No. i fruit was wanted in that market.
They did not wish to be considered as willing to receive the
second quality even on consignment.

Don't try to carry on too large a farm or orchard ; have
less land; put more attention into the growing, and get a
better quality. Keep in mind, I mean for those who make it
their business to grow the best ; pack only the firsts ; taking
pride in their production, remembering the two words "qual-
ity counts."

Quality is to be the leading word on fruit, if, indeed, it is
not so already. It is easier to-day to sell 500 barrels of straight-

56

packed No. i Baldwins at $2.50 than it is to sell twenty bar-
rels of poorly packed at $2. The parties who purchase an
honestly packed package of any fruit are legion, whereas
those who purchase or want the second rate packings are
very few. Always mark variety plainly on head of barrel.

The same care in growing, assorting, in having a clean
package, and in shipping any other of our New England
fruits will bring the most net results. The man who does
these things creates a demand, makes a market for his fruit;
in fact, I 'can repeat what I have said once before, the stock
is half sold before reaching the market-place.

It is said the progress of a race of people is indicated by
the care for fruits and flowers and the character of its apple
growers, who are civilizing humanity by supplying it with
apples. I wish that apples were more universally esteemed
in our households. They are, without doubt, the most useful
of all fruits grown in the northern temperate zone.

During the World's Fair at St. Louis, one day was adver-
tised as "Apple Day." It is said the lines extended hundreds
of feet from the distributing points, every one anxious to get
an apple. It is claimed 500,000 apples were given away.
This caused the pomologists in charge to endeavor to have a
day set apart each year, to be known as "Apple Day." As
near as I can learn the third Tuesday in October was decided
upon as being the one most likely to meet the best results.
It was thought that while thousands of apples would be
eaten that day all over the United States, that further than
that attention would be called to this most healthful and
nourishing fruit, thereby stimulating consumption through-
out the year.

I suppose you have seen the many articles in the papers
the past few years about the value of the apple as a benefit to
the human system, aiding digestion, driving away dyspepsia
and insomnia, making muscle and better blood. The apple
should be regarded more as a food.

"Eating three apples a day
Will drive the doctor away."

It is my opinion that if the apple crop is handled in the
right way, growing the finest, proper packing, judicious mar-
keting and wise distribution, there can be no over-production.
There are more people in this country who do not get enough
apples than there are of those who get too many.

Any good thing that I can do, or any kindness that I can
show to any human being, let me do it now ; let me not defer
it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

57

* ' Here 's to the man with a seeing eye,

Who knows what he's about; ^ ,

Here's to the man who works to a plan,
And keeps a sharp watch out.

' ' Here 's to the man who plugs the leaks,
Who stops to count the cost;
Who makes great haste to check the waste,
Before his profits are lost.

' ' Here 's to the progressive grower,
Who prospers because of credit;
Gained by honestly packing his fruit.
And showing to the world its merit. ' '

Discussion of Mr. Patch's paper: —

Question: "Is Mr. Patch a grower or seller?"

Mr. Patch : "I am a commission merchant."

Question : "Which is the better, to ship apples in a box or
barrel?"

Patch : "I do not think there is anything better than the
barrel. The box is used in the West."

Question : "Which sold the highest last fall, Wealthys or
Baldwins?"

Patch : "I don't know that I can answer that. There were
not enough Wealthys to judge. Since then a good many
have been placed on our market. For the time being.
Wealthy apples brought from 50 to 75 cents a barrel more
than Baldwins."

Fuller: "Is the Wealthy about the equal of the Ben Davis?"

Patch : "It is a good ways ahead. No dealer has many
good words to say for the quality of the Ben Davis. Take
away its color, and he could not sell it. Take away its ship-
ping qualities, and it would not amount to Hannah Cook.

"There is no question in our minds as to which apple, the
Baldwin or Ben Davis, stands first in our market. The
Baldwin, by all means. It sells itself. The other has to be
talked all the time. Eliminate the Germans from our
population, and it would not sell. It is a good seller for
fruit-stands, but ten times as many Baldwins are sold from
the stores as Ben Davis. I would give the preference to

58

Baldwins for general all-around purposes. The Ben Davis
apple produces well in Illinois, Arkansas and Missouri."

Question: "Is not the Ben Davis a short-lived tree?"

Patch : "I think not."

President Eames : "Is not the quality of the Missouri Ben
Davis better than what is grown this way?"

Patch : "Yes ; this apple seems to be almost perfect as
grown in the states I have mentioned."

Mr. Race: "I was recently appointed on a committee to
revise a list of the varieties of apples for which premiums
should be offered. I told them I was coming to this meeting
and I would ask if there is any new variety that would be
desirable to put on the list for new apples to be grown.
What do you think of the Mcintosh Red?"

Patch : "It is one of the best table apples we have. It
comes in the season when we are rather lacking of table
fruit. The Snow apple grows well occasionally, but general-
ly it is a waste of time."

Patch : "I should grow Baldwins and Gravensteins."

Race: "My mind exactly. Would you suggest Alexan-
ders ?"

Patch : "No ; the trouble is you get too many varieties.
People don't know about them. They want to know about
the fruit they buy.

"A number of years ago I was in New York and became
acquainted with the Maxwells. They had grown plums, but
not to any great extent. They brought out the Queen
Claude. I had never heard of it, but it was like the Green
Gage. We marked these Green Gage, and sold hundreds of
bushels of them in Boston.

"Take Damsons — everybody knows Damsons. People
would come in our store and inquire for 'damsels.' They
only knew there was a plum of that kind. So in any kind of
fruit, get something that somebody knows about."

Race: "What would you add to winter apples?"

Patch : "You are wasting your time on Hubbardstons."

Race : "You would advise cutting Hubbardstons from the
list?"

Patch : "Yes ; commercially."

59

Race : "That is what I want, — commercially."

Patch : "I do not believe in having too many apples ; rather
grow a fair amount and try to get the best."

Vincent: "What about the Rome Beauty?"

Patch : "I saw an apple man in Ohio. He had Rome
Beauties and wanted to know about shipping them. The
only thing I was afraid of was the size. The color was good
and they were fine eating.

'T brought some home and took them to some apple men.
They said that they would take them at $3 per barrel. We
sold that carload for $3, another for $3.50, and another for $4,
That is all the experience I have had with handling Rome
Beauties."

Vincent : "I don't know how it would do here, but while I
was in West Virginia there was an orchard on the farm
where I was and I never saw finer apples growing, and they
certainly were larger than any Baldwins that I have ever
seen. It was a young orchard. That is why I asked about
it, thinking it might be a good apple to introduce here."

Question : "Do you open and buy from the face of the bar-
rel ?"

Patch : "When I go to buy, I open the barrel on the face
and on the bottom to see how they are packed."

"There are any amount of mighty good men and many
men who pack apples so that no one would be ashamed of
them,

"I think if the farmers here in Massachusetts would put as
much work into the Baldwin as the West does into the Ben
Davis, that no better Baldwins could be grown in the world
than in New England."

Close of morning session.

Afternoon Session — i.jo p. ni.

ELECTION OF OFFICERS.

List of candidates for officers for 1905 was reported, and
upon vote of the association the Secretary cast one vote for
the list as reported :

60
OFFICERS OF THE FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION.

President, Jonathan Eames,

Sherborn.

Vice-pres., C. A, Whitney,

Upton.

Secretary, S. T. Maynard,

Northboro.

Treasurer, J. W. Clark,

North Hadley.

Auditor, J. L. Ellsworth,

Worcester.

Directors —

Essex County:

E. A. Emerson,

Haverhill.

J. J. H. Gregory,

Marblehead.

Suffolk County :

J. W. Stockwell,

Boston.

Norfolk County :

A. F. Stevens,

Wellesley.

Monroe Morse,

Medway.

Plymouth County :

Augustus Pratt,

North Middleboro.

Walton Hall,

Marshfield.

Middlesex County :

C. F. Hayward,

Ashby.

M. P. Palmer,

Groton.

Geo. F. Wheeler,

Townsend.

C. S. Pratt,

Reading.

E. R. Farrar,

South Lincoln.

Hampshire County:

John W. Clark,

North Hadley.

E. Cyrus Miller,

Haydenville.

Hampden County :

Ethelbert Bliss,

Wilbraham.

L. W. Rice,

Wilbraham.

Berkshire County :

George G. Walker

, Williamstown.

R. H. Race,

North Egremont.

Franklin County :

M. H. Vincent,

Conway.

E. F. Copeland,

Colerain.

61

Worcester County:

Geo. Cniickshanks, Fitchburg.

O. B. Hadwen, Worcester,

C. E. Parker, Holden.

James Draper, Worcester.

E. A. Hersey, Westboro.

LECTURE ON PEACH CULTURE.

