STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 47 



through, and in a wet season thej^ will rot. Another point; it is 

 often the case that plums that are punctured by the curculio will 

 hang on and grow almost up to ripening and those will rot. If the 

 plum is punctured so late that the larva of the curculio fails to eat 

 through the stone and the pith, it will hang. And aside from that if 

 the season is hot and wet I think the Lombard plums are apt to rot. 

 The best thing I know is to go over the trees occasionally and pick 

 off all the decaying plums, for where one commences to rot it will 

 cause others to rot. 



Mr. D. P. True. I would like to inquire of Mr. Augur if his trees 

 that trouble him with the black knot were near other trees that had 

 been somewhat neglected and suffering badly before you discovered 

 it. I was away from home one summer and the black knot made its 

 appearance slightly and when I got home I discovered a windrow, as 

 you might say, right through my plum orchard where it had seemed 

 to be blown by the wind, and I went right at my trees ; some of 

 them I cut severely ; the original tree I had to cut down and burn ; 

 the others were not so bad. I thought it passed in the air. 



Mr. Augur. I think it does. It has been correctly stated here 

 that this disease is of a fungoid character and it is carried by spores, 

 and carried considerable distances. We have about an eighth of an 

 acre enclosed with a high fence and we have about twenty different 

 varieties iu that orchard ; but we had no older trees in the orchard 

 that were affected. I think the two varieties that we have suffered 

 the most from have been the Lombard and the Shropshire Damson. 

 When the excrescence first starts it looks like a fresh growth and it 

 comes out all over the trees almost simultaneously. I found that 

 among the Hudson river plum trees it had been an epidemic and had 

 damaged them to the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. I 

 think it is bad policy to allow old affected trees to stand where j'ou 

 are setting out young trees. Sometimes this pest will come like the 

 scarlet fever or the measles and you hardly know where to trace its 

 beginning. 



Mr. Nelson. A gentleman wishes me to inquire, in view of the 

 trouble from curculios and the black knot, what four or five varieties 

 you would recommend as likely to be most successful. 



Mr. Augur. Among the European varieties I think my impres- 

 sions agree very nearly with those of Mr. Dunbar. The Niagara is 

 highly esteemed in western New York and I should mark that as one. 

 The German Prune is another which our people esteem very highly. 



