JULY 15, 1916 



607 



change the status of the bee as a beneSoial 

 insect in the orchard, and still maintain that 

 opinion. On the contrary, as suggested 

 above, it seems to me the bees may be so 

 manipulated that they will, to an important 

 extent, reduce blight damage, regardless of 

 any and all modes by which it is transmit- 

 ted, either by themselves or other insects. 

 Your conclusion does not appear to me to 

 have been axiomatically correct at all. The 

 above questions are frankly speculative and 

 interrogatively stated. The paper you criti- 

 cise was frankly speculative, and an " in- 

 terrogation-point followed the heading, * Is 

 the Hive a Center of Infection?'" Much 

 scientific work is first based on a theory 

 which is later tested exactly as I wished to 

 test this question. We have not yet taken 

 the record on this season's work; but there 

 would seem to be little likelihood of secur- 

 ing data, for there was almost no blossom- 

 blight in our orchard. The question seems 

 to me to be subsidiary — one on the side — 

 and, however answered, not likely to injure 

 either the keeper of bees or the orchardist. 

 It seems to me that every bit of light we 

 can obtain on this question is certain to 

 benefit both classes, for certainly the mutual 

 dependence of our fruit-trees and bees 

 upon each other is too well established to 

 be shaken by such a comparatively trivial 

 question as to their method or methods of 

 transmitting a single disease, affecting only 

 a few species of fruits, and which has been 

 with us for scores of years without exter- 

 minating the.se fruits, and under conditions 

 that strongly suggest that said fruits can 

 be partially freed from blight effects by the 

 intelligent use of bees. If I erred in raising 

 the question so early, as to the hive being 

 concerned in the transmission, it was be- 

 cause I, like you, was relying too much on 

 what seemed to be axiomatic reasoning, but 

 I do not understand how anybody could 

 conclude that I supposed I had answered 

 the question, and I do not see how I could 

 wish to ansv/er it finally one way m.ore than 

 another, since my opinion as to the useful- 

 ness of the honeybee would hardly be modi- 

 fied at all by the result. We are doing, and 

 have been doing for three seasons, many of 

 file things you criticise us for not doing, but 

 have not reported them because somebody 

 else reported them first, and the results 

 were, therefore, already in print. The 

 ))aper in question was not intended for wide 

 circulation, and no attempt was made to 

 give a balanced treatment of the entire sub- 

 ject. The fruit-growers simply wanted to 

 know if we were trying to advance some- 

 what the knowledge already possessed about 

 the disease, and if we were making any 



progress beyond what was already known 

 to them. 



In some places in your critique you seem 

 to me to be unfair in the extreme in the 

 impression you give your readers as to the 

 character of the paper read, as in this : 



" These facts should satisfy any preju- 

 diced defender of the bee, to whom Profes- 

 sor Gossard jokingly gives the name ' bee 

 monomaniac' " 



The paragraph in my paper from which 

 you quoted read thus : 



" If any quarantine monomaniac pro- 

 poses to banish bees to restrict the spread 

 of blight, I favor immediately incarcerating 

 him in a cold-storage plant and lowering 

 the temperature until he can dream of noth- 

 ing except fragrant flowers, humming bees, 

 and summer weather. The bee monomaniac 

 who will believe nothing at all adverse to 

 his pets is still nearer sanitj^, in my opinion, 

 than the extremists who supiDose that the 

 Creator and all his creatures and laws can 

 be regulated by legislative enactments." 



i^f^mm^faifM^^-^.?S,iS;^mM.m^m 



Two swarms clustered together on a %-inch limb 

 of a peach-tree, gent tiy Daniel Whitmer, South 

 Uend, In<!, 



