330 Wisconsin State Hoeticultural Society. 



a theory. We had not intended at the outset to speak of this 

 subject in connection with the recent claims made as to its relation 

 to the question of blight in our fruit and ornamental trees, but 

 will say, that, after a careful and candid investigation of what 

 has been said both for and against, the difficulties seem fully as 

 great, if not greater, if we accept the theory as true. The fact 

 that these same germs are found in the cells of healthy growing 

 plants, without any evil effect, not only on the vigor of the plants 

 but not even on the infested and adjoining cells, as was stated by 

 French observers in 1869 and even earlier, and as has been con- 

 firmed by more recent investigations, is proof positive that their 

 presence in vegetable as in animal life is not always inju- 

 rious, and gives at least fair ground for the inference that when 

 seen in connection with disease it is the presence of the disease 

 that makes their development possible, rather than that they are 

 the direct cause of the disease. The fact that these organisms 

 are found in nearly all forms of decaying plant tissue, and in 

 some cases in which we know that they are not the direct cause 

 of the incipient decay, also naturally leads to the conclusion that 

 they are but an attendant result. The reasoning, that because 

 these organisms are found in Fire Blight, Twig Blight, Sun Scald, 

 Blight in the Quince, Blight in Lombardy Poplar following in- 

 sect perforations, Sun Scald in the Butternut, and in the twigs 

 of Aspen Poplar, these diseases are but varieties of one and the 

 same malady and have one and the same cause, viz : bacteria, 

 may be a little more ingenious, but certainly does not appear more 

 logical or satisfactory than that of the boy who concluded that 

 " it was the maggots in the dead body he saw that killed the 

 calf." A " laugh " may be the most appropriate answer to both, 

 but it would be fully as strong an argument on the boj'a side. 

 These organisms are doubtless found in all cases of the decom- 

 position of organic matter at that stage of the process where they 

 can find in an available form the elements necessary to their de- 

 velopment, but this does not prove that they are the cause of the 

 decay ; it would rather tend to establish the opinion that they 

 are one of nature's provisions for the return of the decaying ele- 

 ments to their original condition. 



