88 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The profits, if carried on ou a small scale, will not be so great as 

 if carried on ou a large scale, and they are not so great as a few 

 years ago. 



By starting small, giving close attention, and keeping the busi- 

 ness on a pace with the times, the capital will be readily obtained. 

 Only those will succeed in any business who attend to it, and as we 

 learn in the Scripture, "only those who endure to the end shall be 

 saved." 



SOME FUNGOUS DISEASES OF FRUITS. 

 By Prof. F. L. Harvey of the State College. 



The depredators upon fruits and fruit trees are not confined to the 

 insect world. There is a host of minute plants, known by the gen- 

 eral name of fungi, that are parasitic upon higher plants and derive 

 their nourishment from them. The rusts, smuts, bunts, rots, scabs, 

 moulds, mildews, blackknols and blights, so common on our fruits 

 or farm crops, are all parasitic fungi. The parasitic fungi are 

 mostly minute organisms, and have to be studied by the aid of the 

 compound microscope. This is why they are so difficult to observe, 

 and why so little is generally known about them by fruit growers. 

 It is a difficult undertaking to wage war against minute organisms, 

 so small, that the compound microscope is necessary to see them. 

 The study of these parasites must largely be turned over to speci- 

 alists, who have the time and apparatus to investigate them. The 

 study of parasitic fungi is now claiming the attention of many good 

 botanists in this country, and we may hope for a better knowledge of 

 them. The last lew years has added much to our knowledge of 

 these pests and their treatment. A few words about fungi in gen- 

 eral, and their relation to higher plants, may prove interesting and 

 instructive. 



Upon the method of reproduction, botanists divide the vegetable 

 kingdom into two great groups : phanogams and cryptogams. Tbe 

 former reproduce their kind by means of seeds, which are the product 

 of true flowers. These seeds contain a little plant, more or less 

 formed, which under proper conditions of moisture, warmth and 

 oxygen develops directly into a plant like the parent. The plant 

 body is generally large in proportion to the flowers. Though some 



