CHAPTER XXII. 



"Blight and Other Tree Diseases. 



IN the pathology of human diseases, scientific research has 

 developed the most wonderful discoveries. Mysteries that 

 were dark and inexplicable are now made as clear as day 

 by the germ theory of disease in the human system, every 

 form of which is due to the incubation and multiplication of 

 billions of those mysterious little germs, microbes, bacilli and 

 bacteria, good, bad and indifferent, that swarm in the air, in our 

 bodies, and in everything on the earth. With this knowledge, 

 science is now devoting all its energies to the discovery of the 

 laws and conditions which regulate and govern these infini- 

 tesimal creatures in their propagation and relation to the 

 various diseases of mankind. But, while the investigators who 

 have turned their attention to man and his bacterial friends 

 and enemies have made wonderful progress, practically noth- 

 ing has been done in the pathology of tree diseases beyond 

 the bare discovery of the bacteria of blight by Professor Bur- 

 rill, many years ago ; while nothing of any practical value at 

 all has been accomplished by those of our scientific tree doc- 

 tors who have turned their attention to crown-gall, root-knot 

 and yellows. But, while the regular practitioners have ac- 

 complished nothing beyond killing a lot of pear orchards with 

 cultural methods and scientific cutting-out of blight, disin- 

 fecting their pruning shears with acids, etc., as they did sev- 

 eral years ago for A. S. Newson, of Galveston county, at an 

 expense to him of $1,500, with a dead orchard as the result 

 in one year, and are now doing the same thing for the Cali- 

 fornia pear orchards, which are being destroyed by blight 

 also, I believe, though nothing more than a sort of horticul- 

 tural quack, that during a careful study of all those tree dis- 

 eases for the last twelve years, I have really accomplished 

 something of value, especially in my study of blight. The 



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