body to
talk that way, but truth is truth wherever you find it, whether it comes
from the university professor or from the farmer. If we recognize truth,
from whatever source it comes, then we are open-minded and can take
advantage of things that will be greatly to our benefit.

In the matter of spraying materials: They were discovered through
accident, in an effort to prevent thieving in the vineyards of Bordeaux,
France. It seems that workmen on the way to their places of employment
were in the habit of foraging on the vineyards of the farmers along the
way. To prevent that some of the fruit growers conceived the idea it
would be a good thing in order to scare them to get blue vitriol and mix
it with water and spray it on the fruit along the roadside. Later in the
season, very much to their surprise, they found that the grapes that
were treated in that way were not affected with the brown rot. So they
tried it again to see whether they were right about that being the
cause, and it wasn't long before they used it for that purpose. They
stopped the thieving, but they also discovered a scientific truth, that
the Bordeaux mixture was a fungicide and that fact has been of immense
value to the world since then.

When the San Jose scale came into this country from the west, some man
who had used sheep dip for sheep ticks, said: "If it is a good thing
against sheep ticks, why isn't it good against this little vermin they
call the San Jose scale?" He tried it on the trees, and he found that it
was an effective remedy for the San Jose scale. So we have lime-sulphur
today as one of the spray materials in very common use.

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