106 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



harmless? That this is true, I can demonstrate by the follow- 

 ing facts, to which Mr. E. W. Kirkpatrick was an eye witness: 

 About ten years ago, while on a visit to me, at Galveston, I 

 took him to Alvin to see the orchards, and at one place the 

 owner pointed out what was a great puzzle to him. Adjoining 

 his pear orchard was about one acre in oats, then heading, 

 and, the season having been very wet and the land flat, the 

 whole of it was entirely covered with rust, except the turn 

 rows, or headlands, at opposite sides, both of which had also 

 been sowed in oats, the ground having been burned over and 

 the seed harrowed-in on the unbroken, virgin sod. The puzzle 

 which the owner wanted solved was, why was the grain on 

 the two headlands just as high as on the plowed ground and 

 perfectly green, not a spot of rust upon it? He assured us 

 that he had prepared his land most carefully. Having just 

 then solved the mystery of blight in my Hitchcock pear or- 

 chard on the theory of the internal existence of the germs in 

 the trees, and located definitely the causes and conditions un- 

 der which they had been able to develop, I saw instantly the 

 cause of the remarkable phenomenon before us. It was sim- 

 ply a case of favoring conditions. The continued rains had 

 kept the roots of the oats on the soft plowed land so saturated 

 as either to drown out the fine hair-like feeding ones or else 

 gorge them with excessive moisture ; thus paralyzing their 

 normal action and furnishing just the condition of sap most 

 favorable for the development of rust bacteria. The firm, un- 

 broken headlands could not be thus saturated, and the germs 

 remained dormant, under the law of unfavorable conditions. 

 I pointed this out to the owner and friend Kirkpatrick, both 

 of whom saw the truth of it at once. I asked the owner if he 

 had rolled the ground after planting, and he said that he had 

 not. There is not the slightest doubt that millions of dollars 

 are annually lost by rusts, mildews and other bacterial dis- 

 eases, due entirety to loose, unfirmed seedbeds. All grain 

 should be gone over as often as possible with heavy iron or 

 stone rollers, and once as late as practicable in spring. 



But, returning now to pear, apple and walnut blight, I will 

 give a short history of my pear orchard near Galveston the 



