months we have had seven competent inspectors in that county, at an average of $600 per month expense to the county. This spirit has done much towards the success that has been had in controlling the blight in that county. During the past two years I have visited all the principal centers of the several counties of my district. I have held horticultural meetings in all the larger fruit counties, and personally visited many orchards, lectured, and made practical demonstrations as to the control of fungous diseases and insect pests.

OFFICE WORK.

As the acreage to fruit grows, the office work increases. It would not be unreasonable to say that on an average I answer five letters a day from the fruit growers from all parts of the district. They seek information on every phase of the handling of their orchards. I have distributed 800 copies of the tenth biennial report of this board, and had many requests for more than my allotment.

I have urged and advised many new people with small means not to overlook the possibilities of small fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries, etc. With water available for irrigation, the growing of two to three acres of strawberries means a good living for a family, as the market always demands a good grade of this fruit at a good profit to the grower. With water unavailable for irrigation and where gravity systems cannot be had, wells can be dug and water raised by pumping to irrigate quite large tracts in strawberries and the garden that would make it possible for the man with small means to make a good living and lay aside means to meet the cares of old age. In this climate these opportunities are here, and the man who desires to make a small and comfortable home should look these opportunities over, and not overlook them. Another source of diversity in connection with small fruit growing is poultry raising. Eggs in the local markets today at Grants Pass are 45 cents per dozen. Broilers, two to two and a half pounds weight, readily sell for 50 cents. With proper yards and daily care of poultry a small family could easily make money. I have in mind an old gentleman in this county that devotes his time to poultry (he lives 20 miles from Grants Pass). He keeps 200 hens, buys a little feed, raises much from his garden, and every ten days markets $20 worth of eggs the year around. This man's success is because he daily attends to the wants of his hens, changes their feed, and notes results. If he has a hen that fails to respond and does not lay her quota of eggs, she is sent to market. He keeps five hens in each pen, and keeps a

daily record of each pen's production. Method in this. What business ever paid without method as to detail?

There is a tendency in the third district to plant exery available acre to fruit that in my opinion is wrong. After the Civil War the southern states became single-crop planters. Every acre that would grow cotton was planted to the exclusion of all other crops that they needed to make a cotton crop. Their hay, bacon, flour, nearly every necessity they required to make their cotton was bought from the north. They paid heavy transportation charges for necessities that they could easily raise on the farm. The southern planters lost money until they were worked out of their single-crop system.

Will not the apple, pear, peach, and prune growers in the end lose money if they persist in planting every acre to fruit and neglect to grow hay and other necessities they have to have to grow a fruit crop? Thousands of tons of hay the past year was shipped into the third district, which the fruit growers bought at $20 to $25 per ton and hauled to their orchards to feed the stock necessary to cultivate and care for their orchards.

This system is wrong. It should be discouraged. Especially when it is possible on any fruit farm to set aside a few acres and grow alfalfa for hay that is so badly needed for the stock that cultivate the orchards. A few years ago I went to one feed firm in Grants Pass and got a statement of their imports for feed that they sold for a year to the farmers growing fruit in the county, and found that for the year it aggregated $102,000. This was only one feed firm out of several in that city. This amount of imported feed one firm sold, when it is possible to grow all the feed the county requires, and have a surplus for export. Why should the fruit growers of Jackson, Josephine, and Douglas counties pay transportation charges to the Southern Pacific for necessities that they can so easily grow with any reasonable business system?

The past year I have taken up this subject of raising on the farm the necessary feed to maintain the stock that operates the fruit farm at several horticultural meetings that I have attended in the district. I believe, if it is possible, for the success of the fruit grower that this system of one crop be discouraged.

CROP REPORTS FOR 1909-10.

There are many factors that enter into the question of fruit each year produced on a given acreage. Some years climatic conditions are so favorable that a small effort brings large production.

There are years that under adverse climatic conditions the fruit grower after the most strenuous work fails to realize his anticipations. A sufficient precipitation during April, May, and June, followed with good cultivation, insures a large output if bloom is good. During the year 1909 spring frost on low levels injured the bloom, excepting in orchards where faith was strong in the oil pots to raise temperature on frosty nights. All growers that heeded the warnings in and about Medford, phoned to every grower by Professor P. J. O'Gara, had good crops. Those who did not heed the warning lost the greater part of their crop. The same conditions as to frost prevailed during the spring of 1910. The men this year that heeded the warnings of O'Gara have good crops; those that did not, have a very light crop to sell. The experiments had in the Rogue River Valley the past two years in smudging with the oil pots convinces me that insofar as frosts are concerned the fruit grower can save his crop if he industriously uses the oil pots and keeps them burning on frosty nights. True, a warm bed on a frosty night is with many a hard thing to leave, but the results had by those who had the faith in the virtue of the oil pots should stimulate every grower to be prepared to smudge each year the necessity arises.

I am convinced that smudging to prevent spring frost from injury of the fruit bloom will become one of the details of the fruit industry, as now are spraying, pruning, etc.

The following tabulated statement will be found near the amount the several counties of the third district marketed in the years 1909 and 1910: