ON THE PEAR 
This germ has close cousinship with the vari- 
ous tribes of bacilli that cause the contagious 
human maladies. And there is a curious resem- 
blance between the assault of the microbes on the 
pear tree and the corresponding assaults of cer- 
tain bacilli, for example the diphtheria bacillus, 
on the human organism. In one case as in the 
other, the bacilli, once they find a lodging place, 
multiply inordinately and give out excretions that 
are virulently poisonous. Located on the flowers 
and fruit of the pear, or finding their way to the 
inner bark or cambium layer of the tree, they 
multiply prodigiously and exert a malignant in- 
fluence that withers blossoms, blights the fruit, 
and causes the leaves to take on a bronzed red 
hue that is often premonitory of the death of the 
tree. 
If they find lodgment in the cambium layer of 
the trunk, they may spread rapidly in every di- 
rection, until they girdle the tree, shutting off its 
supply of sap as effectively as if it had been 
girdled with an axe. 
Wherever lodged, the colonies of bacilli may 
be located by the oozing out of a milky or dirty 
brown sticky liquid when the spring rains come. 
This liquid is attractive to insects, and as the feet 
and bodies of these marauders become covered 
with the germ-laden fluid, the transfer of the 
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