49 



them in mj fruit house, and there they lay until the first of November. I then went 

 out to look at them, and took one of them to our table at dinner, and sliced it up and 

 passed it round ; and my family liked it pretty well. Another I took to my office that 

 evening, and cut it up and passed it around to those who thought they were judges, and 

 asked how it was liked, and the universal testimony was, " I wish I had a barrel of them 

 to eat." There has been a variety of opinions with regard to that pear, but where it is 

 well ripened and well handled I have no doubt it is a pear which will meet the views of 

 the American people generally. So far as their style is concerned it is a style that will 

 sell them, though it is not of the highest quality. 



Mr. Drury. — The remarks of the gentleman who has just spoken, I think, are very 

 much to the point. I have no doubt he is a reliable authority in matters of this kind. 

 For my part, I feel interested in this, because we can grow the pears in the northern 

 country where I live, but felt a little doubtful about going into their growth on account 

 of their liability to blight. I think there is great reason in what the gentleman has said. 

 We see the truth of it in the animal kingdom. We know that the superior breeds of 

 cattle, sheep, and hogs are more or less liable to diseases to which the lower breeds are not. 

 On my own place some pear trees as far back as I can remember were killed down to the 

 ground — every one of them. I do not know what the reason was, but I am pretty sure it 

 was not the blight. They have all grown up again ; and they are a picture of health. They 

 are bearing a lot of little fruit which does not amount to anything ; but they are hardened 

 to all influences. I am led from this to think that it is possible that we may strike upon 

 a hardy kind of pear that may be suitable to this country. A year ago I was in various 

 parts of Ontario, and I saw evey where evidences of the blight. Just north of Simcoe, in 

 the County of Norfolk, I saw a large orchard of pear trees — I think about five hundred, 

 and I think mostly Bartletts and Flemish Beauties — and I said to the gentleman, " I 

 think that is about the finest orchard I have seen. How have you escaped the blight?" 

 He said, " I have been in the habit of painting our trees with raw linseed oil, and I attri- 

 bute my escape to that." In the immediate vicinity there were evidences of the destruc- 

 tion of the j)ear tree wholesale. I have mentioned this to several gentlemen who are 

 interested in pear growing, and they have said there is nothing in it ; but if that is a 

 preventative of blight it should be generally known. In that whole orchard there is not 

 a single tree that had a sign of blight. I think the trees were seven or eight years of 

 age ; but there were trees in orchards all around of the same age that were blighted. He 

 had painted with a paint brush up to the limbs. He had been doing that every year for 

 several years. 



Mr. a. M. Smith. — I heard of the same orchard this fall. I think a great many of 

 you will remember that our friend Springer thought he had a remedy. That was, 

 splitting the bark ; but in the seventh or eighth year the blight struck them. 



Mr. Saunders. — This linseed oil remedy has been the rounds of the horticultural 

 journals these last two or three years. Another remedy was a mixture of sulphur and 

 lime and carbolic acid. I have understood from people who have used both these reme- 

 dies that in some instances they have succeeded, and in some they have not. I do not 

 know whether the fault, where they have not succeeded, has been in the insufficiency of 

 the application or not. 



Mr Woodward. — My trees are all Duchesse ; and I have never yet lost one of them 

 by the blight. They are dwarfs. I apply to them a combination of salt, phosphate, and 

 ashes. Sometimes I add a little copperas — scattered around among the trees. I have 

 one orchard on which I put this composition each year and manure it a little with barn- 

 yard manure ; and this three or four years it has escaped blight. I think the pear 

 blight attacks the tree from the outside, and works into it. I have also a Bartlett 

 orchard. It is a small orchard ; there are perhaps fifty trees in.it ; and I have not lost 

 any Bartlett trees in a long time with the blight — never since I began to take care of 

 them and apply this dressing every year. That orchard pays me very well. I cannot 

 say that that remedy is a preventive entirely ; but so far it has been very satisfactory. 

 Mr. Arnold. — With us this blight attacks the present year's wood. How would 

 you apply the remedy in that case 1 

 Mr. Woodward. — Cut it oflEl 



4 (f. g.) 



