340 BOARD OF AGBICULTURE. 



Professor Beach: We have used different things, and I siippose 

 nothing better than kerosene oil. It needs something that will kill threads 

 of fungus that have happened to escape cutting. The threads of fungus 

 run all through underneath the bark, and if you leave these, of course, 

 they will grow again and the knot will come out around edges. Other 

 things have been tried, but I do not know of anything that will do more 

 effective work than kerosene.' Wipe saw or knife after making a cut, 

 always wipe it with a cloth wet with kerosene, and it will not spread 

 germs from one tree to another. You can arrest the blight in that way. 



Mr. Little: I have heard kerosene recommended for knots. I cut 

 the knots out of one tree and used coal oil, and it seemed to feed the 

 knots and they kept growing. 



Mr. King: I suspect we were troubled as much with black knot in 

 Wayne County as any place in the State. Many trees around Richmond 

 died with black knot. One gentleman below town, had a large plum 

 orchard, and experimented with different things. He had a mixture he 

 used, and he told our Society about it; quite a number tried it. All we 

 had to do was to cut off the twig, trim them a little on outside and rub 

 on the mixture, and it killed the black knot. I had quite a number of 

 trees that had started black knot. I went home and applied the mixture, 

 and it killed the knot in every instance. 



Professor Troop: That was chloro naphtholium. I saw that same 

 orchard near Richmond. The man showed me all through the orchard 

 where black knot had been very bad on branches three and four inches 

 in diameter, and a couple of years before that he had painted them over 

 with chloro naphtholium, and when I was there they were all grown 

 over as nice as could be. I think our crude petroleum will answer the 

 same purpose. I will say that this black knot comes under our law 

 concerning injurious plant diseases, and wherever it is known I require 

 it to be cut out and destroyed. There is a good deal of it in the State. 



Mr. Teas: How do you apply it? 



Professor Troop: Apply to the knot with a brush. Trim off the knot 

 and paint it over. 



Mr. Grossman: There is one variety of plums on which I wish the 

 experience of others, and that is the Wickson. I would like to know if any 

 one has had any experience in fruiting it? It fruited for me for the first 

 time this season, and I was very much pleased with it. It is very large 

 and fancy and nearly every plum on the trees were perfect in eveiy 

 respect. I had always read and seen it mentioned in the horticultural 

 journals that Wickson was very tardy to come into bearing. These were 

 set two years ago last spring, same age as Abundance and Burbank, 



