402 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



not Bay that the Duchess are much affected with blight, that they 

 are badly affected, but the Yellow Transparent is among- the 

 worst. When it comes to the question of blight, there is no settle- 

 ment of that question except to cut the tree out and plant those 

 varieties that are least subject to blight. 



Mr. Philips: I was going to answer my friend, that he did not un- 

 derstand me; I do not recommend planting an orchard on ground 

 too rich. There is a great deal of our ground too rich, if we want a 

 vigorous tree. 



Mr. Pearce: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: The blight 

 has been discussed in this society for a great many years and has 

 been made a study. From all the information I can gather from 

 scientific men on the subject, in an extended research in the United 

 States, I am fully of the opinion that blight never affects any 

 growth except in epidemic form, unless there is diseased tissue. 

 You apply the principle to animals and vegetables. Whenever a 

 tree is abnormal in growth— and the Transcendent is defective— this 

 bacteria must get in contact with the sap in the tree before there is 

 any bad result. It may affect some trees without, but you take the 

 Duchess — the Duchess never blights. 

 Mr. Philips: O, yes it does. 



Mr. Pearce: Let me go a little further; it does not blight except 

 in extreme epidemic, and then it only extends a little ways; it has 

 the power of resisting. So it is in every healthy tree, it has the 

 power of resisting, because the blight has no chance to get hold. 

 Take every disease of all the human family, and it is all due to 

 bacteria. You can grow trees that are perfectly healthy. I have no 

 doubt the Transcendent can be grown so healthy that it will never 

 blight. I have not had a bit of it for five years. The only proper 

 thing to do is to avoid everything that will produce the least de- 

 formity in the tree. It must not be injured in the least. When I 

 was a boy, in Ohio, and until I was thirty years old, I never saw 

 blight. I saw a great many large orchards. We had perfect trees; 

 they were altogether different from what we have now. If you have 

 got a lot of mongrel trees, they must blight; they can't help it. 

 Grow a strong and healthy and vigorous tree, and you will not be 

 troubled with blight. 



Mr. Dartt: Don't seedlings blight badly? 



Mr. Kellogg, (Wisconsin): I don't know nearly as much as I 

 thought I did, but I know more than I did. I have an idea like friend 

 Dartt that with ordinary cultivation we will escape blight to some 

 extent, but I believe this, that in air drainage we have the only per- 

 fect salvation for blight. I have the McMahon top- worked on the 

 Yellow Transparent, and they all went on the brush pile this year. 

 I have a hundred varieties in one block in the nursery, and they all 

 blighted this year, the Russians worst of all; occasionally a twig 

 on a Duchess, and I saw a little on the Pewaukee; I think that 

 variety is the freest of anything of the one hundred varieties in the 

 nursery. 



Prof. N. E. Hansen, (South Dakota): There has been some talk 

 about seedling apples this morning, and it seems to me that for the 



