BLIGHT. 123 



rooted, they made practically no wood growth, having all they 

 could do to mature the fruit. The owner, seeing the strain 

 put upon them, concluded to relieve them the next year, and 

 pruned heavily during the fall or early winter. The weather 

 subsequently was very mild and open, and having practically 

 rested during summer from severe drouth and their heavy 

 load, and stimulated by the removal of a large part of the 

 tops, the sap began to move freely. Then came a stinging 

 freeze, perhaps just after a heavy rain, freezing the roots as 

 well as tops, completely checking the moving sap for a month 

 or two. That was not a late spring but a late winter freeze, 

 producing a stagnation, so to speak, of the sap. Had that 

 freeze occurred after growth had started well no harm might 

 have occurred, as motion would have been resumed at once, 

 but standing for a month or more the sap, to use a common 

 expression, "soured." 



Now, there, in that sap, was the ideal condition in which 

 the hitherto harmless blight bacteria love to revel, run riot, 

 fondle one another, perhaps, in amorous dalliance, and mul- 

 tiply by billions. The owner was surprised to see how slow 

 the leaves were in putting out, the blossoms, if any, having 

 opened profusely and dropped before a shade of green ap- 

 peared. When the time came for some of the young pears to 

 drop from each cluster, they largely refused to do so, but 

 dried up on the fruit spurs, and turned black. There, before 

 a leaf or shoot had shown a sign, was the blight, and those 

 fruit spurs, the tender, vital points of its first development ; 

 just as the bacilli of consumption, lurking through heredity 

 for years in the system of an apparently healthy man, if 

 favoring conditions of development are given, such as ex- 

 treme overheating, followed by sudden change to wet or cold, 

 will concentrate upon their favorite point, the lungs, and 

 multiply rapidly into millions. The former were the condi- 

 tions for blight, the latter for consumption. Had the trees 

 or man not furnished them, both might have lived, and died 

 from other causes. 



I will now furnish proofs that will show beyond all reason- 

 able doubt proofs which can be verified by observation and 



