May 25, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



247 



believe that Mr. Smith is correct in this reasoning. The re- 

 sults of these experiments seem to show that the so-called 

 "spot disease 'i or blight of the strawberry, caused by the 

 fungus Ramularia Tulasnei, may produce an enfeebled con- 

 dition of the plant from which it does not rally for at least sev- 

 eral generations. It is well known that the Wilson Strawberry 

 is very subject to this disease, but that plantations do not often 

 suffer much from it until the year after planting. 



In the spring of 1S89 Mr. Smith kindly sent me fifty plants 

 of what he thought his most vigorous Wilson strain. These 

 were divided into two lots of twenty-five plants each, and 



favorably located, hence I can ascribe no other cause for the 

 failure of this bed than the disease from which it has suffered. 

 In order to test the validity of Mr. Smith's theory, as noted 

 above, I have been careful to plant each spring a new bed of 

 young plants taken from the bed set the previous spring, and 

 vv'hich consequently has not borne a crop. With these I have 

 been comparing otlier beds formed of young plants from the 

 diseased bed mentioned above, and also from other beds that, 

 while not especially diseased, had borne at least one crop of 

 fruit. I have endeavored to secure a comparative record of 

 yields from these plantings, but as the e.xact number of healthy 



Fig. 48. — Begonia Gloire de Lorraine. — See page 244. 



planted in two small beds about four rods apart. Both beds 

 did well during the first summer, and yielded a good crop of 

 fruit in 1890. But after the fruiting season, one of these beds 

 was badly affected with blight, while the other, from some 

 unknown cause, was nearly or quite exempf from it, and the 

 same was true inthesummer of 1891, the same bed being free 

 from blight both seasons. The result is that but forty-four 

 plants in the diseased bed have survived the past winter, while 

 234 plants have survived in the other bed. If there is any 

 difference in the environment of tlie two beds, the one that has 

 suffered so badly from blight would seem to be the more 



plants in the different beds was not noted at the time the 

 fruit was gathered, the figures based on crop alone might be 

 very misleading. It will be more just to compare the vigor 

 of the different plantings by noting the number of surviving 

 plants at the present time. I may add, however, that the 

 differences in yield, so far as ascertained, are quite as con- 

 spicuous as are those of plant production. 



Last spring a bed of sixty-five young plants was made, the 

 plants being taken from a bed set the previous spring, and 

 which had been set in the spring of 1890 from the healthy bed 

 grown from Mr. Smith's plants set in 1889. In other words, the 



