200 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It would look as though the nurseryman's standpoint intended for me to 

 write from was that of his personal interest in the matter, or, in brief, to 

 so protect trees as to have the largest share of them die, so as to make a 

 market for more trees. I have concluded not to write from such a stand- 

 point. 



I have been a student of the school of tree protection all my life, and 

 for the last five years a diligent student. In the summer of 1885 I was 

 traveling in Florida and Tennessee. The diseases of the Citrus family of 

 trees was one that particularly engrossed the attention of the orange 

 growers of Florida, and it was at that time and during my investigations 

 there, that I think I learned the cause of and how to prevent one of the 

 worst forms of blight. Returning to Tennessee the last of June, that 

 summer, I found the pear trees nearly all killed or partly killed with 

 blight. A neighbor of mine had a fine Flemish Beauty pear tree the limbs 

 of which were killed nearly to the trunk with blight. He asked me if 

 the tree could be saved. I told him it could. He bought 4 quarts of 

 lime and 2 lbs. of sulphur. I put the lime and sulphur into a keg and 

 poured on to that mixture about 4 gallons of boiling water, adding at the 

 same time about 1 oz. of crude carbolic acid. I then took an old broom 

 and applied that wash while hot to the trunk of the tree and up into the 

 limbs as high as I could reach. I think I spent a half hour washing that 

 tree, and must have washed it five or six times over. Now, for the result: 

 It was about the 15th of July. The growing season was long past. In 

 less than a week a new growth had started from the lower part of the 

 limbs not killed, which new growth went on and matured in fine condi- 

 tion a new top of from 2b to 3 feet. A letter received last spring from the 

 then owner of the tree gave the information that it had borne a good crop 

 of pears every year since. 



Pathologically considered, I make up the case like this: the tree lacked 

 certain elements of plant growth which are largely supplied by lime and 

 sulphur in solution. If these elements, were in the soil, the con- 

 dition of the soil and atmosphere were such that they were not available 

 as plant food. The conditions of the atmosphere were most favorable to 

 the development of blight; the bark of the tree, not being suitably sup- 

 plied with the necessary elements of normal growth, became hard and 

 somewhat contracted so there was not room for the downward flow of sap. 

 This sap thus arrested in its downward flow in very hot weather, soon be- 

 came proper food for disease, which extends through any open tissue, or per- 

 haps through the stomata of the leaves, and death ensued. The liquid being 

 applied hot to the bark caused it to expand; the lime and sulphur being in 

 available form for immediate use as plant food, were appropriated at once, 

 and, added to the reserve force in the tree, began to supply a perfectly 

 healthy sap. Whether or no the lime, sulphur and carbolic killed the 

 disease, I am not certain. It may be that nature fought its own battle, 

 and conquered the disease when put in a condition to do so by the aid of 

 the hot wash. 



In the protection of apple trees from the adverse conditions of our 

 climate, my experience has been long and varied. In 1867 and '68, I pro- 

 tected all my one year old apple trees by covering them up with earth. 

 There was about 1,000 of them. Their growth the second summer was 

 remarkably healthy. In 1874 I began protecting my small orchard trees 



