164 "Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



that direction; but after all his examination for years, he was 

 unable to account for blight on that theory in a satisfactory manner. 

 Those of you who have read the last report from our Washing- 

 ton Agricultural Department will find that Dr. Taylor says nothing 

 about it there; but the National Chemist has a short article bear- 

 ing on that. He has investigated the subject and holds the same 

 opinion: that the most careful examination does not show that it 

 can or may have a fungoid origin. These are not exactly his words, 

 but that is his position; and he finally says that investigations are 

 in progress which will be carried out, and he hopes to bring out 

 something more definite in another year. There is the same con- 

 troversy in relation to the fungoid origin of certain diseases in 

 animals. The advocates of the fungoid origin of disease, both in. 

 animals and vegetables, are losing ground; they are gradually giv- 

 ing this thing up. I feel very confident that, within five years, the 

 very position which — I say it without egotism — I assumed in 1872, 

 will be clearly demonstrated to be the true one. That it is a dis- 

 ease resulting from an unequal circulation, an improper diet of the 

 tree and want of proper assimilation. You may call it a sort of 

 vegetable dyspepsia, disturbing, destroying the normal relation 

 between the circulation and assimilation in the tree; and the result 

 is, there is injury, whatever it may be, disturbance of the circula- 

 tion, resulting in diseased sap, dead wood. "Whenever we see this, 

 we call it blight. 



Mr. Gideon, of Minnesota — I have lost hundreds of fine trees 

 with the blight. I find that the blight seldom strikes the same 

 tree twice in the same season, and does not often strike the same 

 tree more than once. Trees that are struck badly one year are 

 seldom hurt the next, unless you cut off the blighted part. If you 

 go and cut off the part immediately after it blights, I find that it 

 is very apt to blight again; and when the blight strikes an orchard 

 once, however badly, it is not often that it strikes any portion of 

 that orchard again during the same year. That is the case at least 

 with my orchard. I have had blight in it every year for some 

 six or seven years, to a greater or less extent. 



The first season it struck the trees on about three-quarters of an 

 acre, which had been highly manured and well cultivated. The trees 

 were growing very rapidly, but outside of this three-quarters of an 

 acre, there was not a tree on the premises blighted, although there 



