IO8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



the sap in motion, followed on the second of February by a 

 severe freeze. Had the sap been dormant, no harm would 

 have been done. 



But, to return to my orchard, which, instead of blooming 

 as usual about the first of March, remained perfectly dormant 

 until about the first of April. Then in a few days the blos- 

 soms seemed to break all at once ; and later, instead of drop- 

 ping off as usual, most of them hung on to the young pears 

 and turned black, though, knowing nothing of blight, I 

 thought little of it. Heavy rains and still, sultry weather 

 followed in May, when, it seemed almost in a day, the fruit- 

 spurs began to blacken and the tender tips of the shoots to 

 droop, until every one of the fifteen hundred trees showed 

 more or less signs of blight, though on most of them it was 

 light and not a single tree died. The ground had not been 

 disturbed since the preceding summer, and never has had a 

 root cut since. 



As soon as I realized that the dreaded fire-blight had 

 struck my trees, remembering my experience with the nitrate 

 of potash twenty-five years before, and its good effect on 

 vegetable diseases, I applied, in June, a heavy top-dressing 

 of cotton-seed-hull ashes, containing thirty per cent pure 

 potash. Ignorantly accepting the orthodox theory of the 

 efficacy of cutting out, and feeling it my duty to stamp the 

 disease out if possible, I hired seven men in September and 

 went over every tree, cutting out every sign of the disease 

 far below the infected parts, and finishing up the long, tedious 

 job in December, at a cost of over five hundred dollars. 

 Now for results. The next spring all the trees again blighted 

 but not so much as before, due doubtless to the non-dis- 

 turbance of their roots, entire cessation of pruning and the 

 free supply of potash. In the meantime I sold the orchard 

 to a near neighbor, E. J. Biering, exacting from him a 

 written promise never to plow or cultivate it, and, contrary 

 to the malicious report that I took advantage of his igno- 

 rance to unload it upon him, before I would sign the deed I 

 had him go over the whole place, pointing out the blight and 

 warning him that it might ultimately kill the trees. But 



