THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO, 



[Note. — The following selections are from the current thought upon horticultural 

 topics during the year, as expressed in discussions at fruit conventions, talks hy the 

 wayside, and notes in our leading horticultural papers; they are gathered here in a 

 place of safe keeping, where they may be easily referred to and used.] 



WHAT SHALL WE DO? 



In almost every orchard as you pass through the country you will see more or 

 less apple trees that are either dead or dying. The percentage of loss last win- 

 ter, notwithstanding its mildness, was greater, I think, in this section than that 

 of any previous winter. This is a fearful fact for orchardists to ruminate over, 

 and the difficulty seems to have a wide range in the State of Michigan. Mr. 

 Sessions, our Lieutenant Governor elect, informed me early in the season that 

 he had a very promising and valuable orchard in the Grand River Valley, near 

 Ionia, nearly ruined within the last three years by this mysterious blight. In 

 all parts of the State that I have visited, many of the larger trees show unmis- 

 takable signs of writhing in the grasp of the destroyer, and in this vicinity 

 some of the young orchards have fared even worse than the older ones, so that 

 we can hardly hope to replace the dying trees by new settings, as some have 

 proposed to do. 



It is very evident that if some remedy is not found, Michigan apples will soon 

 be too scarce to sell for $1 per barrel. J. Webster Childs at the Farmers' 

 Institute at Rochester last winter, gave as his theory that this blight was caused 

 by the sudden thawing of the sap in the bark of the tree after a severe freeze, 

 caused by the coming out of the sun so that its warm rays strike the exposed 

 bodies of the highly trimmed trees. In this theory Mr. John Thomas, of 

 Thomas, a very extensive and successful orchardist, fully agreed. 



The remedy, or rather preventive, proposed by these gentlemen was to let 

 the limbs grow close to the ground, so as to protect the trunk of the tree from 

 the direct heat of the sun. While this may be entirely effective in raising a 

 young orchard, it affords no consolation for those having old and valuable trees 

 which they wish to save. 



In talking over this matter to-day with Isaac Parker, of Hadley, Lapeer 

 county, Michigan, a successful fruit culturist, he denies the correctness of Mr. 

 Childs' theory. He says that in an orchard recently bought by him, in which 

 the trees had been neglected, and the branches were so low as to completely 

 protect the trunk, the death rate was fully equal to those orchards in the neigh- 

 borhood that had been pruned in the usual manner. Mr. Parker claims that a 



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