By Monroe Morse of Medway, Mass.

Mr. President and Members of the Fruit Growers' Associa-
tion :

Several years ago I came before you at the invitation of
your Secretary and gave a history of my experience in grow-
ing peaches. I told then all I knew about peach culture, and
perhaps some things that I did not know but only guessed.
I have not acquired a large stock of knowledge on the sub-
ject since, and I may have shed some of the stock I then
supposed I had, but I am much in the condition I then was,
so far as knowledge of peach culture is concerned. Never-
theless I come again, at the invitation of your Secretary, to
say something on the same subject. What I shall say may
not be of much value, but if it serves to start a discussion
and secure an interchange of opinions on peach culture, we
may derive some profit from that.

The peach, as you all know, is a native of a warmer clime
than ours, and the hardest obstacle to overcome in its culture
in New England is Jack Frost. The trees themselves are
not often killed by the cold of winter, but of the fruit buds,
the same cannot be said. Some varieties are more hardy
than others, but none are sure croppers in our climate. I
have found the Carman more able to carry live buds through
an unfavorable season than any other in my orchard. Next
come Waddell, Pratt and Crosby. While the fruit buds of
Crosby are quite hardy, the branches of the trees suffer more
from frost than any other variety I have. Last spring when
trimming trees, I found four trees of Crosby full of live buds,
and I comforted myself with the hope of some nice Crosby
peaches in the fall. The blossoms opened, and for a few
days, the trees looked fine, but the leaves never got much
larger than a mouse's ear. Then they began to shrivel, and
soon the trees were so near dead that I dug them up. I
found the sap wood discolored. The cold had killed the trees,
though the fruit buds had passed through the winter safely.

62

In other seasons I have found similar though not such
glaring illustrations of the hardiness of fruit buds on Crosby-
trees, coupled with extreme tenderness of the wood as to
resisting cold.

My first orchard was planted in squares, i6J feet apart,
giving i6o trees on an acre. I think that a very good dis-
tance apart to plant, though some, much more experienced
and successful growers, plant closer. As the trees increased
in size, I found the branches interfered some, and when
I decided to enlarge my orchard, I chose to plant in triangles,
or, as usually expressed, in hexagonal form, placing the
trees eighteen feet from each other. This gave one and one-
half feet more space between trees and nearly as many trees
to the acre — 158 instead of 160. It gives three open direc-
tions for cultivating instead of two as when planted in squares.
I think I prefer this hexagonal style of planting, but it re-
quires much care in planting to so place the trees that they
will make good alignment. I should never use trees more
than one year old from the buds. I once filled out some
rows with stocks the next spring after the buds were set,
and at three years of age those trees were as large as the
trees beside them, which were yearlings, when set at the same
time. In planting a commercial orchard I should choose such
varieties as would secure a succession of fruit from the earli-
est good ones to the latest that are suitable for this climate.
I should take into consideration the fruitfulness and hardi-
ness of the varieties, and the preference of the market for
white or yellow flesh, but I would not lose sight of quality
of fruit. I want to supply customers with such fruit that
when one package is used they will want another. Showing
attractive fruit of poor quality is a damage to fruit growers,
as the purchaser's appetite may be sated, or more than sated,
with the first package. In this way I think the Ben Davis
apple and the Elberta peach are damaging the fruit industry,
though some growers may find it profitable for a while to
cultivate them. I think they lessen the demand for apples
and peaches. Most persons are not posted as to the quality
of diflferent varieties, and are guided by appearance in mak-
ing a choice, and, if the quality is not such as to create a
desire for more, they will not buy more, not knowing that
some other variety might please the palate better, though less
attractive to the eye. We read in the good book of a cer-
tain young man who was almost good, though he lacked one
very essential quality. I think the same may be said of the
Elberta peach.

I do not think it necessary in planting trees to make' a

63

large hole. I should shorten the roots enough so a hole
fifteen to eighteen inches across will let them in, and make
it deep enough to let the tree in a little deeper than it stood
in the nursery row. In making the hole put the surface soil
by itself, and when the tree is set use it in the bottom and
to fill in around the roots. Trim off the branches and shorten
the top to not more than two feet. When the young tree
begins to grow, it will need care to train it to grow in the
right form : "Just as the twig is bent, the tree inclined."
Try to get three or four shoots to start near the top of the
stem, to form the main branches of the tree, and rub off all
the others. The second year these branches will need short-
ening, and two to four branches allowed to start on each.
Do not save the shoots which start on the top or under side,
but only those which start in such places as will form a flat
bow. Cut out all shoots which tend to grow upright in
centre of tree, thus forming a tree with an open centre.
While the trees are young, they will need much shortening
of the branches. In doing this, cut close where the branches
fork, so as not to leave an unsightly stub. Try to so form
the tree that all the fruit may be picked from the ground,
or from a step-ladder not more than four feet high. Try to
form the branches in such shape as to bring the danger of
breaking down to the minimum. Sometimes support is
necessary. Props are much in the way, and have to be re-
moved when cultivating. For this reason I use wires to tie
opposite sides of trees together. By fastening the ends of
the wires to short sticks, and passing the wire through forks
in the branches, the wire will do as good or better work
than props and will not be in the way. In pruning the peach,
we should bear in mind that fruit buds are formed only on
wood of present season's growth, and so prune as to keep the
bearing wood as near the stem as possible.

My experience leads me to think a peach orchard needs
careful and thorough cultivation, but I have talked with some
persons who claimed they were growing peaches in sod, and
said the fruit was more highly colored and firmer when so
grown. Last fall I seeded to grass about one acre of my
orchard for trial of the method. I have fertilized yearly with
chemical fertilizers until the last two years. In 1902 my
trees made such excessive growth — in some instances as
much as six feet — that I decided not to use any fertilizer in
1903. As there was no crop that year, and the trees still
continued to grow ranker than I wished, I decided not to
fertilize in 1904, but this year there is promise of a crop, and
I shall fertilize. I wanted to dress the orchard with ashes

64

last fall, but as the peach crop was a failure, my pocketbook
failed, and the ashes failed, too. If I get and sell a good
crop this year, I will try to reorganize the work for next sea-
son.

One very essential thing to be done, if one wishes to grow
first-class fruit, is thinning the fruit when small. It is a very
difficult thing to do and do well. I have never succeeded in
getting anyone to do the work as it should be done, nor have
I been able to do it satisfactorily myself. Invariably, too
much fruit is left on the tree. I think if the work should be
repeated when the fruit is about half grown, it might be
done better.

Mr. A. W. Cheever once said fruit thinning might be better
done if neighbors exchanged work, as most persons would
hesitate less about pulling off his neighbor's fruit.

The peach, like other good things, has diseases and ene-
mies. One enemy almost everywhere present is the borer.
If not guarded against, it is pretty sure to prove very destruc-
tive. I used to examine the trees spring and fall and dig out
the borers, but after a few years I began using a wash in
spring after examining the trees for borers, and I think it
keeps out the borers. The wash was made by slacking lime
to the consistency of paint, and mixing one pint of linseed oil
in a pailful of the lime paint. I painted the trunks of the
trees with this mixture about the ist or 15th of June, and it
adheres nearly all summer. The last two years I have sub-
stituted thin gas tar for the oil. It is cheaper, and I think
quite as good. I have heard that the curculio sometimes is
very troublesome, but it has never been serious with me.
Perhaps clean cultivation in spring and summer destroys it.
I have heard so. The San Jos4 scale, I suppose, is very de-
structive to the peach. I am glad that I have no personal
knowledge of it. Yellows and little peaches have been the
worst diseases of the peach in my experience. Yellows you
all know. Like the poor, it is always with us. The
only remedy is to dig out the diseased trees. Little peaches,
I think, is of similar character to yellows, and in my orchard
has been quite as destructive. When a tree is first attacked,
the most prominent symptom is lack of development of the
fruit, and delay in ripening. Instead of premature ripening
the process is delayed as much as one, two or three weeks
beyond the normal time, and the fruit is so small as to be
worthless. The trees grow less vigorously than healthy
trees. Like yellows, it seems to spread from tree to tree.
The same curative process so effective individually with yel-
lows is the only remedy I know. For cover crops I have

65

used oats and peas mostly. One objection to this crop is
liability to blight when sown at the season it has to be sown
for a cover crop. I wish some one would tell me of some
good rank-growing, nitrogen gathering crop which would
make a good growth when sown about the middle of July,
and would die in winter. I want it to be dead in spring so
as not to be a weed in the cultivation. I have tried crimson
clover several times, but never got sufficient growth in fall,
and it is rather uncertain about dying in winter. My market
is what may be called a home market, and I like to leave the
fruit on the trees as long as possible, and not have it get too
soft to handle well, as both quality and size improve by de-
lay; but it must be picked while still hard, or it will easily
bruise and soon decay. I grade into two qualities, and some-
times into three. Into each package of first quality I pack a
strip of thin paper, on which is printed my address, and a
guarantee that the fruit is as good at bottom as on top of
package. Customers soon learn the difference between a
basket of all good peaches and one deaconed with a few good
ones on top, and when they see my guarantee, they never ask
to see below. The lower grades I do not mark with my
label, but they are always as good at bottom as top. I have
used mostly the common Jersey basket, but am not satisfied
with it. I think a package holding about eight quarts, and
of such shape as to handle well, would be better for a home
market. I got one lot of baskets holding about six qviarts
each, with raised covers, and having handles like grape bas-
kets. They are not as large as I should like, and peaches of
large size do not pack nicely in them. The South Side Man-
ufacturing Company of Petersburg, Va., advertise a basket
claimed to hold nine quarts, which looks in the illustration as
if it might be good. It is very expensive, however, getting
baskets from so great a distance, as freight on baskets is ex-
tremely high.

