2? ANNUAL REPORT. 
EVENING SESSION. ‘ 
The President in the chair called the meeting to order at 7 
p.m. The Secretary being absent, Mr. Latham was appointed 
Secretary pro tem. 
The President then announced the topic for discussion. 
THE DISEASES TO WHICH APPLE TREES ARE LIABLE AND THEIR 
TREATMENT. 
The discussion was opened by Mr. Dartt. He considered that 
the blight affected fruit trees, as disease does the human family. 
The Transcendent and seedling crab are most liable to blight ; 
the Duchess of Oldenburg and Soulard crab the least. The 
Tetofsky is not so free from it as the Duchess. The Saxton 
and Golden Russet also suffered severely from it. He pre- 
ferred the severity of winters, like the last, to the blight. 
Col. Stevens could not agree with Mr. Dartt. He had never 
heard of any successful remedy for it,-but believed that the 
frosts of winter were worse than blight. It was not general- 
ly considered dangerous to fruit trees, as it does not affect 
them oftener than once in twenty or thirty years. It has been 
a number of years since the blight made its appearance in 
Minneapolis. I have heard that a few years since it pre- 
vailed to such an extent in Southern Illinois as to threaten 
the total destruction of the orchards, but has since disap- 
peared. 
Mr. Smith had lost two Soulards by the cause of blight— 
esteems the fruit very highly. Said that until lately Mr. Har- 
ris had thought the blight caused by electricity ; believed 
that Mr. Elliot considered it the result of a certain fungus in 
the atmosphere, but he did not think either supposition en- 
tirely correct, as the electricity, according to that theory, 
would destroy the trees every year. He thought the blight 
was contagious, and could only be regarded as a disease. 
Mr. Gould also thought it was contagious, and was the re- 
sult of fungus matter in the atmosphere, and there was no 
remedy tound for it yet. He had examined the trees affected 
with it with a powerful microscope, but could not detect the 
cause. Stated that his Transcendents were the first to blight. 
Dr. Humphreys asked what should be done with a tree in 
a garden of a hundred others, that had blighted for two or 
three years ? 
Answered by Col. Stevens—* Dig it up.” 
Dr. Humphreys then asked if wood ashes had been used, 
and further stated that all diseases were self-propagating, and 
that if the cause of the blight is parasites, a preventive ought 
