ago, when they commenced to take it up again, I obtained two or three different kinds of dust sprayers and tried all the different formulas that I could get hold of and bought some of the commercial mixtures, so that I had some experience with dust sprays, but I have not used them for two years, and that perhaps tells the whole story. I think the dust sprays are valuable against the plum curculio; I had very good results in keeping them down by dusting the trees and where I do not care to spray for the fungi, I would recommend the dust spray to carry an insecticide, that is, Paris green, for instance. You can put it on with very little labor and very rapidly, too, but I have never been able to control any fungous diseases and as I wish to control those and hence wish to use Bordeaux mixture, I merely put in my acetate of lead and Paris green with the Bordeaux and it gives me no extra work, whereas, to go over the trees with the dust spray would be so much extra work. I know a large number of growers at the time this was brought up six or seven years ago purchased some of these orchard outfits. I do not know of one that was used more than two years.

Dr. Loope: I would like to ask whether you consider that you can control the curculio with liquid spray.

Prof. Taft: Why, practically so, yes. In case of plums, they are perhaps worse there, the number we can save is a very large percentage, 90 per cent perhaps, and although you occasionally find one that is stung, the percentage is very small. The only thing is the thoroughness of the spray, get it on before the trees blossom, kill the beetle as it comes from the ground. The number that you can kill in larva form is very small of course. I think though, from my own experience, that the spray after the fruit has set and eggs are laid, if you do a thorough job, enough poison gets into the cup so that you can kill them, but I rely on the early spray for this insect.

Mr. Kellogg: Does not the curculio get out early enough so as to be there before the plum forms.

Prof Taft: Yes, that is the very point about spraying at that time; you kill the beetles before the plums are formed and of course before the eggs are laid. I think that is the way to do it, and the failures, I am sure, have been due to the lack of spraying at that time.

Mr. Toole: Do you spray more than once to keep clear of curculio, or is that one spray sufficient?

Prof. Taft: I like to spray all trees about four times, except perhaps the peach. I would spray, for instance, all fruit trees just before they blossom and just afterwards. With us we had a great deal of trouble from the different shot hole fungi, the different leaf blights that cause the foliage to drop from the trees in perhaps July or August and where we have sprayed those after we have gathered the cherries, or in case of the early kinds of plums, after we have picked the plums, we can hold that down very largely. In the case of late kinds of plums, those that ripen in September, we spray those about the middle of July, and can hold the foliage on; for instance, the prunes, which are the worst of all that we have in this respect.

Dr. Loope: Speaking of the plum curculio, is it the same insect as the apple curculio?

Prof. Taft: The plum curculio works on the apple and oftentimes does more harm than anything else we have because the fruits drop. Of course there are other curculios, but the same things holds true, that the spray will destroy them, and while I have seen many unsprayed trees with the ground literally covered with fallen apples in which you would find one or a dozen perhaps of curculio marks, right along in adjacent orchards where the trees have been sprayed you would find very few fallen fruits and practically no curculio. If you spray the trees just after blossoming, you can control that insect as well as anything else that is on the foliage.

Mr. Kellogg: Would not you spray before the buds start? Prof. Taft: Well, you will find in my spraying calendar that I have that put down as one time for spraying. The point is, I want to spray once before the trees blossom; I think a spray of Bordeaux just before they blossom is the best of all, but if there is any chance of your not doing that, I would spray with the copper sulphate solution. I rather prefer the copper sulphate, for the earlier spray, just as a sort of disinfectant, cleaning up the trees, when it comes to lasting effects, when you want to cover over the new fruit and new growth, then you want to use the Bordeaux.

Mr. Kellogg: How would you make two pailfuls of Bordeaux for a common little garden?

Prof. Taft: That would be perhaps five gallons. I would

take one-tenth of four pounds, a little less than one-half pound of copper sulphate, and if I had an old wooden pail, I should put it in a little sack, let it hang in there over night and dissolve it. I would take about the same amount of lime, about onehalf pound of the slaked lime, slaked with hot water. You would not succeed very well with a small amount of lime, unless you had hot water. Slake the lime, fill up the pail with water and mix the two together.

Mr. C. L. Richardson: I would like to ask the one requisite of a good spraying outfit.

Prof. Taft: Well, there are of course a number of them. I would want in the first place that it should be durable, that it would not wear out the first season and hence would want one with the working parts of brass and one that would not require too much muscle in working. There is a great difference in pumps. The pumps that have a stuffing box work harder than the others. There are two or three that are all right that have stuffing boxes, as we call them, but my idea would be to take any pump where it is down in the barrel. I would say that our growers who have from ten acres up are making use of power outfits and they certainly are getting remarkable results. I think one reason is that they are more thorough. A man who is pumping does not perhaps keep up the pressure and is in a hurry to get through and will not stop long at a tree, where if the engine is doing the work, that means that we get increased thoroughness and the increased pressure enables the mist to reach all parts of the tree.

