BLIGHT AND OTHER TREE DISEASES. 



one in which the first outbreak of the disease in South Texas 

 occurred fourteen years ago. Up to that time there had never 

 been a case of pear blight within one hundred and fifty miles 

 of it, distant about five miles from the Gulf of Mexico. 

 The orchard was ten years old, and in the spring of 1893 the 

 fifteen hundred trees bloomed like a snow-bank and set an 

 enormous crop. I knew that the pears should be thinned, but 

 the trees being so large, and having matured heavy crops of 

 fine fruit before without thinning, I concluded to let them 

 alone. The ground had been in mowed sod for two years ; 

 but, knowing the trees had hard work before them, and ig- 

 norantly thinking to help them, the whole orchard was lightly 

 plowed in March and kept absolutely clean until July. The 

 spring and summer were very dry, which, with the enormous 

 crops many trees having over twenty bushels checked all 

 growth and sent them to rest as completely as midwinter. 

 Now here was the first condition precedent to blight the next 

 year, viz : suspended growth during the natural growing sea- 

 son. The weather continued quite dry until November, when 

 good rains fell, and, being in the nursery business, mainly 

 growing pear trees from the cuttings, I set twenty men to 

 work, making the cuttings from the early spring growth and 

 much two-year wood. By January, we had in over one million 

 cuttings; and, the winter having been mild and wet, stimulated 

 by it and the heavy pruning, stray blossoms began to show 

 here and there, and shoots to push from the cut ends of the 

 limbs, the sap being in rapid motion. 



Well, on the night of January 17 the mercury fell to 

 eighteen degrees, freezing the limbs solid and completely 

 checking all growth. Here was the second unfailing condition 

 precedent to a coming attack of blight. I did not know all 

 this then, nor suspect anything, but three years ago, under 

 similar conditions here where blight was never known, I pre- 

 dicted to many persons, in March, that Lampasas would have 

 a blight epidemic ; and I proved a true prophet, for it came and 

 killed many trees and is still with us. We had passed through 

 a year with only twelve inches rainfall ; the trees had rested, 

 as mine had, in summer, and a heavy warm winter rain set 



