I4S TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



seemed to be arrested for the year. I also found this system extensively 

 earned out in one of the largest, and by far the most valuable orchard, 

 in the neighborhood of Alton. Here our friend Hyde has root-pruned 

 several thousand trees and has apparently arrested the blight that was 

 threatening the entire destruction of the orchard vidien he commenced it 

 five years ago. It is proper to add that our energetic friend is one of the 

 very few men I have found who have faith in pear-growing as a remu- 

 nerating enterprise. Justice to all the systems under discussion, requires 

 me to say here, that the largest pear orchard in the Alton district (as I am 

 told), which greatly interested your committee three years ago, was this 

 year found most disastrously blighted. Very few trees were found, in 

 all this large and otherwise beautiful orchard, which were wholly free 

 from the disease. Dwarfs and standards were alike fatally affected ; but 

 the varieties the least so were the Seckel and Duchesse d'Angouleme. 

 This orchard had been cultivated in a careful manner until two or three 

 years ago, and has since been in grass and clover. 



While I believe that root-pi'uning may be very profitably adopted by 

 many growers, especially in the vicinity of Alton, where the blight seems 

 alarmingly severe under all other kinds of management, yet I am reluct- 

 antly compelled to say that it is not, apparently, as etficacious in all places. 

 A large orchard of nine year old trees, mostly Bartletts, near Cobden, 

 was last spring root-pruned very faithfully and severely, as I believe, in 

 hope of stopping the blight which had increased for several years; but 

 without having any such result. The trees made a very small growth in 

 many cases, and in other trees it averaged a foot or more. The blight in 

 this case appeared not to distinguish the difference. A small orchard at 

 Benton Harbor, Michigan, standing on a sandy bluff', was last spring 

 very thoroughly root-pruned, and mulched but not cultivated afterwards, 

 and while no blight was manifested, I think that few observers of this 

 orchard would be tempted thereby to go and do likewise. And while I 

 do not consider this a fair test of the system, yet the extreme debility of 

 these trees suggests caution as to soil and other conditions which should 

 modify very rigid rules. In fact the rules found to be precisely adapted 

 to the loess soils of Alton are likely to require essential changes in other 

 localities. 



I have found less blight in the neighborhood of Villa Ridge than in 

 any other where pear trees are extensively cultivated; and this is directly 

 traceable to the fact the trees in that soil retain their foliage in a very 

 healthy condition. In fact I have never seen any locality where so many 

 varieties of trees exhibited so great a luxuriance of gro\vth with so little 

 manifestation of disease. And I was much impressed with the appear- 

 ance of an orchard growing in the Ohio bottom, some three miles from 

 the river, and scarcely beyond the reach of high water, the roots evidently 

 penetrating below the high water line, which gave every evidence of 

 perfect health and great vigor. No blight had ever appeared in any 

 variety, although the oldest trees had been twelve years planted. But 

 all kinds held their leaves late in the season : it being remarked that the 

 Sheldon was somewhat faulty, casting its foliage in October. 