I think I have now taken as much of your time as I ought,
and will close, thanking you for your attention. So far as I
can, I shall be glad to answer any questions. Before I leave
the floor I wish to ask some questions myself. Is it possible,
by any method of fertilizing the tree, to make the buds more
hardy? Would abundance of potash be likely to produce
that result? Can any of our scientific investigators tell?

Discussion of Mr. Morse's paper : —

Question : "Have you ever tried planting peach trees deep
in the ground?"

Morse : "I have a few planted in my hen yard. What the

66

result will be I cannot tell. Am trying planting spring or
summer vetch. Have found it a very good crop."

Question: "Will it make good growth if sowed on the ist
of July?"

Morse : "Yes ; it covers the ground entirely if sowed at that
time."

Question : "How does Mr. Morse stand on the contagion of
the yellows at the present time?"

Morse : "I think it is about as contagious as consumption.
You can get it, but you don't get it very easy. If the trees
are allowed to stand, it seems to spread from one- tree to
another."

Question: "What is the cause?"

Morse : "I have never heard of anyone who knows. My
orchard is about 90 or 100 feet above the level of the Charles
River, about one-fourth of a mile away from it. The soil is
well drained."

Question: "Would it be beneficial to have an orchard
elevated so as to get it well ventilated?"

Morse : "Yes ; the result that is secured from elevation is
freedom from frosts. The temperature of m}- orchard is
about 6 to 10 degrees higher than at the river."

Question: "Are you on a northern slope?"

Morse : "I am on the south side of the Charles River, and
the air. comes down the valley. Many think it is cold on the
hill, but it is really warmer than in the valley."

Fiske : "I would like to know something about this
disease that the speaker calls 'little peaches.' I did not know
we had it here. If I understand it right, the speaker has
largely in his orchard natural trees, and do not these small
peaches result from lack of fertilization? If the disease that
they have in Michigan has really got here, I should like to
know it."

Morse: "So far as I know I am the only person who has
had it. At first I thought it must be that something ailed
the tree for that season, and they would be better in the
future. The next year they were worse. It seemed to
spread from that centre. I sent a sample to Michigan, and
they pronounced it 'little peaches.' After about three years

67

the peaches did not grow much larger than walnuts. The

foliage will be a little wrinkled and have a yellow look.

Still they do not look like the yellows. The tree does not

die as readily as with the yellows."

Aloore: "Have you tried any remedy?"

Morse : "No further than fertilizer and cultivation."

Moore: "I have had it in my trees. It began in the same

way. The trees that bore two or three bushels two or three

years ago have dwindled so that they bear practicallv noth-

ing."

Mr. Ethelbert Bliss of Wilbraham read a paper on "Cul-
ture of Peaches," beginning as follows :

I come before you to-day as a plain farmer, and I assure
you that I feel much more at home on my farm than before
an audience.

I think if more of our young men would sta}'^ at home on
the hill farms and put the same amount of work and energ}^
and thought that they have to put into other things, they
could make more of a success than they do in the cities. In
my own section, when I was thinking some of going away,
some young men about my age thought they could do better,
and they went to the cities and have been working all these
years, and to-day they are no better off, and while my work
is hard and keeps me pretty well tied up, I assure you I
would not change places with them.

We come together in these meetings to give our experience
in growing the different varieties of fruit, and by so doing we
are able to exchange thoughts and get some good, practical
lessons from coming in contact with each other. As a rule,
most of us don't try growing a very long list of fruits for the
market, but rather make a specialty of some one kind. Six
years ago I came before this association, and gave a little
talk on "Peach Growing." Since then in growing this fruit
we have had some very good crops ; a large amount of hard
work and quite a little experience mixed in. Many things
about peach culture I am not quite as sure of as I was at that
time.

I then thought if the buds came through the winter all
right, we were sure of a fine crop of fruit. Usually I think it
will prove so. Still we find there are many things to come
in that will cut the peach crop short.

It is not best for all farmers to eo into fruit growing.

68

Every one who has lived in a fruit section has noticed that
many people start into fruit growing without any informa-
tion from practical and successful fruit growers, and nearly
all meet failure and sometimes very heavy losses. The ex-
ample of some very successful grower, who has received
large returns for his fruit, inspires this class with enthusiasm ;
they give up their regular occupation and start into growing
fruit, believing they will soon be on the right road to success,
but usually two or three years will convince them that some-
thing is wrong. It needs much preparation to start into the
fruit business right, and then mistakes will be made.
Choosing varieties, drouth or wet weather preventing a
stand, or improper cultivation, may be given.

The many insects and diseases may take plants or trees,
and even when the crop is nearly grown there are the chances
of dry weather or heavy rains spoiling it at the last. Stories
of big receipts should be carefully investigated, not only to
learn if the story is true, but to find out what was made last
year and the year before.

If certain kinds of fruit are a failure, the grower should
acknowledge it, and save other people from losses they are
sure to meet with if we hold these things back.

The fruit grower has many things to contend with. Near-
ly every year some new disease or insect is in our orchards to
be looked after. One of the worst just now is the San Jose
scale. This insect being so very small is difificult to recog-
nize by those not familiar with it, and before we suspect
that it is present on our trees, we are liable to have our
orchards full of it, and it seems to me the only safe way for
us is to spray with the lime and sulphur mixture. In our
oldest peach orchard last season we found a large portion of
the trees badly infested by the San Jose scale.

The cold winter of 1904 and the scale destroyed the larger
portion of this orchard. Those not so badly damaged were
trimmed back severely, then sprayed with the lime and sul-
phur mixture.

The formula used for spraying with the lime and sulphur
mixture varies much with different growers.

Some use lime, sulphur and salt ; others do not use any
salt, and some use twice as much lime as sulphur. We use
twenty-five pounds of best lime, and fourteen pounds sul-
phur.

In our work we use A. N. Brown's method of preparing
this mixture. First, we take fourteen pounds of sublimed
flowers of sulphur and two gallons of boiling water, and
make a sulphur paste by adding a little of the water at a. time

69

to the sulphur, stirring it well during the process. By the
time you have the water all stirred into the mixture we have
a very good sulphur paste.

Then I take twenty-five pounds of the best lime obtainable ;
pour on it eight gallons of boiling water. Immediately add
the sulphur previously prepared, cover the barrel with sacks,
and let boil for twenty minutes.

It is essential that you work rapidly, as any interruption
of the slacking process may destroy the effectiveness of the
work.

We do not stir this during the boiling process. With an
ordinary garden hoe occasionally raise the lime from the
bottom, so that it will not settle and burn before it is thor-
oughly slacked. This boils and stands for about one-half
hour, then I add hot water enough to fill the barrel, making
forty or forty-five gallons. This is strained through a fine
wire cloth directly into the spray barrel, and used while hot.
We think this wash is much more effective if applied while
hot, and the results were very satisfactory.

The trees were free from leaf-curl, are looking smooth,
and seem to be free from San Jos^ scale. The lime-sulphur
mixture is very irritating to the skin, and causes smarting
and soreness if the spray is allowed continually to come in
contact with the hands and face. Cheap masks may be used
to protect the face, and gloves should be worn to protect the
hands.

Cultivation.

The more we harrow and stir the soil among our fruit trees,
the better success we shall have in growing them, and the more
we cultivate the soil the less fertilizer we shall need for the
orchards. I think very few of us as farmers and fruit grow-
ers cultivate our land enough. Do we harrow and thor-
oughly mellow the soil before we sow the seed, set the plants,
etc. ? The peach orchard should be cultivated from early
spring till the last of August.

In young orchards sow something like oats for a green
cover crop. This will keep the ground from washing, and
the oats will hold the leaves as they fall from the trees, and
this will help make a mulch.

Varieties.

