THE TREE DOCTOR 



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Photo 83 

 Healthy Bodies Uncongenial to Germs of Disease. 



with the frost-bitten top, in the right of the photo. To sum the 

 matter up, freeze or otherwise kill the foliage, and your "feed- 

 ing" roots die. Or kill the "feeders" and your top must perish; 

 there is nothing to keep it alive, they "blight" sure as fate. 

 Can't you almost hear the buglers of the armies of those 

 "blight" germs that float in the air, tooting merrily: "Away! 

 away ! for here's decay ! Potato tops are dead as hay." Rea- 

 sonings on the problem have not been sound. They have been 

 just as correct as the fellow who found the carcass of a horse in 

 the ditch, in summer, and declared: "The flies killed that 

 animal ; the proof is that the body is full of maggots !" The 

 facts were that something killed the horse, and because he was 

 dead, therefore it was the appropriate feeding place for the mag- 

 gots. If you have a case of "potato blight," ascertain if the soil 

 is too wet, and the roots have drowned. If so, underdrain the 



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