Mr. Toole: I would like to ask what the process is in the preparation of the arsenate and lime.

Prof. Taft: There are two or three ways. I commenced making it in a small way by using one pound of white arsenic and two pounds of lime. I slaked the lime just as for Bordeaux mixture, put this in two gallons of water, one pound of arsenic and two pounds of lime and boiled it for about an hour. That contains as much arsenate as practically two pounds of Paris green.

Mr. Toole: Do you make up your arsenate of lead or buy it? Prof. Taft: Generally buy it, it is cheaper to buy it.

A Member: I would like to ask, Prof. Taft whether he considers a compressed air sprayer practical for large orchards, worked with the sprocket wheel?

Prof. Taft: Some of those work very well. I have known them to be used on the largest apple orchards thirty to forty years old. For myself I prefer not to rely on. the traction outfits, except for medium sized trees, trees ten to fifteen years old. Dr. Loope: About what pressure would you use?

Prof. Taft: One hundred pounds or thereabouts, 135 is not objectionable, but 100 is a good average pressure and with a hand pump it is pretty hard work to keep up sixty pounds.

Mr. Henry: Are the gasoline engines easier to use, or are they apt to break down?

Prof. Taft: The Michigan growers have been using them a great deal in the last three years and in our larger fruit section I think there are ten gas engines to one of every other power pressure. They keep getting them, that indicates that they like them. It is becoming more simplified and they have strengthened the weak parts so that they are certainly giving good results. I know that in Western New York they are relying largely on the gasoline outfits. If a man has no taste for machinery, I would suggest the use of the gas sprayer from the fact that all you need to do is to turn the cock and go to spraying, no machinery whatever, but they cost more than anything else. It costs about one-third of a cent for each gallon you put on for the power.

A Member: How much stronger do you have to use arsenate of lead for potato bugs than for the codling moth?

Prof. Taft: Almost double; I use about four pounds for the bugs and two for the codling moth.

Mr. Henry: Can a power potato sprayer be fixed over for a power orchard sprayer for a young orchard in Wisconsin? Prof. Sandsten: In regard to potato sprayers used for orchards, most potato sprayers are traction sprayers and they are not well adapted for orchard spraying. We found we could not get up pressure enough to spray a tree in an orchard and I hardly see how an ordinary spraying machine used for spraying potatoes can ever be used in an orchard.

Mr. Bingham: We have a man here that has used one of those traction power sprayers on trees thirty to forty years old. Mr. Buehler: I used one and had very good results. I would not want anything better, would not exchange it for a gasoline outfit to-day. It has not been any expense, no power, for I run it with one team, spraying all alone and I have sprayed from forty to seventy acres a season.

Prof. Taft: We have hundreds of them in Michigan and I know men that are just as enthusiastic as this man here. I know one man that got one five years ago, used it, liked it so well, got another next year, and he has trees thirty to forty years old and he likes it very much, but I know a great many others who do not like it for large trees. For trees fifteen to twenty years old they are all right.. I know a man that had three or four of them that preferred them to gasoline engines, but the majority do nọt like them for very large trees.

Prof. Moore: Talking about spraying for the San Jose scale and about San Jose scale being found in Wisconsin, we had a report that there was San Jose scale in Outagamie county this summer. I took occasion to go there and found that it was oyster-shell bark louse. So far as we know there is no scale in the orchards, although we do run across it sometimes in the nurseries.

COMMERCIAL ORCHARD SESSION.

THE OUTLOOK IN THE EXTREME NORTH.

WM. KNIGHT, Bayfield.

I wish to say to this convention that I am not an expert fruit grower in any sense, and cannot be classed with you skilled and scientific men in that line, to whom the world owes a larger debt than they will ever pay.

I am here from Bayfield Co. representing an unknown land, a district (except to its citizens) so little known, and its natural conditions of soil and climate so different from that nonresidents expect we should have, that it is a difficult matter to have them take us at all seriously when we explain to them our prospects and possibilities in the fruit line. They have been so accustomed to hear of Lake Superior, only in connection with cold weather, snow and ice, that they cannot comprehend how it is possible to grow fruit so far north, and until you get on the ground and see the trees and fruit, you still retain a skeptical mind, no matter what others may say. I want to definitely get before you the district that I am speaking of. It is a strip of

7-Hort.