VoL. LX. No. 2671 
NEW YORK, APRIL 6, 1901. 
•1 PER YEAR. 
JIH EXPERIENCE WITH PEAR BLIGHT. 
BENEFITS FROM SULPHUR AND LIME. 
Good Work for the Experimenters. 
A BAD DISEASE.—There is probably no disease of 
fruit trees which has been more studied, or about 
which more has been written, than Pear blight. The 
study of this disease extends back some time before 
the beginning of the last century, and to read all the 
various notions that have been advanced as to its 
cause, and remedies for its prevention, is very inter¬ 
esting. At the present time I believe the theory that 
it is caused by bacteria, which gain entrance to the 
tree through the blossom or the young tender growth, 
is very generally accepted. The bacterium, which is 
supposed to cause Pear blight, was discovered during 
the year 1879 by Prof. J. T. Burrill. It is the purpose 
of this article to give some of the experiences of “the 
man with the hoe.” In the Spring of 1893 we set a 
pear orchard of 650 trees, all dwarfs, of the following 
varieties: Anjou, 250; Angouleme, 150; Louise Bonne, 
60; Bartlett, 25; Winter Nelis, 50; Lawrence, 50; 
Easter, 25; Seckel, 50. Adjoining the pears on the 
east we set 150 quince trees, one-half each of Orange 
and Rea. We bought the best trees we could get, and 
intended to give them the best care possible. None 
v'as lost in planting, and they started to grow in a 
thrifty manner. From the start they were cultivated 
and sprayed thoroughly, and we gave the closest study 
and treatment that was within our means of the va¬ 
rious diseases with which we had to contend. The 
trees grew rapidly and promised to make a fine or¬ 
chard, such as we might be proud of, but during the 
Summer of 1896 blight began to appear on the Orange 
quince trees. From where or how it came I know 
not; neither can I tell why it did not attack the pear 
trees at the same time, but it did not do so that season. 
CLOSE CUTTING TRIED.—As soon as the blight 
was discovered we began cutting it off, a greater part 
of the season going over the trees every other day 
for that purpose. We tried to do the work intelli¬ 
gently by following the directions of Prof. Waite and 
others, who have published articles on the subject. 
At the close of the season of 1896 we did not leave any 
visible sign of blight on the trees. It was confined 
entirely to the Orange quinces in 1896, and we hoped 
to keep it there. But in the Spring of 1897 it began 
to show on some of the nearby pear trees, and spread 
quite rapidly to other parts of the orchard. It seemed 
hard at first to mar the beauty of the trees by so 
much cutting, but we were soon seized with a desper¬ 
ate determination to overcome the enemy, so that cut 
and burn was the order of the day, and never were 
orders more faithfully executed. We continued the 
battle until we went into Winter quarters. 
WASHING WITH SULPHUR.—During the Winter 
of 1898 we gave the subject of Pear blight especial at¬ 
tention, and read everything on the subject we could 
get. One day, while studying the matter, it occurred 
to me that if sulphur will destroy the bacteria which 
cause many of the diseases that human flesh is heir 
to, why may it not destroy the bacteria which cause 
Pear blight, if we could only discover the proper way 
to apply it? This set me to thinking, and I decided 
to test it for myself. In the Spring of 1898, by a little 
scouting in the orchard, I soon discovered a few cases 
of blight that had carried over in the larger limbs 
of the trees, probably having entered by a small spur 
which had been cut the Fall before. In these cases 
the bark was black entirely around the limbs, and if 
nothing was done it would soon cause the death of 
the tree. This was early in April. I made a wash of 
lime and sulphur, using the sulphur freely, and 
washed the places where the bark was black and the 
adjoining limbs thoroughly. I watched this closely, 
and along in May appearances indicated that the dis¬ 
ease was being checked. Soon after this we washed 
the bodies of all the pear trees with this mixture. 
