Among other things the scientists told us we couldn’t use lime-sulphur and arsenate of lead together, that they would have to be sprayed over the orchard in separate sprays, that is, we would have to go over the orchard with lime-sulphur and then again with arsenate of lead, that when you combined the two the chemical combination was such that it deteriorated the lime-sulphur.  Some farmer who didn’t know about that scientific proposition determined to put them both on together, and he found that it not only worked all right but that the two were really more effective when combined than if put on separately.  So you see it was thieves, sheep ticks and ignorance that are responsible for three of our most successful ways of spraying at the present time.

Now, scientific men have come in and given us a great deal of information along various lines in regard to spraying, and I don’t decry science in any sense at all.  These men, while they were not scientifically educated, discovered scientific truths, and it is truths we want after all.

Just what your position on this spraying proposition is here in Minnesota, whether you have commercial orchards up here or not, I have not been able to discover.  I presume that your plantings here are very largely that of the farmer and amateur rather than the commercial orchardist.  In Illinois we have our large commercial orchards, and we have gotten beyond the question of whether it pays us to spray or not.  For a man to be in the commercial apple business in Illinois and not spray means that he doesn’t accomplish very much and his product doesn’t bring him any profit.

Now, whether you spray commercially or whether you spray for your family orchard in an amateur way, it doesn’t matter so far as the spraying is concerned—­you should spray in either case.  If you have a community where you have few orchards and they are small, it behooves you to get together and buy a spraying outfit, combine with your neighbors and buy a good spraying outfit, and then have some man take that matter up who will do it thoroughly in that neighborhood and pay him for doing it.  In that way, if you hire it done, it doesn’t interfere with your farming operations and gets your spraying done on time.  I have noticed this with stockmen and with grain farmers, men who are not directly interested in fruit but combine it with their regular business, that they consider fruit growing a side line and such a small part of their business that they usually neglect it altogether.  In the matter of the spraying they keep putting it off until tomorrow.  When the time arrives for spraying you must do it today and not put it off until tomorrow.