14 



would only do what they have been told to do there wasn't 

 any question about controlling it. I went around to many 

 orchards and in no ease do I recall an orchard that we went 

 into where we did not discover plenty of it. In many cases 

 1 should not have discovered it, but the inspector with 

 whom I was travelling would point it out to me. 



Perhaps this one instance will give you an idea of how 

 troublesome it is. I went to one 40-acre block of pears. 

 The inspector told me if we could find the fire-blight-man 

 at this orchard he would be an interesting m^n to meet, and 

 he certainly proved so. I found out he had spent his whole 

 season of six months looking after the fire blight in that one 

 40-acre block. In addition to that the field inspectors go 

 through the orchards every few daj^s looking for it and if 

 they find any they mark the tree, call the owner up by tele- 

 phone and tell him where they found it. 



We found this man digging about the roots of a tree. 

 He had a hole perhaps three feet deep about the tree and 

 was treating the roots. I asked him how much time he had 

 ispent on this particular tree and he said he worked on it 

 about two days and a half. Now. it was not a particularly 

 good tree, there are just as good trees in Massachusetts, yet 

 not many of our people who had a pear orchard would think 

 it was worth while to spend two days and a half or even one 

 day on a single tree. 



The last of these "troubles'' which I am going to men- 

 tion is winter injury. I think next to the collar rot, and 

 i'crhaps, the fire blight, that would be the thing which would 

 worry me most. I saw more of it in British Columbia than 

 I did on our own side of the line, but too much of it every- 

 where. Sometimes in the worst sections one would see half, 

 or even three-quarters of the trees that were affected with 

 ^'inter injury. In some cases the trees were very bad and 

 m other cases just showing a little yellow appearance, but 

 always enough to indicate that that tree was damaged. Last 

 year they had an unusually severe winter and most of the 

 injury came from that season. 



