STATE HOBTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 125 



Mr, Whipple. Do you consider blight something that certain 

 localities are especially subject to, or is it something that will finalh'' 

 pass away. 



Mr. Gaylord. I think it is something that rises on every man's 

 farm, and comes from the specially favorable conditions to be found. 



Mr. Whipple. We have a little different history. The first 

 appearance here of blight was where the city of Minneapolis now 

 stands, and it has traveled west. Out where I am, fourteen miles 

 from here, I used to have it in my orchard, but it has disappeared. 

 Some trees have been nearly killed. Other orchards close by were 

 not affected by the blight the same year. It seems to me that blight 

 has been in the country about fifteen years. But I believe it is 

 something in the air that will pass away after awhile. In my 

 orchard there was no sign of blight this last year. 



Mr. Gaylord. Another thing that affords a favorable condition 

 for blight is the rapid growth of our trees. A tree will grow five or 

 six inches in a week's tinie; the twigs are then very tender and that 

 accounts for this dry, miasmatic substance striking the leaves and 

 holding to them, and its being most destructive to the new growth. 



Mr. Whipple. If that theory is correct, I would like to know 

 why, when we were troubled with it here, it wasn't known some 

 fifteen or twenty miles west of here. It is on trees further west, 

 twenty or twenty-five miles west from here. If it is in the atmos- 

 phere and certain conditions bring it on, whj' does it not trouble us 

 one year as well as another? 



A Member. Another thing about blight, if you commence cutting 

 off the blighted part, you will kill the tree, I don't care if the tree 

 is a fooi through. , 



Another Member, I let them stand the first season, and cut off 

 the blighted part the next year. 



Mr. Tuttle, I have never found any man that fully understood 

 the cause of blight. I have talked with Prof. Berry and others, and 

 they all agree that it is something that comes and goes. We don't 

 know why, and we don't know when it will disappear. Mr. Down- 

 ing feaid it appeared in his vicinity, quite a number of years ago; it 

 left there, and for some thirty years it has not returned. I know in 

 Wisconsin for more than fifteen years we never saw anything of 

 blight. I don't know why we didn't have the same state of atmos- 

 phere then that we have had since. The first appearance of blight 

 was on the Talmon Sweet apples; it w?s not confined to them, but 



