The Canadian Horticulturist. 



293 



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1th C^nabian ^or^icuP^uriet 4|. 



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Notes and Comments. 



A Visit from Prof. Burrill.— It 

 was with great pleasure that we en- 

 tertained the celebrated niicroscopist, 

 Prof. Burrill, of the Illinois State 

 University, Champaign, 111., for a 

 day at Grimsby just after the close 

 of the meeting of the A.A.A.S. at 

 the halls of the University of To- 

 ronto. He is engaged under the 

 U. S. Government in investigating 

 the cause of the peach yellows, and 

 should he succeed in defining the 

 nature of this mysterious disease, we 

 may next hope for some remedy. 

 We visited several of the peach 

 orchards of Grimsby, in each of 

 which specimens of diseased trees 

 were only too easily found, and he 

 took away samples of the wood, fruit 

 and roots of affected trees for 

 careful microscopic study, promising 

 that if any good should result, he 

 would communicate it for the benefit 

 of Canadian peach growers, through 

 this journal. 



It was a privilege to look through 

 his powerful instrument and see the 

 minute microbes which cause the 

 pear blight, mounted from diseased 

 trees in our own orchard, and to 

 listen to his explanation of their 



mode of operations. He also showed 

 us the microbe of the peach yellows, 

 but says its habits are much the more 

 mysterious, for while the blight 

 microbe has the power to make its 

 way by a kind of corrosion from cell 

 to cell of the pear tree, no way for 

 such progress of the former has as 

 yet been discovered, and, notwith- 

 standing this, it is found in all parts 

 of a diseased tree. 



We asked him if there could be an\' 

 mistake in the statement that the 

 microbe was the cause of the pear- 

 blight. He said there was not ; he 

 had isolated some of them from the 

 tree, and had caused the parasitic 

 organisms to grow and increase in 

 numbers, on a certain prepared 

 gelatine, in a closed glass tube. He 

 had then applied some of these 

 microbes to a perfectly healthy tree, 

 and blight was the result. 



In replv to our inquiry as to best 

 time for cutting off blighted limbs of 

 the pear tree so as to prevent its 

 spreading, he said that the microbe 

 most frequently found entrance 

 through the blossoms, and that the 

 trees should be carefully examined 

 at that time and all blighted blos- 

 soms cut away before the mischief 



