48 State Horticultural Society. 



food, in which they multiply rapidly, and from which they are car- 

 ried to other flowers, each infected flower dying itself and sending 

 death to all the other flowers. Others of these insects go to the 

 young, tender twigs, puncture their bark to suck the sap, and, in 

 so doing, insert a blight bacteria within. 



Now that we have the life history of the blight and understand 

 its mode of transfer, what can be done to overcome or prevent its 

 ravages? One thing is to provide that the tree shall not have too 

 rank a supply of sap; another, to select so-called resistant varie- 

 ties; another, to destroy existing and prevent new infection; and, 

 another, to control the responsible insects. 



To accomplish the first, proper soil and location should be se- 

 lected, as I have already said, and cultivation should be light or 

 none after the trees have made a good start. It has been advised 

 to put standards to sod when about three years old; dwarfs may 

 need annual cultviation. Dwarfs may blight less than standards 

 of the same variety, but I cannot say. My Clapp Favorite, which 

 are dwarfs, blight the most swiftly and fatally of anything I have, 

 and my dwarf Duchess also blight a good deal. An application of 

 salt to the ground about the trunk to check the rapid growth is 

 sometimes recommended. As to its efficacy, I do not know, but I 

 am trying it this year on a short row. The use of phosphates to 

 ripen up the young growth early in the season is recommended, 

 and ought to be good. Propagation on French stock is said to give 

 better results than on Japanese. 



The term resistant, as applied to pear trees in relation to the 

 blight, although useful, is misleading; no tree exercises any resist- 

 ant force to the blight. Its sap may not be food that the blight 

 bacterium can thrive on, may be insufficient in quantity to furnish 

 a food supply, or may not be attractive to the insects by whose 

 feeding punctures the blight would be planted. As a Bartlett or 

 Clapp has richer fruit than a Kieffer or Garber, we might expect it 

 to have a richer sap ; and we do know, to our sorrow, that the blight 

 thrives better in it. By midsummer most blight infections die ont 

 in most varieties of trees, and is usually ascribed to the dimi- 

 nution in the sap flow. 



As to the relative immunity of different varieties in my own 

 orchard, I should rank the Garber by long odds first and incompar- 

 able, unless, perhaps, with the Seckel. Next I would put the dwarf 

 Anjou and Duchess, and probably the Lincoln and Clairgeau. Then 

 could come the Kieffer, Possibly I would rate the Kieffer with the 

 Duchess, or above it, only for a terrific hailstorm last year in my 



