SPRAYING FRUIT TREES.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 47, 6 October 1892, Page 2

SPRAYING FRUIT TREES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAK. Sir,— l notice in the New Zealand Mail jf September Bth a letter from Mr Wilks, )f Feilding, warning apple eaters against mating fruit that has been sprayed with irsenical solutions. Mr Wilks say 3 '• nearly all the most popular remedies used in destroying insectivorous pests on Fruit trees contain arsenic in one form or mother." According to Nuttall's Dictionary an insectivorous creature belongs So an order of quadrupeds, or an order sf birds that subsist on insects and are generally considered the friend of the srchardist. Mr Wilks points out that these remedies are " dangerous, that is, in the hands of the ordinary farmer and orchardist." He appears to think the ordinary farmer and orchatfdisfc are somewhat chunkheaded and are not to be trusted to use this dangerous remedy. I would point out to Mr Wilks that dynamite, strychnine, and a host of other things are dangerous, but at the same time useful. The idea of the poison when sprayed on the bloom remaining round the pistils and stamens and becoming incorporated in the fruit is all moonshine. I notice, either in the Mail or Farmer an article stating that a learned professor in Canada had gone minutely into the question as to whether it was dangerous to eat fruit that had been sprayed with Paris green to destroy codlin moth. The analytical test went to show that an apple eater would require to eat about 25 tons of apples to get sufficient poison to destroy a human life, so I think we can take Mr Wilks' warning for what it is worth. I am, etc., W.G.P. Colyton, October sth, 1892.