For the trade Elberta possibly stands at the head. Fran-
ces is a new yellow peach. Chair's Choice, late Crawford,
are good late yellow peaches. For a white peach the Belle
of Georgia is quite popular, as it is very large, white, with
red cheek, firm and of excellent flavor. Champion and Old
Mixon are good varieties.

70

Packing.

We should make careful inspection at the packing-shed.
Facing baskets and boxes with the largest berries and
peaches soon puts fruit below par. The time is coming
when only the best berries, peaches and apples will go on the
market at all, and our work should be of such character that
the grower is proud of it, as he will be if properly done. One
of the greatest mistakes is to label inferior stuff as "fancy."
This word has been so badly abused that commission men
pay little attention to it.

Discussion of above paper : —

Maynard: "What is your elevation, Mr. Bliss?"

Bliss : "About 200 or 300 feet from lower land."

Race : "What is the matter with the peaches ? The idea of
having 'little peach' disease. What on earth is that?"

Bliss : "It is evidently a disease."

Race: "Is it not because of over-production? Does not
the tree bear itself to death? I am not a peach grower, but I
would like to bring out some of these points. Mr. Morse
said that some of the peach buds were alive on his trees when
the trees were dead. How is that?"

Bliss : "That is all right. I think the small peach disease
is very similar to the yellows. I think if that disease gets
hold of a tree, it will die. It is not like being killed by a
hard winter. It is a disease."

Race: "Is it not a fact that in taking borers out of a peach
tree the tree is almost destroyed in digging them out?"

Bliss : "A peach tree will stand a good deal of that sort of
thing, and will live."

A voice: "Let us hear from Mr. Barnes."

Barnes : "Mr. President, when I came into the hall I did
not expect to have anything to say, but since Mr. Bliss has
got me into a scrape I will try to answer any questions you
may ask.

"Three years ago we found that we were having consider-
able competition in Massachusetts markets, and the peaches
got in in better condition on wagons than we could get them
in on the cars. Last year the Massachusetts men did not
seem to have so many peaches, but this year the buds are in
fine condition, so we are expecting to ship our peaches South.

71

"We have been troubled with the San Jose scale, and if you
have not, you must expect to have it pretty soon. You
should all be on the watch for it. If you are not sure
whether or not you have the scale, it would be a good thing
to have some one come and inspect your trees who does
know it, for many who think they do not have it find it is
with them. During the last season it has been found in
almost every locality by those who thought a year ago that
they did not have it. You might not notice it until the
trees are so badly infested that they show dead limbs. When
you find the scale, it is not such a great matter to eradicate
it or keep it in check. Mr. Bliss has told you how to prepare
the mixture and put it on."

Morse : "Perhaps the gentleman can tell what causes the
yellows."

Barnes: "No; I cannot. Do not think anybody can. The
best thing is to remove the tree as soon as you find it
is infected. Inspect the tree and cut ofif the infected limbs at
once, and in the fall pull out the trees."

Question : "Would it do any harm to burn these branches
in the orchard?"

Barnes : "No, I think not, with proper care."

Morse : "Have you ever had any trouble with 'little
peaches' ?"

Barnes : "Never had any trouble with those. A gentleman
inquired how Mr. Morse had live peach buds on dead trees.
I think probably Mr. Morse was right. Last winter we had
very cold weather and we lost 1500 trees with roots frozen,
and we had buds and blossoms on trees that, before the fruit
ripened, died."

Question : "I had a peach orchard that looked fine, but in
one day the peaches grew black and dried when they were
about as large as a peach stone. The trees, most of them,
died that season, and the rest of them the next year. What
do you think was the cause of that?'

Barnes : "I do not understand what could have been the
matter."

Morse: "Have you ever known of any experiments to in-
crease the hardness of buds by fertilizing the trees?"

72

Barnes : "No ; doubt very much if it could be done. Where
a tree has made very rapid growth, the buds have been more
incHned to blight than when they make slow growth.
Avoid the use of nitrogen."

Vincent: "I know less about peaches, but with raspberries
and blackberries I think that a minimum of nitrogen is best
for increasing the hardiness, and I do not know why it should
not work the same with peaches. Of late years I have tried
potash and stable manure, and have had more success with
them than with nitrogenous manures."

Barnes : "We must use discretion as to the soil that we
have. Each man must decide that for himself."

Wheeler: "How deep should the trees be planted?"

Barnes : "Somewhat deeper than in the nursery. On damp
land do not plant so deep, but do not plant on wet soil if it
can be avoided.

"Regarding our location — we are not very high — about 300
feet above the valley is the highest point. Look for a point
with good drainage. We have some orchards about 700 feet
above sea level, but don't find that the crops are any better
than in those 300 feet above the valley. The section where
we are, Wallingford, Conn., is quite a centre for growing
peaches."

Moore: "How long has this orchard been in existence?"

Barnes : "We have been in the business about fifteen
years."

Moore: "Have you made money?"

Barnes : "Sometimes we have. A neighbor of ours planted
an orchard about twenty-five years ago, and the greater part
of that orchard is alive yet. The trees seem to be healthy
to-day, and that is about the oldest peach orchard that I
know of anywhere in that vicinity. They are not all one
variety, there are four or five. It has been given pretty good
cultivation and pretty good care. I think peach orchards
need good cultivation. These trees are very large, having a
spread of twenty-five or thirty feet."

Maynard: "What is your distance apart?"

Barnes: "About sixteen or eighteen feet; but if the land is
sandy and dry, plant nearer. Try to have a good circulation

73

of air. If the trees are planted close together, they will run
up in the air."

Moore: "What is the best variety you have for market?"

Barnes : "The Elberta has been the most profitable fruit
for us ; at the same time a person should not depend on one
or two varieties. The Elberta comes right at the time when
people want peaches for canning. They are a fine color, and
they sell well. The Champion is hardy, large and good
■quality. At some seasons it is somewhat subject to rot. In
some markets the white peaches will sell as well as yellow
peaches. Farmers generally are planting yellow fruit."

Question : "Don't you think the white fruit has the best
flavor?"

Barnes : "I think so. For canning the Late Crawford is
good."

Question : "Have you had much experience with Mountain
Rose?"

Barnes : "I think it is good except that it is somewhat sub-
ject to rot. The Carman is coming on and taking the place
of others."

Question: "Do you plant Fitzgerald?"

Barnes: "No; we have not."

Chapin : "Which do you consider the best soil, sanfly or
heavier?"

Barnes : "Soil that has good drainage. Open subsoil is
best, but at the same time we don't want gravel where every-
thing beats right down through. We have one orchard that
has a heavy soil that requires little nitrogen. The peaches of
this orchard have grown very large, but lack in color,"

Chapin : "I have about lOO trees on clay bottom. The
trees grow well, but have no peaches. I have Crawfords
and Elbertas, and they are on a slope,"

Barnes : "We have had Late Crawfords at seven years old,
and had two good crops, where with Elbertas we have had
four. Late Crawfords will not bear so young."

Parker : "A gentleman near me knows all about peach
trees. Perhaps he can tell us something, and I am sure I can
hear him — Mr. Kinney."

Kinney : "I am no stranger in Worcester. I saw the notice

74

of this meeting as I was passing the hall and I came in, and
I intend to stay until it is done. I have a little over 3000
trees. I have been in the fruit business about fourteen years.
I can stand on the heights of my land and look OA^er 100 to
200 acres of peach orchards, and we are located in the centre
of the fruit-growing section. Mr. Barnes, how many car-
loads of peaches were shipped from Wallingford? About
ten or twelve carloads per day, was it not? These are
shipped mostly to eastern markets. I set out 450 trees on a
high, rolling piece of ground, and I want to tell you gentle-
men what I took off from that. The first good crop year I
netted $1500 from my 450 trees, and could see where I was
going to get rich quick.

"Now let me warn you about the San Jose scale. I kept
my orchard until I got up to three or four thousand trees, but
then my trees commenced to lose vitality and began to die.
Now that was too bad, but come to find out, my orchard was
literally plastered with the San Jos6 scale. The next springs
when I could spray my trees, I had to spray a new orchard,
and I am looking forward to the time when I can go in and
pick my carloads of peaches again. And understand, that
for all my peaches I have found a home market. I tell you
it just seems to me as if you had an unlimited market, and it
seems to me that there is any quantity of land around in this
section of the country that will raise peaches, and if you will
go into it, it will bring you in more money than any other
class of farming. Don't be discouraged because I have lost
one big orchard. I am first putting my land into good condi-
tion by raising corn ; then I shall seed it down and, after
cutting a crop of hay, turn the sod under and then my peach
trees are going in there."

Question: "What would you have done to those trees if
you had known what was the matter with them?"

Kinney : 'T should have sprayed them and cut them back.
I should have saved them if I had known it."

Question : "Which runs your farm, the peach orchard or
the dairy?"

