STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 17 



have been kept in check by frequent movings or digging, and this trouble has by this time, only 

 just begun ; for the longer the trees stand, the in ire labor will be required to keep down these 

 never-to-be-eradicated enemies. Whereas the trees on Mahaleb stocks wilt at the end ■ if the 

 fifth year have attained a size about twice that of those on Morello, when they commenced and 

 continue to bear full crops of fruit, repaying the planter from thirty to an hundred fold, for his 

 expenditure of capital and labor, and without the serious effect of " eternal vigilance " in grab- 

 bing out suckers, (as the Mahaleb does not throw off suckers). I will venture the assertion that 

 if the planter of an orchard on Morello stocks were to keep an accurate account of the time 

 spent during the first live or six years in keeping the suckers in check — this would at ordinary 

 wages equal in amount, the market value of all the fruit winch the trees will have borne up to 

 that time. If this is true, even if the trouble were to cease at that period, the advantagei would 

 be largely in favor of the Mahaleb stock. I dwell upon this matter more at length than its com- 

 parative importance seems to demand, because I fear that very many of our farmers ami others, 

 are misled by the accounts of the "productiveness of the Early Richmond cherry on Mart llo Sto l-x," 

 and in their eagerness to procure an early supply of the valuable fruit, are induced to plant freely . 

 of these trees, losing sight of their bad habits, (if indeed the seller informs them), which when 

 they d velop themselves will tend to discourage the planters and lead them to regret their choice. 



If there are serious and valid objections to the .Mahaleb stock, 1 have not yet heard them; 

 and having known them for seventeen years, and especially after the close observations made of 

 them during the last tew years, In all kinds of soil — in Northern Illinois — in which any fruit trees 

 succeed, I am satistie 1 that their longevity is as great, if not greater than the Bforellos and that, 

 on th' whole, they are decidedly preferable, to them as a stock upon which to work that class of cher- 

 ri s of which the Early May is the type. 



The Poir litii/ht seems to have been unusually prevalent during the past season in nearly all 

 the localities visited, and I failed to discover that any locality, kind of soil or exposure, or that 

 trees under any kind of cultivation or neglect were entirely exempt from it; yet there seemed to 

 be less In orchards under good cultivation in soils of moderate fertility which were naturally under- 

 drained, than in those either stimulated with manure or those which were neglected. I did not 

 examine trees this year, which had been properly root pruned upon Dr. Hud's plan. He can 

 doubtless tell you whether such escaped. If so, the fact is a strong argument in favor of his 

 sy6t' 



The Root Blight, as I have observed it in the apple orchards of Union county, threatens to be 

 a seiious evil. I spent an entire day last year In examining trees afTected, or dead with this dis- 

 ease, and found that the roots of diseased trees were encased in a white fungus of firm texture 

 which seems to commence at some distance from the tree and gradually spread and thicken to- 

 wards the trunk, destroying the vitality of the roots which it enclosed. It is po8tibU that the 

 fungus growth was the result rather than the cause of the disease, but the mode of the progress of 

 the disease, and the appearance of the roots, seemed to oppose this theory. Several trees, in the 

 orchard of P. R. Wright, of South Pass, which had been in orchard four years were still In full 

 leaf an 1 apparent vigor after the disease had destroyed all the small roots and approached very 

 near to the collar. These trees had thrown out numerous fibrous roots, around the collar, 

 which afforded temporary nourishment, and the only food furnished from the soil during the 

 last stages of disease. The theory that this form of "root rot," as it is called, is caused by 

 the apple root louse or woolly aphis, appears tome to bean erroneous one from the facts above 

 stated, and from the fact that in some trees examined which were affected as above described no 

 aphides could be found, or any excrescences upon the roots which are said to always result Irotn their 

 depredations. 



It is tru.-. however, that there is a woolly root louse at work in the same region, doing a vast 

 amount of mischief; yet, as before Intimated his depredations arc readily distinguished from the 

 "root rot"; for wherever this insect was found — and I found thousands of them upon a few 

 trees — the roots were kuarledor knotty, and of course dying; the small roots resembling more 



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