﻿Nelson Association, 431 



" Australasian " on remedies for the American Bliglit, and mucli has been 

 said in favour of using stocks of the Majetin apple as a sure prevention of 

 the disease. A Mr. Wade, of Pomona Place, Launceston, Tasmania, in a 

 commvinication on the subject to the same paper, says : — 



" That on his ai-rival in Tasmania he devoted especial attention to the 

 check and prevention of apple blight, and one of his first ideas was to raise 

 stocks from the seeds of those sorts not affected by blight. He chose the seeds 

 of the Siberian Bitter Sweet, and the result was success far beyond his most 

 sanguine expectations, for barely one per cent, of stocks raised from those 

 seeds were in the least affected by blight, while some alongside, raised from 

 promiscuous seeds, were desti'oyed by it ; and that he has continued the system 

 for several years with the same unvarying success." 



Mr. Lightband's operations, above referred to, have been most successful. 

 The juices of the fresh graft after a while permeate the whole of the diseased 

 ti'ee, infusing as it were a new life and fresh vigour into it. The aphides 

 avoid infesting it, the leprous bark exfoliates, and a clean sound bark takes 

 its place ; the tree continuing to bear two kinds of fruit — that of its original 

 stock as well as of the anti-blight graft. These, however, will no doubt in 

 time merge their respective types or qualities, the one with the other. 



"From these circumstances it is not too much to say, there are good groimds 

 for assuming that, in the first place, as a prevention of the disease the selec- 

 tion of an anti-blight stock on which to graft the particular kind of apple 

 desired to be grown, will be the best means of insuring a healthy fruit-bearing 

 tree ; and in the second, as a cure for trees already affected with the blight, 

 the inoculation process of Mr. Lightband is the most rational plan that can be 

 adopted. 



It is not the apple tree alone, however, that such parasites persecute. The 

 pear^ the peach, the apricot, and the nectarine, as well as the smaller fruits, 

 also the grape vine and the hop plant, are all, more or less, infested by a 

 species of one or other of them ; and those who desire to derive both pleasure 

 and profit from their fruit-gardens or hop-grounds, should not fail to seek for 

 and apply proper remedies in good time. 



In conclusion, it may not be out of place to advance a few words on the 

 bearing which the theory of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, 

 has upon the subject now under consideration. It is obvious that without an 

 operating cause — one, doubtless, amongst many, such as the pai-asitical 

 influence of aphides on fruit trees in enforcing, as regards the latter, the 

 necessary process of renewal by stimulating horticulturists to adopt improved 

 methods of cultivation, as well as, instinctively as it were, to select such stocks 

 as will prove the fittest against the destructiveness of these pests — with little 

 exception, many fruit-bearing ti-ees would be left untended, and, as a natural 