Kinney : "Well, I am proud of both of them. I always
have relied upon my dairy as the foundation of my business."

75

Parkhurst : "Can you keep a peach orchard for many
years ?"

Kinney : "I don't think there is much trouble if you take
good care of your orchard."

Brooks : "Would Mr. Kinney recommend pruning the
peach trees or thinning out the fruit, so it would not be neces-
sary?"

Kinney : "Thinning fruit is very expensive. You can pick,
pick, pick, all day and not see where you pick. j\Iy idea is
to prune and take off limbs, but one year, I had such a large
crop of peaches that I hated to cut them ofif, so I got props
and put under to hold them up."

Brooks: "Does not that exhaust the tree?"

Kinney: "I think you are right; that it does."

Fiske : "There is one question that occurs to me. I have
to set out more or less trees every year in order to keep my
orchard full. While we have no San Jos4 scale, and those
people who have it are so used to it that they find it pretty
easy to spray, I tried to spray for other things and found
that it was too costly. The question that arises in my mind
is whether the art of fumigation has arrived at such a point
that a tree taken from a locality where they have the San
Jos^ scale can be fumigated so that it would be safe for me
to buy it and put it in my orchard."

Barnes : "As far as I know the fumigation is no injury to
the tree, and if there is any scale on the tree it would be
killed unless covered up with dirt. But there are washes
that any man can get up for himself, like the lime and sul-
phur wash,"

President : "It seems to me that many must have the scale
who do not know it, and the whale oil soap is an effective
remedy."

Ware : "I was at the meeting at Amherst, and it seemed
to me that fumigation is impracticable, particularly for trees
of any size. It would require a very large tent to cover a
tree effectually, and a great deal of care must be exercised.
There is considerable danger in its application, and if the tree
is in foliage, it will not only kill the scale, but also the tree.
I have no doubt it is practicable and useful for nursery stock,
and ought to be used there. It is also very expensive."

76

Morse: "What strength do you use whale oil soap?"

President: "Pretty strong."

Ware : "I find that out West, they are using a dry spray —
the Bordeaux mixture. I would like to ask Professor May-
nard about the dry spray; whether it is practicable here."

Maynard : "I have had no practical experience, but find,
by questioning those who have, that it is expensive and in-
effectual. It is hard to make it adhere to the tree."

Green: "We think the dust spray is of no real value. I
used it two summers and succeeded in getting canker worm
in very thickly, also apple scabs. Found it a waste of time
and material."

Bliss : "In regard to spraying — if you spray with lime and
sulphur you will not regret it. It is not such a tremendous
job, nor so very expensive, after you get at it, and there will
be no trouble in keeping the scale checked."

Kinney: "You can go through our city and see
hundreds of dead apple trees, that have died within the last
year or two, all killed by the scale ; also plum trees, pear
trees and cherry trees. Men are now getting outfits, and going
around spraying for so much an hour. Now the scale is
certainly coming and you want to be prepared for it."

Race : "We have not had the cost of spraying. I have a
catalogue where they estimate the cost at $6 per thousand,"

Barnes : "I think that is a fair estimate. But the spraying
should be done very thoroughly, so that it will not need to
be done every year. Go over it several times in one year,
and then you will not need to go over it again the next year."

Race: "This estimate of cost, coming from Mr. Barnes, is
valuable."

Morse : "I would like a description of apparatus for spray-
ing."

Barnes: "That depends entirely upon the size of the or-
chard. The best is cooking by steam. We have a five-horse
power boiler."

Morse: "What style of pump do you use?"

Barnes : "We use a common hand pump, a pump that is
fitted to a barrel and this is drawn around."

77

PLUM CULTURE.

H. O. Mead, Lunenburg.

Our Secretary invited me to write a little paper on this
subject. I wrote him back that perhaps I would give you a
little talk.

Now I have not come here to talk entirely, from the dollar
standpoint, or to tell you how many thousands of dollars you
might make from an acre of plums. There is something else
in the fruit line that appeals to one as well as the dollar. I
had a discussion with a man who said, "You are all right.
You make a dollar on your farm." I said that if the dollar
was all I made on my farm, I would get off it. The home
is a good deal on the farm as well as the money. Ask what
you can raise for yourself and what you can raise for the
local market. The plum is a back number, but, raised as you
would raise peaches, it is a fruit that easily gluts our mar-
ket. It can be sold in a limited way, at a good profit. That
man who raises fruits must study his market when he sets
out his orchard.

I would say something regarding the Japanese varieties.
The land I should select would be high, well-drained, good,
loamy soil. The soil has quite a little influence in quality
of the fruit. If you would raise good fruit, you must thin it.
The man who has never thinned a tree down in good shape,
has never raised good fruit. You may not all agree with me
because some people have no taste. All they see is size
and color. In order to raise something that is really good,
you must thin it. In thinning fruit, it does not pay to thin
until the small fruit has dropped off. If you thin about
three inches apart, you will raise a fruit which is much supe-
rior to that raised when the tree is allowed to overbear.

It does not pay to raise small, insipid fruit. The tree stands
better, does better, and if you have a market for good fruit,
there is more in it. I doubt if, for the general market, it
will pay to thin as you would for yourself.

You can graft the Japan plum on the peach, and it will
do very well, and if you set deep enough so that the plum
vv^tll be down near the ground, it will thrive.

By taking at about the right time, you may thin by strik-
ing the tree lightly. They need severe pruning. Leave per-
haps two to four inches of last year's growth. In regard to
older trees, — I have a plum tree that in '85 was grafted into
an Elberta, and it is still bearing. The Japan bears young.

In regard to marketing, I will say that of course your
packages will depend in a measure upon the grade of fruit

you are growing. In selling certain grades of eating fruit,
I used common strawberry crates. In grading fruit, you will
find that unless it is put up in fine style, on varieties like
the Burbank, there is little difference in price between the
graded and ungraded. There is not the difference in price
that the difference in fruit would seem to represent.

In regard to varieties, the Red June is one of the best early
plums we have. The Climax is very large, a nice, firm plum.

The Abundance is good eating. The Wickson is not a very
heavy bearer. The October purple and Hale are rank grow-
ers, but not heavy yielders for the size of the trees.

Discussion of Mr. Mead's paper : —

Question : "What do you think of the AVickson ?"

Mead : "It is a very upright grower. Do not think it what
3'ou would call high qualit}', but they are so good in size
that they could be sold by the dozen."

Question: "Are they hardy?"

Mead: "Not as hardy as others."

"In setting out a small orchard, I had a row of Wicksons.
Last winter every one of these died, so I concluded they
were not hardy. I find no difficulty in selling my surplus
plums."

Moore: "Did you ever properly thin a plum tree?"

Mead: "Yes."'

Moore: "How many did you leave on the tree?"

Mead: "I don't know."

Moore : "I have a few plum trees, but have never yet suc-
ceeded in thinning the trees. I thin until I think I have done
enough, and then in a few weeks, I thin again, and then when
I pick them, I find there are six plums where there should
be one. I don't think I shall live long enough to get a plum
tree properly thinned."

Mead : "I thinned a pear orchard one year when pears were
very plentiful. I thinned with the idea of getting pears for
the next year, and it was the most profitable thinning I ever
did."

Sharp : "How did the thinning of those pears affect the
pears the next year?"

Mead : "It was a great help."

79

Parker : "Why was the gentleman so anxious for a crop
the second year rather than the year when he had them?"

Mead : "Because I thought they would be worth a dollar
more a bushel the next year."

Friday, March g — lo a.m.

THE CARE OF APPLE ORCHARDS.

H. W. Collingwood. Editor of the Rural New Yorker.

I will talk about some of the things that have come about
in my own orchard during the past year.

At the hotel today, they handed me a bill of fare on which
was, "Baked Apples, 15c." I always plan to have an apple
sometime during the day. I wish you would send a com-
mittee up to that hotel. I would not have that apple served
on my table. I could forgive a man for selling such an apple,
but when he asks fifteen cents for it, I think it is rubbing it in.

The home market for fruits has not yet been developed.
You ought to be able to sell ten times as many apples as you
do right here in Worcester to-day. There are a good many
housekeepers who seem to regard an apple as ,we used to a
shrine. They put it on a shelf for the children to look at.
You must educate the people so that the trade in good eating
apples may increase. I believe that if a man go at it right
and try to develop the trade in his own section, he would
make a good thing out of it.

