Addresses — Blight. 159 



influences, drouth, wet soil, parasitic fungi, diseased roots, in- 

 sect work, zymotic fungus, rich soil, contagion propagated from 

 diseased quince trees, electrical action, freezing of unripe wood, 

 mechanical action, etc. After learning that so many causes 

 produced blight, I was somewhat discouraged. As late as 1875, a 

 writer who signs himself W. B. Smith, boldly asserted that "it is 

 a disease we know nothing about. Twenty-five years ago there 

 were many who knew a great deal about it, but they have all dis- 

 appeared." Many who do not pretend to know the cause of blight, 

 prescribe remedies for it. These sum up pretty heavily from all 

 sources, and number as follows: Starve the trees, slit the bark, 

 cut off blackened limbs and burn them, salt the roots, use lime and 

 sulphur wash, whitewash the trees, dig trenches around them every 

 three or four years, three feet deep, cutting off the outer roots, and 

 then throw the earth back into the trenches (big job for a lazy man); 

 prune the tops severely, use turpentine and lamp black, apply lin- 

 seed oil to the trunks and limbs, scatter lime and ashes under the 

 trees, scrape off the dead bark and apply caustic soda, bore a hole 

 with a two-inch auger, fill it with salt and sulphur and put in a plug. 

 This last remedy was recommended with the strongest assurance by 

 somebody, but I never have tried it, believing that the two-inch 

 auger remedy, to say the least, might injure small trees, notwith- 

 standing the virtues of sulphur for destroying fungus. It is always 

 cheering in emergencies to have one man appear who knows just 

 what to do, like him who told old Sparrowgrass, when the latter's 

 horse broke through the ice into a mill pond, that he knew exactly 

 what to do to get the horse out of that misery, and when bidden to 

 do it, deliberately took his gun and shot the animal. 



In consulting authorities on blight, it is proper to mention the 

 most learned and intelligent. The American Pomological Society 

 in 1871 appointed a committee to study this subject, collect infor- 

 mation and report two years thereafter. In their report they men- 

 tion several kinds of blight: first, that caused by sterility, easily 

 remedied by fertilizing; second, " blight caused by zymotic fungus, 

 whose presence is not detected until life is destroyed in the affected 

 parts." This is the kind I had in mind when I commenced to 

 write this article. Thinking that this report must unravel the 

 mystery of blight, judge of my surprise when this able committee 

 announced that they had arrived at no satisfactory conclusion as to 

 11 — Hort. So. 



