146 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



of the pear industry in this country. If it will pay to keep up the 

 present costly fight against pear blight anywhere, it will certainly do 

 so here. 



It is well known that the only successful method ever devised for 

 combating blight is that of cutting out all the affected parts and disin- 

 fecting the wounds, but this should not deter us from improving the 

 method nor from trying to find a better one. The science of plant 

 pathology is a comparatively new one, and we are still in our infancy 

 so far as methods of fighting plant diseases are concerned. Hence the 

 work of improving our present method, or finding a new and better 

 one, should be pushed vigorously by our plant pathologists. 



RESISTANT VARIETIES. 



Every pear grower will readily admit that the ideal method of com- 

 batting pear blight would be to grow varieties which would naturally be 

 resistant to the disease. The speaker wishes to state emphatically that 

 the ultimate solution of the pear blight problem will be in growing 

 such resistant varieties. Can such varieties be found or produced? 



rt is a fact, well known to fruit growers, that some varieties of pears 

 suffer much less than others from blight. Comice and Anjovi are much 

 more resistant than Bartlett and Howell. The pear industry in the 

 South and some sections of the East is dependent on the Kieff'er because 

 it is more resistant to blight than our better varieties. There are in 

 cultivation at the present time more than two thousand varieties of 

 pears. Of this number comparatively few varieties have been thor- 

 oughly tested to determine their resistance to pear blight. Is it not 

 possible that among this host of varieties some will be found which 

 will be comparatively free from blight, and still be desirable commercial 

 varieties ? To show that this is possible, it is only necessary to state 

 that we already have varieties which are known to approximate this 

 ideal. The Lucy Duke, a seedling of the Bartlett, which has been in 

 cultivation for more than 35 years, has shown marked resistance to 

 pear blight. This is a pear of excellent quality, and promises to be of 

 commercial value. Another, promising variety is the Douglass, which 

 originated as a seedling of Kieffer, probably crossed with the Angou- 

 leme. This variety has been growing in central Kansas, in a region 

 where blight is very severe, for 14 years, but has never shown a trace 

 of blight. It is not among the best in quality, but it is markedly bet- 

 ter than the Kieffer, and apparently far more resistant to blight. 



We have several varieties of poor quality but remarkably resistant 

 to blight. A variety locally known as the Florida Sand Pear and which 

 belongs to the Chinese Sand Pear Group, has been grown in the south- 

 eastern states for more than 30 years under the severest possible con- 

 ditions, with badly blighted trees of other varieties in adjoining rows, 

 this variety has never shown a trace of blight. The Burkett is a 

 variety which has been grown in the upper IMississippi Valley for the 

 past 50 years, and there, under conditions where very few of our 

 varieties can be grown because of the severity of blight, this variety 

 has proved practically free from this disease. The Suri)rise is another 

 variety from the middle West, where under the severest conditions it 

 has never shown a trace of blight. Other varieties showing marked 

 resistance are Krull, Fluke and Orel No. 15. Other examples might 



