ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HARDY BLIGHT-RESISTING PEARS. 



99 



The original Chinese trees on my grounds seems as hardy 

 as the best oak but not as adapted to our year round climate 

 as some of my seedlings, which I do not doubt will endure fifty 

 degrees below zero. The old tre'e, in our hottest summers, loses 

 a part of its foliage, but not so with seventeen out of twenty 

 seedlings which I have. They have splendid foliage and are 

 thoroughly adapted to our climatic conditions. 



About three years ago, I sent Rev. John B. Katzner of 

 your society some scions of one of them, and he wrote me in 



Cluster of fruit on Warner pear on Chas. G. Patten's experiment grounds. 



June last that the mercury sank to forty degrees below zero 

 last winter and that he believed my tree would stand forty-five 

 below, and I feel sure that I have hardier trees among them. 

 One, dominant in Seckel characters in tree and fruit, is in first 

 bearing this year, and is very promising in fruit and for future 

 breeding work. 



So much for the extreme hardiness of these trees, and now 

 what I believe to be of more far reaching benefit to our coun- 

 try generally in this breeding problem is their freedom from 

 that most destructive enemy of the pear, "the blight," which 

 sometimes sweeps whole orchards as a fatal epidemic. In 

 1915, when the blight was severe in several places on my 



