2 10 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BLIGHT. 



A DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Wyman Elliot': I have given this subject con- 

 siderable attention for the very good reason that we have 

 had a good deal of it, but today I am just as much in the dark re- 

 garding it as I was when I began to study it, and I was in hopes we 

 would have something brought out at this meeting that would be 

 helpful to us. At the Kansas City meeting of the American Pomo- 

 logical Association they had a learned professor from Cornell Uni- 

 versity present who gave us a fine talk on the subject of blight and 

 scab. He is devoting his whole attention to that one topic, and up to 

 that time he said he had not solved the mystery, but he said 

 vou could stop both blight and scab bv using corrosive sublimate. 

 i had this year a sprout that I was looking after very carefully from 

 the original Wealthy tree. It was a very fine specimen and grew 

 thirty-four apples. It commenced blighting and is now only two 

 and one-half to three feet high and nothing but brush and stump. 

 I commenced to cut and kept on cutting until I cut most of the tree 

 awav. That is the remedy I employ for blight ; whenever I see any 

 blight I cut it. 



Mr. Philips (Wis.) : Do you sterilize the knife? 



Mr. Elliot : No, I don't use it enough. 



Mr, Philips : You carry it along with your knife. 



Mr. Elliot: Perhaps I do, but I don't take that precaution. I 

 would like to hear from Prof. Hansen. 



Prof. Hansen ( S. D.) : In the Missouri society there were three 

 subjects they agreed not to discuss: politics, pear blight and religion. 

 I don't know whether apple blight would be included in that or not. 

 (Laughter.) 



Mr. O. F. Brand : W^e had a professor here thirty years ago, a 

 professor of horticulture, who went west later and raised sheep. He 

 gave us a talk on blight at that time, and he went right down to 

 bed rock facts. He told us it was caused by a little bug in the 

 atmosphere, and he told us the truth. I went to Florida and spent 

 a part of a summer there twenty years ago looking after the blight 

 question there. They had it very badly among their orange trees, 

 and they were willing to pay lot's of money to find a remedy that 

 would cure the disease. I learned this definite fact, which one 

 gentleman brought out here yesterday, that one thing that causes 

 blight is because the trees are hidebound. The gentleman got clear 

 up to the point', but he did not tell us what it was. He gave us a 

 cure, but he did not tell us what caused the disease. He split 

 the bark to release the tree from being hidebound — but I have found 

 something better than a knife. I made up my mind that a tree 

 blighted because the bark did not expand naturally, and if we applied 

 something to the tree to make it expand naturally it would not 

 split, so I applied a wash of sulphur and lime with some carbolic 

 acid added. That stopped it, and there was an increased growth, 

 and there was no more blight. That is all there is to it. Provide 



