FRUITS 227 



exudes drops of a sweet sticky liquid that is simply 

 swarming with the blight germs. Other food being 

 scarce, bees are attracted to this sticky exudation 

 and become smeared with it. When they after- 

 ward visit the first open flowers, they carry the 

 germs, which find a favorable place of growth on the 

 moist stigmas of the pistils. They multiply and 

 find their way down through the soft tissues so 

 rapidly that in the course of one or two days the 

 entire flower looks limp and watery, and it soon 

 blackens and shrivels. From the flower stem the 

 disease quickly makes its way to the soft cambium of 

 the fruit spur, and spreads from this downward to 

 the larcrer limbs on which it is borne. The disease 

 usually continues to spread rapidly as long as the 

 tree is in an active growing condition, and it often 

 happens that the disease, gaining access to a large 

 limb from some small fruit spur, completely girdles 

 it, and thus causes the sudden dying of all that part 

 above the point of infection. If, as sometimes hap- 

 pens, the diseased fruit spur springs directly from the 

 main trunk, the entire top of the tree may suddenly 

 die. When the trees stop growing and begin to 

 harden up the new wood in the great majority of 

 cases, especially on the twigs and small branches, the 

 disease dies and a sharp line of demarcation begins 

 to separate the dead from the living wood. On the 

 trunks and larger limbs, however, there are always 

 certain places where it continues to grow slowly, and 

 it is by means of these " hold over " cases that 

 the disease passes the winter, and starts a fresh out- 

 break the following spring. The " blossom blight " 



