452 The Blight o?i the Pear Tree ; 



In priming before the sap begins to rise freely, no sap 

 should follow the knife in a healthy tree. But in trees 

 which have been affected with blight, a sticky, viscid sap 

 exudes from the wound. 



4. Trees which ripen their wood and leaves early, are 

 seldom affected. This ought to elicit careful observation ; 

 for, if found true, it will be an important element in deter- 

 mining the value of varieties of the pear in the middle and 

 western States, where the late and warm autumns render or- 

 chards more liable to winter blight than N. England orchards. 

 An Orange Bergamot, grafted upon an apple stock, had 

 about run out ; it made a small and feeble growth, and cast 

 its leaves in the summer of 1843, long before frost. It 

 escaped the blight entirely ; while young trees, and of the 

 same kind, (I believe,) standing about it, and growing vig- 

 orously till the freeze, perished the next season. I have 

 before me a list of more than fifty varieties, growing in the 

 orchard of Aaron Alldredge, of this place, and their history 

 since 1836 ; and so far as it can be ascertained, late-grow- 

 ing varieties are the ones, in every case, subject to blight ; 

 and of those which have always escaped, the most part 

 are known to ripen leaf and wood early. 



5. Wherever artificial causes have either 'produced or 

 prevented a growth so late as to be overtaken by a freeze, 

 blight has, respectively, been felt or avoided. Out of 200 

 pear trees, only four escaped, in 1832, in the orcliard of Mr. 

 Reagan. These foiu* had, the previous spring, been trans- 

 planted., and had made little or no growth during summer 

 or fall. If, however, they had recovered themselves, dur- 

 ing the summer, so as to grow in the autunni, transplaut- 

 ing would have had just the other effect ; as was the case 

 in a row of pear trees, transplanted by Mr. Alldredge in 

 1843. They stood still through the summer and made 

 growth in the fall, — were -frozen, — and in 1844 manifested 

 severe blight. Mr. Alldredge's orchard affords another in- 

 structive fact. Having a row of the St. Michael pear (of 

 which any cultivator might have been proud.) standing 

 close by his stable, he was accustomed, in the summer of 

 1843, to throw out, now and then, manure about them, to 

 force their growth. Under this stimulus they were making 

 excessive growth when winter-struck. Of all his orchard, 

 they suffered, the ensuing summer, the most severely. Of 

 twenty-two trees, twelve were aflected by the blight, and 



