17 
As types of wild pears, Pyrus calleryana from 
I Chang and Pyrus yariolosa (?) show remarkable 
promise, "being of very vigorous growth and 
taking huds of commercial varieties very easily. 
" Pyrus ussuriensis . SPI 21880, tho totally 
immune, has suffered slightly from the dry air 
and hot sirn at Talent. For more northern sec- 
tions, hoT;ever, it may just he the stock. Prof. 
Reimer made 200 inoculations on this pear, at 
§. different datejs, on all possible places, but 
not one tookj 
"As a stock. Japanese sandpear is far 
preferable than the French seedling stock. The 
last often gets badly infested with woolly aphis 
on its roots; the Japanese roots suffer only very 
little from this pest, while these roots also al- 
most never suffer from blight. If nothing else 
was obtaina.ble Japanese stock, selected, would be 
the best to employ, but, — with these new species 
of Pyrus far better material is available. Prof. 
Reimer stated that the value of a totally immune . 
congenial , stock i^ almos t inestimable . The 
value of the pear- industry in Jackson Co., Ore., 
is worth c.a. #10,000,000, and should this in- 
dustry go the way the pear- orchards went in the 
Sacroinento Valley it would mean bankruptcy to 
many a concern. We went through an old orchard 
of Anjou pears where I was shown trees that pro- 
duce often from |100 to |200 worth of fruit a 
year. Something marvellous! 
"I also was shown the damage that the blight 
has done in old orchards, having eaten away all 
the bark of a trunk or of main roots so that the 
people had to resort to inarching with seedlings 
so as to supply the crown iwith some nourishment. 
Prof. Reimer promised me to send you some fotos 
illustrating this phase of the situation. 
"As I have written Mr. Dorsett already, this 
work of Prof. Reimer is simply remarka.ble; it is, 
so to say, a new way of testing a thing. It is 
not the old haphazard way of waiting to see 
whether nature tests a variety or a species as 
regards immunity to blight, but it is the ultra- 
modern way of carrying the virus to a plant by 
human hands and getting records concerning de- 
grees of immunity. I went to Talent as a sceptic 
and after the first day with Prof. Reimer I was 
fully convinced, not by his words but by the 
material he had shown me. 
December 31, 1916. 
