26 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Q. Does Dot the season have something to do with the blight? A 

 3'ear ago this snniraei' we had much blight in our young orchard. We 

 cut it out when the trees were dormant. It seems to me that the blight 

 appeared one hundred to one, last year to what it did this year. I think 

 heavy pruning has a tendency to cause pear bligJit, so I would not top- 

 graft any more pears. I have lost three-fourths of all the pears I have top- 

 grafted Avithin three or four years after I did it. Personally I would 

 not advise any one to top-graft a pear orchard, on account of the blight 

 taking them then or a few years afterwards. 



Mr. Farrand — I may say one thing I have observed and it brings up 

 the problem of pollenization in connection with fruit. Some say that 

 the Duchess pear is not susceptible to blight, but in an instance that I 

 know of in every one of the blossoms you could see where the blight had 

 definitely entered these blossoms and I think it spreads in this way. 

 There is a great chance to spread infection through the blossom. I laid 

 it to the bees working on some infected branch and then coming to these 

 trees and infecting them in that Avay. This observation is made after 

 I have watched the matter very closely arid this is the only logical con- 

 clusion I could come to in regard to the blight in that instance, the leaf 

 spurs did not have a particle of it but every blossom s])ur did. 



A Member — -Always when you cut a limb off for blight, you will find 

 sap will come out and when it does you can almost always find bees 

 on it. The theory was largely, in putting the keresone on there, that 

 the bees would not work on there until it got seared over, until the 

 sap quit coming out of the wound. There must be some cause for the 

 blight spreading. Mr. Farrand has spoken of bees and I am inclined 

 to think that his theory is correct. 



Mr. Smythe — In putting kerosene on that stub did it heal eventually? 



A. I could not see any bad effects, one-half of the tree was gone 

 and the other half matured the pears and the part that we put kerosene 

 on healed over and it has borne ever since. The theory was that the 

 kerosene made it so obnoxious to the bees that they would not want to 

 light on there, but would stay away, and so the poison was not carried 

 from one tree to another. 



Mr. Welch — I have been listening with much interest to this discus- 

 sion. It seems to me that these terms, cultivation, excessive cultivation, 

 are misleading. I have a neighbor who I notice gave his peach orchard 

 good cultivation in October, the season was Avrong and the results were 

 not favorable. I had a young pear orchard 7 or 8 years old which has 

 made an excessive growth every year, from 3 to 5 feet at a time. I had 

 a theory that the early cultivation of the pear orchard Avould be a pre- 

 ventive of the blight — that it would leave very little room for the blight. 

 I also have another opinion that I believe will work out as the cause 

 of excessive blight, that is, I question whether our summer spraying- 

 may not be an advantage in preventing the blight. This orchard I have 

 I haven't given it a summer spraying of lime-sulphur, but it has been 

 fairly well cultivated and what has been done was done early and the 

 trees made a great groAvth. I Avould not say that this is a sure preventative 

 of blight, or thrtt it is a preA'cntiA'^e at all, but it seemed to Avork well in 

 this particular case. 



Q. I would like to knoAV what to do with the blight. Perhaps this 

 has been answered before, but I have just come into the hall. 



