There are few places in which there is a sufficient crop to make heavy shipment to eastern markets. There is almost a complete failure of fruits throughout the south. A few of the citrus fruits will give fair crops. California and Oregon alone appear to have escaped the general destruction. Along with this failure in fruits has gone a more or less unsatisfactory condition of general farm crops. As a whole, this is one of those "hard years" which leave an indelible impression upon our rural industries.

We should know the causes of all this. It is strange that while we are constantly inquiring into petty details we have overlooked these broader issues. Perhaps the very fact that we have applied ourselves so diligently to details and incidentals is reason enough for the neglect of larger questions. Nevertheless, the neglect is deplorable, and it must be remedied. Experiment stations must adopt a broader policy and allow their men to travel in search of information. There is danger of narrow work under narrow management. A tour of a state or region is often more useful to farmers and the experimenters than the cutting of seed potatoes or the sampling of strawberries.

The causes which are held to account for these failures are almost innumerable. Some of them are founded in ignorance and misconception, but have attained standing because of their age. It is strange how many things we accept simply because someone has said so! There are probably no more than five hypotheses advanced which can be held to account for general failure of fruit crops.

1. Cold, either during the winter or frosts in late spring. The greater part of the failures of the tender fruits in the north the present year, and the entire failure in the southern states, is unquestionably due to hard frosts following a February and early March of unusual mildness. Yet there are exceptions to this statement, even in the case of peaches, for in some of the lake regions of New York the peaches set, and attained to a considerable size before they fell. And the apple crop has failed in regions where there were no late frosts.

2. Lack of pollination. It is a venerable notion that a heavy rain at blooming time prevents pollination, even though it is well known that heavy crops often follow just such storms. There are no definite proofs that rains interfere with pollination.

PERHAPS there has never been a more complete failure of orchard fruits than this year. In all the eastern states the production is very small and mostly of inferior quality. Pears have, perhaps, been the most satisfactory crop in New York and eastward. Michigan, Wisconsin, Missonsi and a few other states have a partial crop of apples, but in general; neither, perhaps, are there proofs to the contrary, although the presumption is against the notion. At all events, we challenge the statement, in the hope that direct observations may be made.

3. Insects are often held to account for the failures, but insect attacks are of such a nature as to leave little doubt of their time and extent. Their work is visible, and it usually appears after the fruits have attained some size. In many parts of the country the curculio is the cause of failure of peach and plum crops year after year, and the devastation of the codlin moth in apples and pears is well known. But beyond these two instances, it is doubtful if insects cause the wholesale failure of fruit crops simultaneously over large areas.

4. Overbearing usually lessens the crop of the succeeding year, and is no doubt the commonest cause of failure of fruit. An overtaxed tree requires time in which to recuperate. But such trees do not bloom profusely the following spring, and the failure is easily enough understood. But in many parts of the country where fruit has failed this year there was a poor or indifferent crop last year.

5. This year it has been urged that fungi may be the cause of a widespread and complete failure. This generalization explains many of the obscurities which others do not, and it is abundantly supported by facts. It is no doubt true that fungi spread more rapidly than formerly, because of the greater number and continuity of orchards, just as contagious diseases spread faster in cities than in the country. In the small and isolated orchards of former days, fungi and insects were confined within closer areas. This phenomenon of rapid distribution, due to greater extent of host-plants, may be termed communal intensity.

The fungi which have been connected thus far with this breath of destruction are the scab fungi, as apple, pear and quince scab, the curl-leaf of the peach and the fruit-rots of the cherry and plum. They spread with marvellous rapidity in certain cool and wet springs, and as they exist year after year in nearly all localities to a greater or less extent, it is not strange that under favorable conditions they inflict wide areas. All this suggests a broader study of these fungi than mere life histories. Meteorological conditions, the general method of their transport, the kind of cultivation and the varieties in the orchards, and the relations of extent of orcharding to the injury done, demand thought.

But we doubt if the failure of the apple crop as a whole this year is due entirely to any one or all of these causes. Even the forest trees in many regions are unproductive, although they were not injured by frosts, nor by insects, and we know of no fungi which could cause the failure. In short, considered in the broadest sense, we do not yet know why fruit crops simultaneously fail over many states. The injuries to fruit after it has fairly set can be seen and traced, but this wholesale death of flowers and very young fruits is an obscure problem. The causes which we have discussed, except possibly in the case of frost - which is easily observed - are evidently too local or insufficient to admit of universal application. Who is the philosopher to enlighten our ignorance ?