1876.] REPORT OF SECRETARY. 153 



passing year we are taught, more and more forcibly, liovv slight is the 

 amount of our positive information. It is but a twelve-month since I 

 confidently asked if any one had ever known the Seckel to be affected by 

 the Blight. Individual experience has already enabled me to answer my 

 own question in the affirmative. If then there is no variety which can 

 be regarded as proof against disease, the main argument in favor of 

 restricting ourselves to the kinds heretofore cultivated loses its whole 

 force. For, in that event there is every inducement to experiment, by 

 cross-fertilization or seedling, until all hope is destroyed; or something is 

 obtained, whose healthy and hardy nature shall prove perfectly satisfac- 

 tory. If the Seckel, and its like, prove untrustworthy, gone is the theory 

 of Col. Wilder, in favor of depending hereafter upon native varieties. 

 Nature supplies no analogy to warrant a belief in the continued immunity 

 of a species, simply because of its nativity. During the present epideniic 

 in Savannah the black race has not maintained its usual average exemp- 

 tion. Are we not absolutely compelled lo fall back upon natural selection, 

 and confessing our own helplessness, to found all our future hopes upon 

 the survival of the fittest ? Over and beyond that are the experiments 

 of Mr. Scott, to show what one man has accomplished, and to indicate a 

 path in which others may profitably follow. 



The ravages of the Blight during the past season have been general 

 and excessive. As already stated, the Seckel, hitherto considered invul- 

 nerable, has succumbed, partially at least, to the attacks of this inexpli- 

 cable disease. The Louise Bonne de .Jersey, one of the hardiest varieties 

 under cultivation, has failed of its usual immunity. Kinds less frequently 

 met with, because of more recent introduction, (the Beurre Superfin for 

 example), have been, in too many instances, literally destroyed. For 

 that is destruction which leaves but an unsightly limb or fruitless stump, 

 after long and weary years of patient culture and hope. In the extension 

 or communication of this disease to the Apple, strange as it will seem, 

 may lie our only prospect of discovering a remedy. When the Orchards 

 of the State are in vital danger, the men who have stoutly upheld the 

 supremacy of cider, refusing to mortify the flesh of Massachusetts, may 

 contrive to overcome the inertia of the General Court. Commissions 

 were created, and the medical faculty seriously exercised in an effort, 

 fortunately successful, to stamp out of existence the plague of Pleuro- 

 pneumonia The loss of the Fruit trees alone, m the Commonwealth, 

 would not be an insignificant item in the aggregate of its resources. But 

 that loss would be infinitesimal when compared witn and weighed against 

 the inappreciable value of the Fruit itself to the enjoyment and actual 

 health of the people. The optimist will say that there is no danger ; 