Last week in France, three men had a wager to see how
many apples they could eat. One ate fifty-seven apples in
eighty minutes, another forty-seven in seventy minutes, and
the third fifty-three in ninety minutes. While the demand
for good apples is increasing, the supply 4o6S not increase
so rapidly. I find that the actual per cent of A No. i apples
is decreasing, while the poor ones are increasing. Why is
that? In many markets, we find poor small apples with
scabs and scales on them. Putting these facts together a
man may reason in this way : "If I can plant a good apple
orchard, raise a first-class apple and put it on the market, it
will pay me to do it." I expect to see the time when the
Baldwin apple will rank in value above any other agricul-
tural product of New England. I think we are coming back
to the cultivation of good Baldwin apples. If I were a young
man and had a small amount of money to invest, I would go
out and plant an apple orchard, and stay upon it as long as

80

I lived. I hear of men going to the Canadian northwest,
and going to other places, but I firmly believe that there is
no other place that I would prefer to that of starting an apple
orchard on one of these New England farms.

But people say, "We have orchards scattered all through
the country." Well, I had one of these orchards on my farm
that makes me think of a thing I saw in Florida. In Palatka,
I went into a barber's shop to get a shave. There were three
men all living on the profits of one razor. There was one to
shave, a second man to make change and another to brush
the customers off. These three men were all depending on
the labor of one man. One of these old high-headed trees
makes me think of that barber's shop.

Just think of the fertilizer that you have to put on to get a
crop from that tree. All these great big limbs that stretch
out you don't get any money for. All that takes fertilizer
and culture and time. I don't believe those old high-headed
trees are up-to-date. Modern culture demands low trees.
There are lots of those trees that are not yet ready to go to
the brush pile, but many are not worth keeping. They esti-
mate in New York that it costs $1.25 to $1.50 to spray one
of those trees properly. That is an awful price. Those trees
cannot be sprayed as they ought to be unless a man is a
monkey and pan climb up in the high branches, and hang on
with his toes while he is spraying them. I don't know how
it is with you, but with us the San ]os6 scale is the greatest
enemy we have to fight. The trouble with these old trees is
the San Jos6 scale. The trees gradually die and people don't
know what is the trouble with them. This is in our own neigh-
borhood. The scale is in the high-headed orchards of our own
county. These trees can be saved by proper spraying. Still I
believe that most of them should be cut down.

Suppose a man has one of these orchards that is doing
well — what is the best way to handle that orchard? There
are many of them I think in Massachusetts, and the most of
them are in sod. Suppose a man has one of these orchards
and it is in sod and he wants to handle that as long as he
can. How can he do it? I will tell you what I did.

I had four different orchards, all in sod. One was a Green-
ing orchard. In the fall we plowed the sod. The next
spring I said that I would cultivate that orchard thoroughly,
but when I looked at it and found the roots all broken, I was
discouraged. I went in and sowed oats, the worst thing I
could have done, and that orchard failed. Where an orchard
is neglected it is more likely to succumb to the San Jos^ scale
than if it is kept up.

81

You notice this in the potato field, that the most of the
bugs are on the inferior plants. The bugs seem to have a
human instinct like that of a Rockefeller. So it is in the
orchard that has not proper care that the most of the scales
are found.

In this orchard that I speak of, I found this to be true. I
then seeded this orchard down, but I cannot make them into
good trees.

I have tried another orchard which had never been sprayed
and the fruit of which was very wormy. I put a wire fence
around that orchard and put about five shoats to an acre
into the orchard. For four years in succession we have had
hogs in that orchard and I found this to be the most success-
ful experiment of any. It will not do to put hoes into a
place and say, "Root, hog, or die." The way to keep a hog
in an orchard is to calculate that it will get about 60 per cent,
in the orchard and that 40 per cent, must be supplied in some
other way. I go out and sow corn and the hogs pay for it
well in pork. I had eighteen hogs in an orchard from about the
middle of May to the latter part of September. As nearly
as I can figure they have paid me a little over $5 apiece. I
consider that the good they did to the orchard more than paid
for the hay and the windfall apples. Every spring I find that
they have rooted around the trees and ripped the sod up. I
then go in and sow a clover mixture, one quart of alsike to
five quarts of red clover. This is scattered right in the mud,
I don't try to harrow it in. By the middle of May this makes
a fine mat for the hogs to eat. All that I put on in the way
of fertilizer is iron slag crushed up into a powder, which fur-
nishes the necessary potash and phosphoric acid. We put
on 400 or 500 pounds during the year, and if you could see
how those trees have improved, you would be astonished. If
you handle the old-fashioned orchard by, putting in hogs, feed
about 40 per cent, in corn. It is well to keep plenty of wood
ashes before the hogs, as they need wood ashes, ground bone
or coal ashes. Then there is no danger of their injuring the
bark of the trees by gnawing them when put into the orchard.

Another good way : We have a Baldwin orchard in sod.
We put in high-grade fertilizer and seeded down with red
timothy and red clover, and cut something over three tons of
hay to the acre. This we feed out to the horses, and in the
spring spread the manure with the bedding, which is added
to it, on the orchard again. We find this to be a good plan
for handling one of those old orchards. Lots of people never
think of putting anything onto the old orchard, but just take
ofif the hay every year. If I bought another farm with an
6

82

old orchard, I would first look it over with great care. I
would hunt for scale and cut out all limbs where there were
any to be found. I cannot come here and tell you just how to
prune a tree. A man must have it in his heart. The tree
will die at the top, and I can then cut so as to make a lower
head on the tree. Then, if possible, I would put hogs into
the orchard and I would spray the trees.

I have 3,000 trees planted by the Hitchings plan, but I
would not yet advise any one to try this, as it is still an exper-
iment with me. Those trees come down close to the ground,
and head out like a bush. It is evident that the limbs with
the fruit on them will come down to the ground. They will
not be a very handsome tree, but, "Handsome is what hand-
some does." They are easy to spray and I think I am having
less trouble with weeds and insects where the grass is left
on the ground.

I think that many of our fruit growers that have old or-
chards make a mistake in the kind of fertilizer they use. I
would not use ground bone on an orchard in sod. If I had
a cultivated orchard I should be justified in using it, but when
in sod use only the most soluble food I can get, and with the
exception of the iron slag, I have settled upon potash and
acid phosphates and put them on in August. For nitrogen,
I have settled upon nitrate of soda, and put it in when the
tree needs it.

A man has no business to be in the fruit-growing
unless he knows the character of every tree he puts into the
ground. A great many men get a great amount of fruit, but
do not know every tree, but the man who understands the
tree, has mastered his business. I believe in personal super-
vision of trees.

In regard to spraying: Now we come to a subject of vital
importance. I am going to depend upon a 20% mixture of
limeoid and kerosene. I shall put this on about the ist of
April and then watch my trees. I shall use two or three
applications, and then through the summer use whale oil
soap with a 10% mixture of the limeoid and kerosene, if I find
it necessary. Have any of you seen the limeoid and kerosene
mixture? It is a finely powdered magnesian limestone mixed
with kerosene in the proportion of one pound of limeoid to
one quart of kerosene and then diluted and sprayed on the
trees. There is no chemical change made. The lime unites
with the kerosene and is held in solution. It forms a paint
all over the tree. It is better than pure kerosene because,
in nine cases out of ten, pure kerosene hurts the tree, while
if it is put on in the form of an emulsion it evaporates too

83

quickly. Lime, sulphur and salt mixture is most effective,
but my objection to it is that my orchard is too small for me
to have a plant for preparing it.

This mixture that I recommend, I find is a little cheaper
and much easier and handier to make, and I believe it will
keep the scale in check and can be used when the foliage is
on the tree.

I don't beHeve, however, as much in the fumigation of nur-
sery stock as I did a few years ago. Two years ago, I bought
a large consignment of nursery stock and I wrote the nur-
seryman to fumigate them. He did so. These trees have
not done well and I believe they were injured by being fumi-
gated when they were too tender and thus became susceptible
to injury. I would have the trees fumigated when firm and
hard. I shall take the young trees and dip the tops into an
i8% mixture of limeoid and kerosene, and let them remain
there for a few minutes. It may be that I am wrong, but I
shall try this in preference to fumigation.

I believe in the future of the apple tree in New England.
I will not say that the ways I have described are the best
ones for growing apples. One good thing is that we are
learning that there are no cast-iron rules for anything, because
the thing is so complicated that a man must work out his
own salvation in general conditions and with a few general
rules that are always true. A man must find out the way
that is best for him after studying his own conditions. The
individual part comes in by each man studying out his own
conditions and environments, and if he tries to find a cast-
iron rule he will not succeed.

An old man was once telling me how he tried to kill a
bear. A bear had come down from the mountain and killed
one of his hogs. He got a piece of bait and put it in a trap.
When he went to look at it the bear had been there and eaten
it. He took another piece of meat and baited it again.
Again the bear ate the bait. Then he said to himself, "1 will
bait the trap again and take the old shotgun and watch for
that bear." This he did, again baiting the trap, and taking the
double-barreled shotgun went and hid behind a bush, but he
did not calculate which way the bear would come and when
he heard the bear coming through the bushes he looked and
found that he was betwixt the bear and the bait. This is
the trouble with many fruit growers. They get between the
bear and the bait.