A SULPHUR SPRAY.—Again the fight was on; the 
blight was beginning to show quite rapidly. We were 
desperate, and felt that something must be done. We 
could find no doctor who could offer a satisfactory 
A PAIR OF OHIO BABIES. Fio. 99. 
remedy, so I decided to make a solution of lime and 
sulphur, and use it as a spray upon the trees with a 
Pomona spray pump, which we did. This was about 
the middle of June. I went just ahead of the spray¬ 
ing machine, and cut off all the blight carefully. We 
had currants growing between the pear trees, and we 
found that we could not avoid getting the spray upon 
PEAR TREE AND BABY AFTER THREE YEARS. Fie. 100. 
f 
the fruit, so when we had sprayed one-half of the or¬ 
chard we decided to postpone spraying until the cur¬ 
rants were picked, but I cut all the blight from the 
trees at this time. Nothing more was done to the 
blight until after the currants were picked (about 
July 1), when we commenced where we had left off 
to finish spraying the pear trees. We found at this 
time what struck me as a very strong evidence that 
the first spraying had done some good. On that part 
of the orchard sprayed two weeks before there was 
very little or no new blight, but on the part left un¬ 
sprayed the trees were blighting badly. Here we had 
the last row of the part which had been sprayed 
standing next to the first row of the unsprayed part, 
the one blighting badly and the other showing no 
blight, and this was very marked when we compared 
the two parts of the orchard, which contained just 10 
rows each. At the time we completed the spraying 
I again cut all the blight. During the remainder of 
this season we had very little blight in the orchard. 
EARLIER SPRAYING.—I came to the conclusion 
that we had uot sprayed early enough, so in the 
Spring of 1899 we sprayed just after the blossoms had 
fallen with the sulphur mixture, spraying all the trees 
at the same time. We had no new blight this season 
on the pears, and only a little on the quinces. The 
season of 1900 we sprayed just before the blossoms ai)- 
peared, and we had no new blight this season, so we 
did no further spraying with sulphur. In regard to 
the few trees that I washed first in 1898, on some of 
them the bark became healthy, and they have borne 
fruit each season since that time. At this time we 
find that we have lost 125 pear trees, besides many 
others badly mutilated. The varieties most affected 
were Louise Bonne and Bartlett; the others suffered 
about equally except Seckel, which had very little 
blight. The Orange quince trees were nearly all de¬ 
stroyed, while Rea was not much damaged. 
EXPERIMENTS SUGGESTED.—In conclusion, let 
me say that we do not claim to have proven anything, 
but straws show which way the wind blows. Some 
of the leading fruit growers in New York State who 
use lime and sulphur as a wash for their trees say 
that they have no blight, and William Saunders, who 
had charge of the Experimental Grounds at Wash¬ 
ington, has said that where lime and sulphur was 
used as a wash for the trees for several years no 
blight appeared. His experience, I believe, extended 
over 15 years or more. In correspondence with sev¬ 
eral of the leading experimenters in this State and 
elsewhere I find very much doubt expressed as to the 
efficiency of this remedy, but none of them gives any 
proof by experiment that it may not succeed. This is 
not at all discouraging to me, because it is only a few 
years since we were told that there was no remedy 
for black knot except to cut it off, and now we know 
to a certainty that spraying with the Bordeaux Mix¬ 
ture will prevent it. A speaker from Canada said at 
the meeting of the Western New York Horticultural 
Society that Bordeaux Mixture would prevent Pear 
blight. Our experience would seem to prove that it 
will not, as our orchard has been sprayed with it from 
the start. I wish to say, however, that Prof. M. B. 
Waite, of Washington, D. C., was candid enough to 
admit in a recent letter to me that “Some poisonous 
mixture in the nature of a sulphur-lime mixture 
might be used, possibly with some success, to kill the 
gummy exudation and prevent the dissemination of 
the disease to healthy trees; but we consider it a 
much better method when such cases are actually 
found to cut them out and destroy the germs by burn¬ 
ing.” It seems to me a much more leasonable way 
if we have a remedy that will destroy the disease (I 
must say I believe sulphur will do it), to apply it and 
save the tree rather than to cut away the large 
branches and destroy its usefulness. My idea is to get 
the remedy on the tree in some way before the bac¬ 
teria gain entrance to it. Our scientific friends tell 
us that they can make pure cultures of the bacteria 
which cause Pear blight. I would suggest that some 
of them attempt to settle this question by experiment 
in the laboratory (if they have not already done so) 
and tell us whether the bacteria would be affected by 
the fumes of sulphur or by contact with it in any 
way. If the destroying agency can be discovered I 
am willing to trust to Yankee ingenuity to invent the 
