Orchard Pests.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6743, 27 April 1893, Page 3

Orchard Pests.

[TO THE E-ITOB.]

Sib,— With your permission, I would like to put our trouble of the uodlin moth before your readers in a different way to what you had it in a sub-leader a few evenings back. I understand that another Bill was brought before some of our leading fruit-growers dealing with this and other orchard pests. but owing to iti! requirements being too hard upon some in the matter of dtfiuing ,; clean and unclean districts," it has not been thought dosirable to make it law in its present form. I trust this alteration will be nia'de, and no time lost about it, either, so that the settlers can elect boards of management in-each district with power to deal with the pesjjts mentioned therein. Iv your articlo _bove mentioned, you seem to fall iv with the views of Mr Goddard, that tho eradicating of tho codlin moth is an impossibility. I tuiat, for tho sake of our reputation a's \ diligent and euergetic people, such an ath-ission will never be madi: again in dealing with auy pest. If intelligence and active-co-opera-tion cannot quire conquer, it can at least reduce it to almost nothing, in Tasmania, California, and other places, and aro we to admit ourselves beaten in Hawko's Bay ? It has been abundantly shown by results that the remedies for kcepiug do.vn, i might say, all pests, ate not wanting. It is he persistent and systematic using of them hat has been neglected by ua here that has ieen the cause of our being overrun by >rchard pestn as wo aro. I uoed not here •numerate those remedies. Mr Hanlon 'tho lite Government poinologist) has given I good list of all that is required iv his publication "Spraying Fruit Trees, etc," which can bo obtained by anyone whe wants it from the various Government offices. 1 have only to point out a few things that have been successfully overcome that havo looked iv the beginning quite as formidable as tho codlin moth, viz, the woolly ap_is, or American blight; the jeuya-purchasi; the peronispoia (p.itato fu-..gus); the oiidiuui on the vines; and last, but worst of all, the phylloxera insect of the vines. I misfit, say to those easy going people who think when an orchard could be planted oat. and whether attended to or not, was bound to have a lot of fruit in a year or two, those times have gonu for ever. These iv scot and funguoid pests have oome to stay ; thu climate suits thjm, aud as I said above, it is only by persistent and systematic battliug with ths'u that wo oa- keep them below that level of a_-,iting our orchards and vineyards There is one thing which I think would bo useful at least to a good number of orchardistß-that is, to put the different operations of treating our pests in calendar form. This is a matter that should bo done |-by some of our entomologists—Mr Mat-kell, F ft.M.S., for instance, i-o that it could be thoroughly reliable, and their treatment could have tho best possible effect. V. bile on this subject, I would lute to point out an opening tor some of our young lads—a good praotioal knowledge of fruitarowing" and entomology. Tho time is at hand—in fact, now is—that they aro wanted 1• be sent forth into the different districts, to study their requirements, their pests, their benefidal insects, and the birds, analysis of soils, trees, most Buitablo fruit, etc., to be arown iv the various districts of New Zealand, which embraces a climate almost Biniikr to California (Oregon to Arizona). -hevTnust be liberally educated, aud there will be .opportunities of *Utoguisbuiß themselves quite as much as in the other v-ofessiom., which are overdone. The Americans have dono this- Must we always be bahiud them r—l aw., &c , B. !?. And-Bbon. Greemneadows' Fruit Farm, 20th April, 1893