One word more. New England farming and New Eng-
land fruit growing are to have a boom, I believe, as they
never had before. There comes into the life of every man

84

a period of depression, and we cannot shake this off. We can-
not get rid of it, and then, all of a sudden, it passes. It is
the same with the sections of a country. I know that when
I was a boy it was taught me that as soon as I was old
enough, I was going away to the West as straight as I could
go. I went West and found there the same feeling of de-
pression, and I come back to New England now, and I realize
that at last the feeling of courage has returned to New Eng-
land again and I realize what it would be to be a boy again
in New England. We cannot be boys again, but we can
leave the brightest legacy of hope and strength to those who
are to follow us on these New England hills.

Discussion following Mr. Collingwood's lecture : —

Maynard : "Would you use the limeoid mixture if you have
no San Jos6 scale?"

Collingwood : "You will never exterminate the San Jos^
scale. It breeds so rapidly and it is so small that you never
will be able to fully exterminate it."

Parker: "Will 5^ou repeat the composition of the limeoid
mixture ?"

Collingwood : "One pound of fine magnesian limestone,
one quart of kerosene. Mix these thoroughly, dilute with
water, and stir all together until it forms a sort of paint, with
which spray the trees.

Morse : "What is the cost of limeoid and where is it ob-
tained?"

Collingwood : "Its cost depends upon the cost of kerosene.
Limeoid itself costs three-fourths of a cent a pound. Use
kerosene. It does not work with crude petroleum. It is
obtained in Wilmington, Delaware.

President : "We would like to hear Dr. E. P. Felt of New
York."

Dr. Felt : Mr. Collingwood has stolen my thunder and put
me on the defensive. "The Remedy for the San Jos^ scale" —
this is a subject to which we have given considerable atten-
tion in the State of New York. We want something that is
effective and something that is cheap as possible. We have
tried a number of things. We have not tried limeoid. We
have tried crude petroleum and find that after it has been
used three or four years the trees show that it was an injury.

85

It can be used for a year or so without injury. Limeoid has
its good points, but it seems to me that it belongs to the same
class as many other remedies, that is, the experimental class.
Too much is said about some of these washes when in the
experimental stages.

Limeoid has its value, but it is practically a kerosene emul-
sion, and I fail to see how it is going to be better than the ordi-
nary kerosene emulsion. Taking what we have found to be
the result of putting on oil for several years, is it, the limeoid
mixture, going to be a safe thing to use? I fear it will, after
a series of years, cause as much injury as the other oils.

I believe that at the present time if a man has trees infested
with the San ]os6 scale, he can use whale oil soap as well
as anything.

We consider the lime and sulphur wash the most effective.
We have been experimenting with these materials in the lab-
oratory to see how it operates. So far as the combination was
concerned, we got no statement concerning it except in a gen-
eral way. We have found in practice, however, that it pays
in our judgment to use a little more lime than sulphur and
that the salt is no essential ingredient and that long boiling
is not necessary. We agreed upon certain essentials and we
advise the use of twenty pounds of lime, fifteen pounds of
sulphur and thirty minutes' boiling, the use of salt being
optional. We know this to be good, but do not say that
others are not good. We eliminated the salt because there
seemed to be no great benefit from its use, and we have
reduced the time of boiling because we have failed to see but
what results are the same in boiling for a shorter time.

Professor Lowe brought out what has been known as an
unboiled wash, because the boiling has been done chemically.
That has been used and used with comparatively good suc-
cess, and, in a few instances, without good success. It is
a safe wash if properly prepared.

Last spring we took up another line of investigation which
depended upon ordinary sal soda. This wash — a lime, sul-
phur and sal soda wash, is yet in an experimental stage. It
is made of twenty pounds of lime, fifteen pounds of sulphur
and ten pounds of sal soda. This was worked out for the
first time last spring, and was tested by many chemists. In
our own work, it stood up as well as the others. This wash is
promising; is worth experimenting with. In case a man has
a very few trees let him try this wash, but I don't recommend
it unreservedly.

Another lime and sulphur wash is one that was brought
out by Mr. Brown of Delaware, but results as yet are not

86

as satisfactory as with the other washes. We have in our
work almost always diluted with cold water. The operation
as we make it is not very difficult to make nor difficult to
apply. We should be very careful about how we take up
new things.

Discussion : —

Collingwood : "What is the difiference in killing the scale
with a lime and sulphur wash and killing it with an oil?"

Felt: "The insect is lying under the scale. They are sepa-
rated so that you can turn the scale over and not destroy the
insect. The insect can be destroyed in two ways. The lime
and sulphur washes go through the scale and kill the insect.
The oils we apply to the scale cover the insect, and we take
oil strong enough to go through the scale and smother the
insect to death. One is a case of suffocation ; the other a
case of burning."

Collingwood : "Am I right in thinking that fumigation in-
jures a tender tree?"

Felt : "I think you are. Regarding fumigation for the San
Jos^ scale, I do not believe it advisable to fumigate trees
that are not hardened and it should not be continued too
long. Fumigation depends a great deal on how it is done.
I would advise fumigation of all thoroughly matured trees,
not for killing the San Jos^ scale that are seen alone on these
trees, but for killing the San ]os6 scale that may be on the
trees.

For the soda wash, use twenty pounds of lime, fifteen
pounds of sulphur and ten pounds of soda, ordinary sal soda,
to fifty gallons of water."

Afternoon Session — i.^o p.m., March p.

Mr. Drum was called upon to explain a new system of cold
storage.

Construct a building as nearly air-tight as possible. Build
in this a tank and put a coil of pipe in it. Directly beneath
put a secondary coil and connect the coils. In the coil of
pipes put chloride of calcium brine. Around the primary
coil of pipes put crushed ice and salt, and as that cools- the

87

brine it goes from the primary coil to the secondary coil and
then returns. This is the gravity brine system as used in
the fruitery of Madison Cooper of Watertown, N. Y. The
cost of such a cold storage plant will vary with the locality.

Question : "Do you consider your fruit of as good quality
when taken out as when it goes in?"

Drum : "Yes, the market demands a hard apple when it
comes out. For my part I cannot see that there is any dif-
ference. I think the quality is uninjured."

Question: "What temperature do you prefer?"

Answer: "30°."

Question : "Won't the apple freeze at 30° ?"

Answer,: "No, sir."

SMALL FRUITS.

President: "Mr. L. W. Rice has a paper. If he is in the
hall, will he please come forward?" (Mr. Rice not present.)

President: "Mr. Warren of Weston will read a paper on
'Strawberry Culture.' Mr. Warren."

Mr. Warren : Where shall we place our strawberry bed ?
If just the kind of land can be had that is desirable, take land
that never has produced anything but spontaneous growth,
say an old pasture. Clear and burn the land, then plow and
harrow fine till it is in good working order. It will
be hard work, but it will pay in the end. This virgin soil
makes the best land for strawberries. If more of this kind
of land were used, there would be less blight, rust and mildew.
There seems to be something about this kind of land that
cannot be found in any land that has been used. The plants
should be set early in the spring with a small amount of fer-
tilizer. Plants in this kind of soil can be taken care of with
about one-tenth the labor, as there are but few weeds. Such
land requires but little care for some years. If you grow by
the single plant system, set the plants twelve inches to fifteen
inches apart each way, making beds with paths between.
Cut ofif the runners once a week. If you use the hedge-row
plan, the plants may be set in rows three and one-half feet
apart, and the plants in each row three feet apart, the runners
trained to grow out on the side . If you have a matted bed set
rows four feet to four and one-half feet apart and the plants
eighteen inches apart. Cut off long runners. Surplus plants

88

are as weeds to the plants from which you wish to grow ber-
ries. Be sure to cut off all runners when the bed has attained
the width desired, for all growth beyond saps the vitality
from the other plants from which you wish to grow fruit.

It is a good plan to remove old plants in September and
let the others fill their places, after the young plants have
taken most of the vitality from the parent plant, as the fruit
grown on them will be inferior. It has been found that the
third or fourth plant is the best to set new plants, as they
are the strongest and have the most vitality.

With varieties not inclined to make plants enough, either
set in moist land or water frequently. Water is very essential
not only in growing the plant, but in filling out the fruit, but
if it is used freely the plants must not be crowded, or the
fruit will decay. Consumers are always willing to pay liber-
ally for water, if presented in an attractive form.

Someone has said that to grow large attractive strawber-
ries, the first thing needed is water, the second thing a little
more water, the third thing a little more water.

Discussion of Mr. Warren's paper : —

Wheeler: "Have you practiced spraying strawberries?"

Warren: "No."

Question: "What varieties do you raise now?"

