Report of A. H. Carson. 45 



These orchards were bearing heavy crops of fruit, and yet 

 the surface had not been cultivated and fined up enough to 

 create a dust mulch to obliterate the cracks and conserve the 

 moisture so necessary to mature the heavy crops of fruit they 

 bore. The loss for want of cultivation in these orchards could 

 not be less than one-third when an expenditure of not over 

 two per Cent of the loss in better cultivation would have been 

 a saving of 31 per cent to the owners. 



BLIGHT. 



This disease that first made its appearance in the Rogue 

 River Valley about four years ago has to a great extent been 

 controlled in the larger commercial orchards. Orchards in 

 which it was first discovered were treated by cutting out the 

 twigs that were blighted and a tree-to-tree inspection made, 

 and every hold-over (the source of annual infection) cut 

 out, with the result the disease has been controlled and these 

 orchards have recovered their vigor and are bearing heavy 

 crops of fruit. 



The orchards that showed the blight at first were in the 

 hands of careful men, and the Instruction as to method of 

 treatment by Professor O'Gara were literally followed, hence 

 their success in fighting the blight. Where the blight gets 

 into an orchard district, as it did in the Rogue River Valley 

 four years ag-o. to clean it out of that district requires the 

 co-operation of every fruit grower in the district. It must 

 be honest, enthusiastic co-operation of every one to clean it 

 out and prevent loss of trees as well as fruit. It is hard to 

 alarm averae-e fruit o-rowers as to the dangers of a disease 

 whose source is a minute germ. They can see the effect of 

 the germ. but becaus^ they cannot see the germ they attribute 

 the result from the blight to many causes of a sunerstitious 

 nature. In fact the germ theory of disease in the human 

 family was propounded a long time before it was accepted by 

 the medical Drofession. In fact, as Dr. Pickel of Medford 

 stated recently in a lecture before the Rogue River Horticul- 

 tural Society, "Thirty years aß-o but few among the medical 

 Profession accepted the germ theory of tynhoid, tuberculosis, 

 and other diseases of the human family, but today there is 

 not a reputable physician anywhere but does accept it." 



Dr. Pickel has made a study of the blight germ, and he says 

 that to save a tree from the germ there is no treatment but 

 the knife to cut out the parts that have become diseased with 

 the germs; that there could be no spraying Compound that 

 could reach them. In this lecture of Dr. Pickel he says just 

 what Professor O'Gara taught us about the origin of the dis- 

 ease and the only remedy. Dr. Pickel owns a large orchard 



