INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 441 



causes of the poor condition of the barli it is a comparatively simple and 

 inexpensive procedure to practically exterminate them. For scurfy 

 scales, oyster shell bark lice and wooly aphis a ten per cent, kerosene 

 emulsion in June will kill ninety per cent, of the young insects. 



If such diseases as those of the apple rot type have attacked the twigs, 

 causing the dead and roughened bark or the unknown diseases common on 

 Benoni, causing bunches on the limbs, a winter or early spring wash 

 should be used. Take fifteen pounds of live lime and slack with water, in 

 which two pounds of copper sulphate have been melted, and add about 

 fifty pounds or more of fine hardwood ashes. The materials diluted to 

 fifty gallons of water should be sprayed on trunks and branches, using 

 a coarse spray. This treatment clears off old bark, destroys insect eggs 

 and fungus spores and has a tendency to remove many of the hardy scale 

 insects. The effect on the bark is very pronounced. 



Such a wash costs little and is believed to be as effective in its work 

 as the most costly of tree paints and patent washes. It will prove 

 profitable to care for the bark, for dried-up, bark-bound orchards can not 

 produce valuable crops. 



PEAR BLIGHT. 



The disease known as pear blight, and little understood until within 

 a few years past, has been more than usually prevalent the present season. 

 The leaves on some branch— usually a shoot of the present season's growth 

 —die and the shoot soon turns black. Frequently this extends farther 

 down to the older wood, and if no effort is made to stop the malady the 

 tree dies outright. Sometimes it will stop one season, to begin again and 

 run its entire course to the death of the tree, next year. 



The remedy is cutting and burning the affected branch, and this should 

 be done as soon as possible. The cutting should be some distance below 

 the point at which the disease seems to stop— six to twelve inches — ^so as 

 to be certain of removing all the diseased wood. This sometimes dis- 

 figures the tree, but it is an effectual remedy if done properly and without 

 delay. 



The malady is now known to be baeterial^a microscopic fungus; and 

 it may be transmitted from one tree to another, which explains the burn- 

 ing part of the treatment recommended above. Even a knife used on a 

 diseased branch will infect a healthy tree by cutting into it, unless the 

 implement is disinfected. The simplest method of disinfection is by pass 

 ing the knife blade slowly through the flame of a lamp, and this should 

 be done at once. 



The same malady affects some of the apple trees, and the quince trees 

 occasionally, but it is not nearly so virulent, rarely or never killing the tree 

 but stopping with shoots of the current season's growth. In this case it is 

 called twig blight; and the remedy is the same. 



