BLIGHT. 211 



the tree something that will keep it in normal condition. You can 

 cause that normal condition by keeping it in a healthy and growing 

 condition. Take a seed, and you can keep it' for years dormant, 

 and yet if it is properly treated it will expand and grow. 



Mr. Geo. J. Kellogg (Wis.) : I have heard a great many talks 

 on blight. The two papers we had yesterday were the most sensible 

 on the subject that I ever heard, even from professors. Common 

 people know more than the professors anyway. (Laughter.) 



On the subject of blight I have learned that these scientific men 

 don't know anything about it, and if we depend on them we will 

 not know anything about it for two hundred years. My theory of 

 blight is the same as the facts we know about apoplexy, it is a 

 rush of blood to the head. If there is any scab there is blight. It 

 comes on after a sultry, muggy and hot atmosphere, and we find the 

 most blight after an electric storm. I think electricity has some- 

 thing to do with it, and if I had a row of Yellow Transparent I 

 would run a couple of wires over them. 



The Chairman : In Fresno, California, they get blight, and they 

 have no thunder storms there. 



Mr. J. M. Underwood : It seems to me there is as much varia- 

 tion in the opinions of people in regard to blight as there is in the 

 conditions under which blight exists. I claim that, so far as I can 

 discover, there is no condition of the atmosphere, of the soil or in 

 the growth of the tree but what blight will prevail ; and there is no 

 condition, so far as I am able to discover in the minds of the 

 people who are discussing it here, but what blight prevails, and 

 there is a great variation in your beliefs in regard to it. Some say 

 it is owing to the condition of the atmosphere. If it is wet, and the 

 sun is hot it will produce blight; and some say that blight occurs 

 when there are different conditions, w'hen there is an excessive 

 growth of the trees — and I agree with you all, you are all right. But 

 we have got to take the opinions of every one of you in order to 

 get at the facts. There is no one person that is right about it so 

 far as the conditions under which blight exists are concerned. Now 

 the nurseryman, so it seems to me, is interested in this question 

 financially more than anybody else. He has perhaps 500,000 or 

 1,000,000 trees in the nursery, and it is quite an item whether those 

 trees are going to be blighted and injured so as not to be market- 

 able as nursery trees. Suppose they are Wealthy, and he has 100,- 

 000 Wealthy trees, and the trees are coming on two or three years 

 old and ready for market, but the blight comes on and destroys those 

 trees so that he has to cut them out — it becomfes fluife a serious 

 problem. I think the nurservman lias more involved in the matter 

 than anybody else. The orchardist has comparatively few apple 

 trees, and if' they blight it does not affect him as much as though 

 he had 100,000 trees "ready to bill to his customers, and he has to 

 cut them all out and burn them. 



In my experience blight exists under all conditions. It has ex- 

 isted in seasons that were dry and there was nothing to cause an 

 excessive growth, yet the trees looked just as though they were 

 burned ; and sometimes after a very severe winter when the fibrous 



