Report of A. H. Carson. 47 



in the valley. He understands the blight and its remedy, the 

 knife. He has his men cut out the germs when first seen, and 

 has no losses from the blight. A majority of the fruit growers 

 now, through the educational work of Professor O'Gara and 

 his practica! demonstrations on trees that have the disease, 

 are now Controlling the blight, but not all are doing so. They 

 reject O'Gara's teachings as to remedies, but get hold of 

 some faker's advertisement wherein "his spraying Compound 

 has never been known to fail to rid an orchard of the blight," 

 and believing this bosh and use the spray, with the result 

 the trees continue to die from the germ. Several such cases 

 occurred in the valley this year. A very valuable orchard 

 was badly damaged by the blight. When it first started in 

 this orchard a day's work with the knife cutting out the germs 

 would have exterminated it. The county inspector gave the 

 owner careful Instructions how to treat it. The owner prom- 

 ised the inspector to carry out his Instructions, but in place 

 of doing so heedlessly sprayed his trees with a remedy recom- 

 mended to eure the blight. The result of violating the Instruc- 

 tions of the inspector and using the useless spray Compound 

 was that a good portion of the orchard was badly damaged 

 from the blight, and a number of trees killed. In fact, the 

 whole orchard would have been a thing of the past had not 

 the owner sent up a distress signal, calling O'Gara and the 

 inspectors to his aid, who at once set the men to cutting out 

 the diseased germs and saved many trees. The result of 

 Professor O'Gara's and the inspectors' work is that now the 

 orchard is healthy and recovering from the blight. 



Another annoying obstacle to the successful Controlling of 

 the blight is bulletins issued by some who have a theoretical 

 knowledge of the blight, but nothing that is practical. Recently 

 I noted a clipping in a newspaper credited to a bulletin issued 

 by some professor, whom I do not now recall, saying it was 

 easy to control the blight by cutting out the hold-over infection, 

 that it was unnecessary to cut out the dead blighted terminal 

 twigs. This Professor had but little practical knowledge of 

 this disease or eise he would have emphasized the necessity 

 of cutting back all blighted twigs, well back too, to control 

 the blight. For two reasons he should have done so. First, 

 it is true that in many of the blighted terminal twigs the germ 

 dies, and in those that they do die there is no danger, but 

 many of the twigs have moisture enough in them to keep some 

 germs alive. With a few murky, rainy days the sap quickens 

 and the live germs in a twig rapidly multiply, work down into 

 the larger limbs, and develop a hold-over. So it is unsafe 

 and poor practice to leave a single twig that has blighted for 

 fear some of them might have a few live germs that when 



