Adaptations in Hokticultuee. C9 



them. Another thing he had observed the present season was that 

 the blight, or what closely resembles it, can be produced by mechan- 

 ical means. lie girdled a section of the top in a healthy tree, 

 one where there was no sign of blight, and in ten days that sec- 

 tion was dead, with all the appearance of blight, even the same 

 sour scent, and the black, acrid exudation. 



He had never seen any real benefit resulting from cutting off 

 the limbs struck with blight; if the weather was favorable for 

 blight, it would develop again ; if not favorable, it would then 

 stop spreading without the cutting back. The only real remedy 

 seemed to be the preventive one of checking the rapid growth of 

 our trees. Trees standing in grass land or in poor soil are much 

 less subject to blight. Excessive fruitage also lessens the liability 

 to it ; anything which starves the tree or prevents an excessive 

 wood growth acts as a preventive. For this reason he thought it 

 was better to have bearing trees stand in grass land. 



Mr. Huntley thought that trees should be cultivated the first few 

 years. That was the period when they were the most liable to 

 injury by blight, but if set in the sod they would never be 

 healthy, vigorous trees. His trees had not suffered from blight 

 for a year or two. The tent caterpillar had stripped them of 

 their leaves, so that they had made but a feeble growth, and this 

 he supposed was the reason why they had not blighted. Stand- 

 ing in sod was not a sure cure, for he had seen Transcendents 

 standing in turf struck with blight as bad as those in cultivated 

 ground. 



ADAPTATIONS IN HORTICULTURE. 



J. W. Wood, Baraboo. 



There is one thing well established in our horticultural experi- 

 ence, and that is that indiscriminate planting of choice vari- 

 eties of fruits, vegetables and flowers is not all that is necessary 

 to insure satisfactory harvests. The fact is that we live on a 

 kind of border land between successful fruit growing and failure, 

 which makes it necessary for us to exercise great care in attend- 

 ing to all the details of the business. We must study carefully 



