404 Wisconsin state Agricultural society. 
suppression by specifics, either chemical or mechanical, as sure 
to fail of a permanent cure for the blight. 
Analagous theories have prevailed in the medical world con¬ 
cerning the origin of almost every disease human flesh is heir to, 
and exhaustive measures were resorted to to find in this fungoid 
theory a cause for the “ Texas fever ” in cattle, but all these efforts 
were vain. More reasonable and tangible causes are sufficiently 
known and seen, upon which to base a theory for disease in all 
departments of organized life. 
Reproduction by artificial means has solved many of the prob¬ 
lems of life, both in the animal and vegetable kingdom, and will 
doubtless do much for this question of the nature of blight. 
Successful artificial propagation of fungoid spores in healthy 
wood, and under adverse local conditions, would go far to show 
their aggressive power, and the possibility of their becoming a first 
cause of blight. But I have yet to know one such example, and 
have no faith in the theory that cryptogams are endowed with 
any such vital force as to become real antagonists of higher forms 
of organization. Could this theory be sustained, it would subvert 
the best systems of therapeutics in their relation to the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms, and it would install in their place the 
old dogma of specifics. When all the art and science of the 
medical world failed to find a satisfactory cause for the “ cattle 
plague,” the cryptogamists triumphantly referred them to a 
“fungoid origin.” But the commission of eminent government 
surgeons, after the most careful and searching tests, “ failed to find 
any evidence of fungus germs present in the blood and secretions, 
and found the theory of cryptogamic origin untenable.” 
Again, they report having found in some cases the germs of 
fungus, “ but that these germs can develop and multiply without 
dead organic matter as a pabulum is very doubtful.” (Pages 181— 
190 of Groverment Report.) Admitting that cryptogamic life is 
more nearly omnipresent than any other order of creation, yet I 
believe its sphere is mainly limited to the one work of reconstruct¬ 
ing dead matter. 
A strong point against the fungoid theory, is the fact that the 
weakened specimens and half hardy varieties are not the first to 
be affected, but the hard wooded, hardy varieties, such as most of 
