first, that were
sprayed immediately after the bloom fell, produced 175 bushels of very
fine No. 1 fruit, free from scab, while the other nine rows, equal in
every respect so far as the trees are concerned and the amount of bloom
there was, produced seventeen bushels of No. 2 fruit, no No. 1 fruit at
all.

The Willow Twig is one of those varieties that is very susceptible to
scab, and of course this is a marked illustration of what happens if you
don't spray at the right time. Notwithstanding the fact that the nine
rows, the last ones, I speak of, were sprayed with the two following
sprays at the same time that the other part of the orchard was sprayed,
the results were entirely different because the first spraying, which
was really the important one so far as the scab is concerned, was not
put upon the tree at the right time.

The scab fungus, which seems to appear on your apples out here, is one
of the most insidious diseases we have in the whole fruit industry. I
think that scab fungous disease is probably the one that affects you the
most. Now, scab fungus will not be noticed particularly in the spring of
the year. The time that those spores are most prevalent, the period of
their movement as spores in the atmosphere and the lodging upon the
fruit, is right at the beginning, right about the time of the blossoming
or immediately following. For a period of about two weeks at blooming
time and after is the time that you have that condition.

And the trouble is--it is just like typhoid fever. You let typhoid fever
get into a family, and they do not think anything of it except to take
care of the patient properly if he has it, but it doesn't scare the
neighbors, it does not interest them. But let the smallpox break out in
a community, and everybody is interested and scared to death for fear
they are going to get the smallpox.

Well now, as compared with things of a fungous nature, the scab is a
good deal like typhoid fever. The latter is insidious and it will
destroy more--I take it there are more people die in the United States
of typhoid fever every year than die of smallpox, ten to one. I haven't
the statistics but I have that in mind, that it is a fact that they do,
and yet there isn't half the fuss made about typhoid fever that there is
about smallpox.

Now, that is so about the scab fungous disease. In Illinois, to
illustrate, we have what is called the bitter rot fungus in the southern
part of the state. If