94 . EXPERIMENTAL FARMS. 



The following sketch of the history of the disease in Ontario, by Dr. Beadle, will 

 be read with much interest: — 



"In the early days of fruit-growing in the Niagara District, we had no pear tree 

 blight, nor apple-tree blight. ****:*:* 



With the advent of what people termed grafted fruit, came after a few years 

 'blight' on the pear tree, and not until several years after it had become a serious 

 plague of the pear, did it affect the apple tree, to any appreciable extent. The first 

 pear trees that bore fruit in my father's garden were of the Summer Bonchretien 

 variety. These did not blight for some time after they began to bear, and I am 

 unable to give you the exact date of its first appearance, but by the year 1840 it had 

 begun to appear in those, and other pear trees in the garden. In 1847, A. J. Down- 

 ing complained that the ' blight ' of the pear was a serious drawback to the extensive 

 cultivation of the tree. In 1845 it was severe in the west, that is as far west as 

 Indiana, and apparently was but little known in that region before that summer. 

 About 1827 to 30 it was said to have been very destructive to pear trees at Schenec- 

 tady, N.Y., but no mention was made of any injury to apple trees from this cause; 

 it then disappeared for some twenty years. There was a similar apparent periodicity 

 in the Niagara district. My father having learned that some had applied black- 

 smith's cinders with beneficial results, tried them upon his pear trees, digging them 

 into the ground over the roots as far as they probably extended. After this some 

 ten years elapsed without any blight in his trees, but it broke out again, and I think 

 there has never been as long a period of exemption since. 



" I have no data that enable me to say when it appeared in the apple trees. Its 

 first serious work on apple trees was upon the crab-apple trees, such as Eed and 

 Yellow Siberian. Montreal Beauty, &c., not unfrequently killing the whole tree. Its 

 effects on other apple trees are confined for the most part, if not wholly, to the 

 young shoots of the summer's gi-owth. I cannot now recall one instance of even a 

 whole branch having been killed by it, and am confident that I have never known 

 an apple tree, other than the crabs, to be ruined by the ' blight.' As to the time 

 when the blight appears, there is no time after the beginning of June when it has not 

 appeared, but usually its presence is more abundantly manifested from the middle 

 of July to the end of August. 



" With regard to varieties of pears, the Duchess d'Angouleme, Kutter and Seckel 

 are the least subject to the ' blight' of the varieties with which I am acquainted. 

 Of the rest, in some seasons one would seem to be the most subject to the 'blight,' 

 in the next year some other variety would take the lead. 



" Fifth inquiry, trees in sod versus trees in cultivated ground. No opportunity 

 has been presented to me of making such a comparison. In 1885 I copied into the 

 Can. Horticulturist, vol. viii., an editorial from the Philadelphia Record gvfivig an 

 account of two orchards adjoining each other, and in soil and varieties alike, situate 

 at Newfield, New Jersey, the one cultivated to garden crops and liberally manured, 

 the other kept in grass, ploughed occasionally and re-seeded. The first was at that 

 time nearly destroyed by blight, the second as sound as when first set out, though the 

 trees were only about half the size of the cultivated, had never borne as well, nor 

 equalled them in appearance. Query : — Are the bacteria the cause, or is the diseased 

 tree or branch favourable to the multiplication ? 



" Yery truly yours, 



" D. W. BEADLE, 



« Toronto." 



