88 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tection not only to yourself but to your neighbors who are try- 

 ing to protect their trees from disease. One old diseased tree 

 is capable of producing enough fungus spores to infect all the 

 trees in an orchard provided they are carried to injured places 

 on the trees. At the present time there is much dead wood in 

 the orchards of Maine. There is no other one thing unless it is 

 spraying which is so important in controlling the fungous dis- 

 eases of the apple as the prompt removal and burning of dead 

 and diseased wood. In removing dead branches, care should 

 be taken to cut back to the living wood in order to remove all 

 of the fungus mycelium, because if any remains it will continue 

 to grow and will spread the disease. This care in removing 

 the source of the material for infection should be followed by 

 thorough spraying. Spraying of apple orchards in Maine is 

 not nearly so generally practised as it should be, although it 

 has been demonstrated many times that it pays. 



I have already mentioned a number of the fungi which cause 

 apple rots. It is a fact too well known to all of you that apples 

 sometimes rot on the trees and that when they are placed in 

 ordinary storage there is great loss. It is not so well under- 

 stood, I think, that most of this loss is caused by the attacks of 

 fungi. When we understand that this decay of ripe apples is 

 caused by living growing plants which are able to propagate 

 themselves in such a way that one rotten apple may produce 

 enough spores to infect all the apples in a barrel, we are better 

 able to make plans to prevent this loss. 



During the past year, I have studied the fungi which cause 

 decay of apples in Maine. The work along this line is not com- 

 pleted but enough has been done so that I can say that Maine has 

 a large number of apple rot fungi. In this work we have found 

 practically all of the fungi which cause decay of apples in other 

 parts of the United States or in Europe and some others which 

 have not been reported in either country. One fungus has been 

 found which was described for the first time as a cause of fruit 

 decay in Europe a few years ago. This fungus causes a rapid 

 decay of ripe apples and also causes decay of green fruit upon 

 inoculation. It has not been reported from any other part of 

 this country, but probably occurs. One other fungus has been 

 isolated from decaying apples which belongs to a group of fungi 

 never reported in America and this species is new, never having 



