.420 BOABD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this is such a fall as will make blight; to be taken during the winter into 

 the orchard and told this tree has been struck at tlie junction of its 

 branches; that tree is not at all affected; this tree will die entirely the 

 next season; this tree will go first on this side, etc., and to find, after- 

 wards, the prediction verified. 



3. This leads me to state separately, the fact, after such a fall 

 blighted trees may be ascertained during the process of late winter or 

 early spring pruning. In pruning before the sap begins to rise freely no 

 sap should follow the knife in a healthy tree. But in trees which have 

 been afflicted with blight, a sticky, viscid sap exhudes from the wound. 



4. Trees which ripen their wood early are seldom affected. This 

 ought to elicit careful observation, for, if found true, it will be an impor- 

 tant element in determining the value of varieties of the pear in the 

 Middle and Western States, where the late and warm autumns are more 

 liable to winter blight than New England orchards. An Orange Bergamot, 

 grafted upon an apple stock had about run out, it made a small and feeble 

 growth, and cast its leaves in the summer of 1843 long before frost. It 

 escaped the blight entirely, while young trees, and of the same kind, I be- 

 lieve, standing about it, and growing vigorously until the freeze, perished 

 the next season. I have a list before me of over fifty varieties growing in 

 the orchard of Aaron Aldridge, of this place, and their history since 183(i, 

 and so far as can be ascertained late growing varieties are the ones in 

 every case subject to blight, and of those which have always escaped, 

 the most part are known to ripen leaf and wood early. 



5. Whenever artificial causes have either produced or prevented a 

 gi'owth so late as to be overtaken by a fi'eeze, blight has respectively been 

 felt or avoided. Out of 200 pear trees only four escaped, in 1832, in the 

 orchard of Mr. Ragan. These four had the previous spring been trans- 

 planted, and had made little or no growth during summer or fall. If, 

 however, they had recovered themselves during the summer so as to 

 grow in the autumn, transplanting would have had just the other effect, 

 as was the case in a row of pear ti-ees planted by Mr. Aldridge in 1843. 

 They stood still through the summer and made growth in the fail, were 

 frozen, and in 18J4 manifested severe blight. Mr. Alridge's orchard 

 affords another instructive fact. Having a row of St. Michael (White 

 Dayenne) pear (of which any cultivator might have been proud) standing 

 close by his stable, he was accustomed in the summer of 1843, to throw 

 out now and then, manure about them, to force their gi'owth. Under this 

 stimulus they were making excessive growth when winter struck. Of all 

 his orchard they suffered the ensuing summer the most severely. Of 

 twenty-tAvo trees twelve were affected by the blight, and eight entirely 

 killed. All in this region know the vigorous habit of this tree. Of eight 

 Orassane Bergamot (a late grower), five were affected and two killed. 

 In an orchard of 325 trees of seventy-nine varieties, one in seven were 

 blighted, and twenty-five were totally destroyed. Although a minute 