Warren : "All popular varieties.

Moore: "What is the best variety for every purpose?"

Warren : "It would be hard to tell what would be best for
anyone else, as conditions are so different. I would set a few
of a new variety every year."

Question : "Do you think the Glen Mary gets as well fer-
tilized as the other varieties?"

Warren : "I have no trouble. Many people think that much
of our blighted fruit is caused by the frosts, but that is not
so. It is caused by imperfect pollenization, which is mostly
owing to the wet weather. If the weather is pleasant we get
good crops of berries, but if it is rainy and wet the pollen is
washed off."

Mr. A. W. Ward of Holden explained his method :
"Plow and harrow and put on fifteen or twenty
cords of good manure. Put on green manure in the
fall. Set the strawberries about five feet apart if the

89

land is well manured. There should be three feet be-
tween the rows. That gives plenty of room for picking.
After setting out give thorough cultivation once a fortnight.
The best way to kill the weeds is to do it before they come
up after they have sprouted. Don't let any runners spread
out before the middle of July or they will sap the parent
plant. You must get from 12 to 16 cents per quart in order
to make strawberry raising pay."

Morse : "I would like to hear what is used for mulch."
Allen : "I use meadow hay, 3^ to 4 tons to the acre, putting
it on after the ground is frozen. I think it works better if
cut up. Cut it about four inches long and it will not blow
off."

Question: "Do you ever use planing mill shavings?"
Allen: "No, sir; have used it in manure, but don't like it."
President : "The question was asked yesterday how near
the brown-tailed moths had come to Worcester. Mr. Ells-
worth has some nests here that were found on Chatham
Street."

Ellsworth : "This is the farthest west that the nest of the
brown-tailed moth has been found in the State. These were
found in pear trees. I would advise that when you go home
you look and see if there are any in your trees. If so, get
them off and burn them up, as that is the only thing to do
with them. As soon as hatched they are ready for business.
They feed not only upon fruit trees, but upon elm, maple and
oak."

Warren : "I got some from my trees day before yesterday,
and I found many on plum trees. They were on plum trees,
pear trees and elm."

Joint Session with Worcester Horticultural Society — 2 p.m.

Mr, O. B. Hadwen: "The lecturer for the afternoon has for
his subject, "The Apple, the King of Fruits," and I have the
pleasure of presenting Mr. Baker."

90

THE APPLE, THE KING OF FRUITS.

W. D. Baker, Quincy, N. H.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Fruit Growers' Association.
Ladies and Gentlemen :

A short time ago I received a very courteous invitation to
speak at your meeting. At first I felt inclined to decline
because I felt that to try to say anything that would interest
you would be like "carrying coals to Newcastle," but when I
reflected that the invitation was given by your honored Pres-
ident, I felt that it would be unfriendly in me to decline when
he has so often in the past been so kind to us.*

Discussion following above paper : —

Ware : "We have listened to one of the most beautiful
presentations on the subject of the apple that it has ever been
my pleasure to listen to. We look upon the apple as one of
the most important crops that is grown, and it has been the
chief subject of discussion during this meeting. One of our
speakers has told us that he believes it is the way for young
men to begin their future by planting and cultivating an
orchard. New England presents conditions that are better
adapted to the cultivation of the apple than any other section.
These rough hills may be improved with very little expense
or labor.

"Some years ago, when lecturing in one of the most west-
ern towns of this State, I was asked what I thought best for
the men of that town to do, as they had become discouraged,
and I said, 'Set out orchards,' and years afterwards these
men came to me and thanked me for the advice that I then
gave them, saying that they had found the raising of fruits
to be successful.

"It makes me ache to go around and see apple trees that
would otherwise be strong trees mutilated and destroyed. I
like the idea of pruning low. Many of the suggestions that
have been made to us to-day are those we may profit by, and
I am glad to be here and look into your faces again."

Clark : "I move that a vote of thanks be given the Worces-
ter Horticultural Society for the use of the hall, and to Mr.

* Printed in Proceedings of Worcester Horticultural Society.

91

Brooks, the retiring Treasurer, for his long service as Treas-
urer." (Voted.)

Hixon: "I move that a vote of thanks be extended to Mr.
Baker of New Hampshire in behalf of the Horticultural
Society." (Voted.)

Moore: "Since our last meeting one of our most prominent
members has been called away. I think it would be well to
take some notice of that. At the present time other members
of the association are confined at their homes by sickness,
and I move that we tender to such our sympathy." (Voted.)

Parker of Holden : "I don't want to stand up and throw
any cold water. We have had a strenuous meeting of the
advocates of tree planting of all kinds, but I wish some one
would explain to me how it is that the only orchard that I
know of that was to be an example to me and every one else,
all of Baldwin apples, that of this, the neighbors all say,
'Give me that land without the trees and I would rather have
it.' Shall I go to work and grow apple trees and then have
my neighbors tell me that the land is worth more than the
trees ?"

Ware : "I would be very glad to say a word in reply. The
land that I recommended for setting out orchards is now
almost worthless for any other purpose. I think it would be
very unwise to set out an orchard on land that is very valua-
ble, although I have some apple trees growing on land that
is worth from 15 to 25 cents per foot, but I recommend set-
ting out orchards on land that is not valuable for cultivation,
but can be adapted to the growing of apples at very little
expense."

Clark : "Twenty years ago, when I set out my orchard,
there was none in the vicinity and people said I was a fool.
♦Perhaps they were right, but I didn't believe them. Ordi-
nary apples, as we raise them to-day, have no money in them,
because the trees are not cared for. In order to be profitable
the orchard must be cared for just like any other crop, and
the best fruit must be raised. I would not advise setting out
an orchard on any land that can be cultivated to some extent,
but I do not see any other use that we can make of our hills

92

than to set them out to orchards that shall be well taken
care of and fed to produce good fruit, and then you will get
good prices. We must study the matter to get fruit and get
it every year."

Moore : "Is there not trouble in setting an orchard on a
hillside?"

Clark : "I would not set on land that is too steep, neither on
flat land."

Question: "What is a tree ten years old worth?"

Clark: "It depends on the man. He must put himself into
it in order to get something out."

Parker: "So far as my knowledge goes, this orchard to
which I refer has been well taken care of."

Clark : "We know this orchard and I have often thought
that if I had not my orchard, I should come down here to
Worcester and buy it."

Hixon : "You all know that I believe in the cultivation of
the apple. I have recommended it for the past fifteen years
that I have been here. It is a disgrace to Worcester County
that we would not know where to go to buy a Worcester
County apple fit to put upon our table without buying a
bushel or two in order to get two or three decent ones. We
got $20 for ten barrels of apples. Don't you think that is a
good price for Baldwin apples? You know that my apples
are not as large as the best.

"After the fruit is grown you must know how to sell it.
Grow some fruit that will sell and don't be afraid of produc-
ing too much."

Watts : "There is one thing you should all remember, that
the best fruit cannot be grown on old trees. Don't plant
apple trees on poor land if you want good apples. My friend
is right in front of me who sells pears for $1 per dozen. We
don't all possess his facilities nor his knowledge. Where I
live we don't need to do much pruning."

Fiske : "What I would like to know is, why it is that a
farmer who has the best orchard in the county cannot sell it.
I have a cousin who has a farm in Grafton that adjoins mine.
This farm is, if anything, better than mine, and yet that farm
has been in the market for five years, and there has only one

93

person looked at it, and I don't know why a farm that is
adapted to fruit culture cannot be sold."

Leavens : "I am acquainted with that farm. It is well
located and is an exceptionally fine fruit farm. It is an ideal
location for fruit culture, but as Mr. Fiske says, no one seems
to want to invest in it."

Parker: "If I had the cold storage plant of Brother Clark
I think perhaps I could grow apples to a profit. He seems
to understand how it is done."

Ellsworth : "It seems to me that more should be said in
regard to the brown-tailed moth. It is impossible for those
who do not know about it to conceive of the situation until
they have seen it. If taken in time, it is easy to get rid of
them, but you let them go for two years and what you can
do now for a few cents will in two years cost as many dol-
lars. Now is the time to have this thing looked into."

Baker: "This is a subject that we cannot say too much
about. A year ago we found a few in New Hampshire, and
this spring we have found hosts of their nests, and our Legis-
lature has passed a bill to provide money to exterminate
them.

"They are different from the gypsy moth, for they can fly
and the wind will take them along in hosts.

"No tree can live unless it has leaves to breathe and this
brown-tailed moth takes the leaves. Another point is the
annoyance of the eruption that is caused by their hairs get-
ting upon the flesh. It sometimes takes weeks for this rash
to be allayed. We in New Hampshire are going to try to do
what we can against this pest, and every man must do every-
thing he can, not only to save his own trees, but to destroy
■ the moth completely."

Adjournment.

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