402 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ventive of blight, the latter especially advocating it as practicable 
and available to secure health and fruitfulness. 
Dr. J. H. Earnest, a veteran pomologist of Cincinnati, after fifty 
years of observation, says he is confirmei in the belief that fire- 
blight is a vegetable mortification , which commences in the sap ves¬ 
sels and under the bark, and if allowed to spread, will contaminate 
adjacent parts ; remedy—pare and cut away affected portions. 
Mr. H. W. Mills, of Canada West, in Gardener's Monthly , 1867, 
p. 138, admitting the presence of fungi as a secondary cause of 
blight, yet attributes its power for evil to a weakened organism , which 
opens the structure of the tree to the attacks of miasmatic spores 
or seeds, and their presence proves “ only that the tree is a suit¬ 
able locality for the perpetuation of the fungus, which wants only 
a slight advantage to perpetuate itself to the destruction of the 
tissues of the tree, and no more dangerous to the life of the tree 
than is the 1 ciscaris vermicularis ’ to the human body, unless some 
weakening cause arise to make their work easy.” 
Dr. Wm. M. Housley, of Kansas, in discussing “ root pruning” 
as a remedy for blight ( Pomologist , Dec., 1871), says: “If fungi 
are the cause of blight, it is hard to account for the following facts* 
They almost universally attack wood of the most vigorous growth, 
made the preceding season ; they are said not to attack trees dur¬ 
ing a very dry summer; are not known in California or Italy; 
they are very destructive upon one piece of ground, and harmless 
upon another contiguous, and both under the same conditions of 
climate and variety.” Now, if fungi be the cause, “it is difficult 
to understand how they attack strong and healthy trees rather than 
feeble and unhealthy ones; and why they do not attack in a very 
dry summer.” As it cannot be presumed that fungi are not pres¬ 
ent in California and Italy, why is the pear not attacked there ? 
It is hard to reconcile the universal presence of fungi with this 
seeming and unaccountable preference. 
Dr. H. further says: “We are therefore forced to the conclu¬ 
sion that the causes of this disease, if ever discovered, will be 
found in something other than the attack of fungi upon trees 
which are sound and healthy. That fungi are found in the disor¬ 
ganized, dead tissues, is not evidence that they are the cause of this 
disorganization, but as they are found only in disorganized tis- 
