28 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



My thoug-hts shall be along the line of this type of fruit. 

 I shall not touch on the Orientals, they are in a class by them- 

 selves. I have no quarrel with the man who grows the Kielfer ; 

 if it suits him, and he is satisfied, why should not I be also? 

 I have never grown the Kieffer, except in an experimental 

 way, and know very little about its requirements. 



Now it would seem that we must look farther than lack 

 of demand in the solution of this question. 



In my judgment the two great underlying causes that 

 have checked pear orcharding in eastern Xew York, and I 

 judge your conditions are nearly identical with ours, is blight 

 and pear psylla. 



Many an orchardist's hopes have been wrecked by the 

 blight. I recall a few years ago, in a discussion of this ques- 

 tion, a gentleman said to me, after relating his woes of the 

 destruction of a thrifty young Bartlett pear orchard with the 

 blight: "I will never plant another pear orchard." There was 

 a man thoroughly discouraged, and a good fruit grower at 

 that. 



Mr. George T. Powell wrote me some two or three years 

 ago that he had torn out about two thousand pear trees, as 

 they were practically past their usefulness, owing to the rav- 

 ages of the Psylla. 



So it would seem as though these two problems act in 

 many instances as a deterrent to the extension of the planting" 

 of this noble fruit. 



Now the question arises, can we control these troubles? 

 While I would not in any way minimize the gravity of them, 

 still I am free to say that I believe we have it in our power 

 to practically control them. This opinion is formed from 

 many years' experience in combatting them. 



We will look at the blight question first, which to my 

 mind is the far greater one of the two. 



Science has exploded the old theories as to the cause of 

 this trouble and we now know the disease to be a bacterial 

 one. There is an old adage that an ounce of prevention is 

 worth a pound of cure, and this is very applicable in the mat- 

 ter of blight with the pear. Not that we can entirely prevent 

 attacks of this malady, as it is almost impossible to destroy 



