BLIGHT. 133 



not a single tree escaping, though on many the evidence was 

 light, and confined to the fruit spurs alone. In spite of it all, 

 however, they bore a moderate crop, and not a tree died. 

 This was due entirely to the fact that the natural water level 

 here is only from four to five feet below the surface, and 

 consequently the sap kept in motion more during the pre- 

 ceding drouthy summer than if the water had been twenty 

 or more feet below. 



This explains clearly why blight has never prevailed be- 

 fore here, as it has not in California, where irrigation does 

 the same for their trees in summer. Four hundred six-year- 

 old Garber pear trees alongside of this orchard showed no 

 signs of the disease, nor did another Le Conte orchard of 

 one thousand trees, six years old, which I owned, about six 

 hundred yards distant, having been neither pruned nor 

 plowed. Moreover, two trees the same age, and set when my 

 oldest were, which I gave to a neighbor who helped me plant, 

 both having borne heavy crops, but neither pruned or plowed, 

 also escaped entirely. The six sprayed trees blighted quite 

 as badly as any, and the Kieffer pears showed equal signs of 

 rot. Now, then, on the external theory, why did those six 

 trees blight, though completely covered with the most effec- 

 tive known germicide the whole season, and, as the bacteria 

 could not have come from the gulf, how did it happen that in 

 their journey from the blighting districts to the north of us, 

 they passed over a great number of pear trees fourteen miles 

 above me at Alvin and other points, without attacking a single 

 tree ? There is but one intelligent explanation. No other 

 trees bore as heavily as mine the year before, nor did any 

 other man commence to prune as early as I did, or do it as 

 severely. The preceding drouth and heavy crop, with early 

 and severe pruning, aided by the freeze of January 17, pro- 

 duced the conditions in my trees favorable to a greatly in- 

 creased multiplication of the germs already in the trees, and 

 the result was what is known as blight. And in passing, I 

 will say here that thousands of dollars have been wasted in 

 useless going over and cutting out the affected shoots as they 

 appear. I tried it most thoroughly on a few trees, and found 



