r'S TJTTBftRT. 429 



SECRETAKY'S BUDGET. 



NOTES ON PEARS. 



The list of really valuable pears is much shorter than our nursery- 

 men would have us think, although some of the catalogues are epitomes 

 of reliable information ; among others, tbat of Ellwanger & Barry I al- 

 ways refer to as authority, as I do to Campbell's on grapes. These cata- 

 logues, when trustworthy, are the most valuable of all helps to the 

 amateur growers. 



From experience with most of the leading varieties, I should now 

 plant the following for a general home orchard: For summer: Bart- 

 lett, Clapp, Petite Marguerite, Tyson. For autumn: Belle Lucrative, 

 Burre Superfin, Duchesse, Howell, Seckel, Sheldon, Onondaga, Anjou, 

 Clairgeau. For winter : Lawrence, Jones, Winter Nelis and Josephine 

 de Malines. To this list five or six others might be added that would 

 be generally quite as satisfactory. Rev. E. P. Powell. 



PEAR BLIGHT. 



Prof. Arthur does not tell us what these germs are, but we suppose 

 them to be bacteria. One thing is certain, these germs or bacteria 

 that are rising from "damp spots" into "the air when dry" have great 

 power of discrimination, and select the same kind of trees though situ- 

 ated hundreds of feet apart, neglecting the intermediate trees. The 

 only trees I had killed the first yeai, 1881, were the new Frederick of 

 "Wortemberg, one growing on high land, with a gravelly subsoil ; one 

 on soft, black soil with clay underneath; and the third somewhat 

 similarly situated, but each one from 300 to 1,000 feet from the others. 

 The next year four St. Michael Archangel trees were attacked just in 

 the same way ; three of them recovered, but the fourth is in a bad way, 

 full of blighted limbs, with pears hanging on the live ones. My crop 

 from the four trees this year was eight bushels. 



I do not see that any of the experiments in inoculation are of any 

 value. There is no doubt that there is just as likely to be sap poison- 

 ing among vegetables as blood poisoning among animals. We all know 

 how careful surgical men are of blood poisoning from diseased animals, 

 and a diseased limb is quite as likely to contain a substance sure 

 poison to living tissues. Inoculating a tree does not tell us what is the 

 cause of the blight. That is what we want to know. 



I do not look upon the blight with any great fear. With about 

 3,000 pear trees 30 to 40 years old on my own grounds, and neighbors 

 adjoining with 1,000 more, where no blight has ever appeared except 

 iipon a few of my own trees, and all that were attacked having fully 



