THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
79 
spot on the south side of Midway Plaisance, near the 
Illinois Central tracks. The fact that the exhibit of a 
French nurseryman is on the outer edge and the only 
one seen as one passes along the promenade, together 
with the fact that the entire plot is about large enough 
for one man’s exhibit, leads the general observer to be¬ 
lieve that the French tree-grower is the only exhibitor. 
But if one enters the plot other displays are revealed. 
WESTERN NEW YORK ORCHARDS. 
M. B. Waite of the division of vegetable pathology 
of the U. S. Department of Agriculture has so far pro¬ 
ceeded with his investigations as to the causes of the 
non-fruitfulness of Western New York orchards as to 
warrant the chief of the division, B. F. Galloway, in 
predicting that the ultimate result of the inquiry will be 
the restoration of the fruitfulness of those orchards pro¬ 
viding orchardists and nurserymen heed the suggestions 
of the department. An article by Professor Galloway 
on the subject will appear in the forthcoming report of 
the Secretary of Agriculture : 
Under the head, “Work on Pear Blight, the Polli¬ 
nation of Pear and Apple Blossoms, etc.,’” the report 
will say : “ The investigations on the above subjects, 
which were placed in the hands of Mr. Waite, have 
been for the most part confined to the field. While no 
important discoveries bearing directly upon the pre¬ 
vention of blight have been made, some interesting and 
valuable results have been attained through a study of 
the relation of insects to the disease in question. It 
was pointed out in my last report that insects play a 
very important part in disseminating the blight germs. 
In fact, it seems doubtful now if any other really im¬ 
portant means of distribution exists. This intimate 
connection between insects and the disease suggested a 
series of experiments, which were carried on at Brock- 
port, N. Y. The experiments were designed primarily 
to ascertain if exclusion of insects from pear flowers 
would protect the latter from blight. The question as 
to the necessity of their visits for pollination was a 
secondary one, being considered only as a possible bar¬ 
rier to the adoption of any method of treatment which 
would wholly or in part exclude the insects from the 
blossoms. The work proved, as briefly set forth in my 
last report, that all flowers from which the insects were 
excluded were protected from blight, but, as also men¬ 
tioned, certain varieties of pears failed to set fruit in 
these cases. This discovery, the importance of which 
was not fully realized at the time, led to others which 
seemed to plainly indicate a fact hitherto generally 
overlooked by horticulturists, viz : that certain well- 
known horticultural varieties of pears, such as Bartlett, 
Anjou, Winter Nellis, etc., are incapable of self-fertili¬ 
zation. In other words, in order to secure a good crop 
of fruit on any of the foregoing trees it was necessary 
for their flowers to receive pollen from some other var¬ 
iety. This discovery opened up a wide field and sug¬ 
gested numerous experiments bearing on questions of 
considerable importance to fruit-growers. It is unneces¬ 
sary to go into details of the subject here, it being suf¬ 
ficient to briefly describe some of the more important 
lines of work and the results they brought about. 
“ In the spring of 1890, and thereafter at frequent 
intervals, the division received complaints from the firm 
of Franklin Davis & Co., Baltimore, Md., to the effect 
that a large pear orchard owned by the Old Dominion 
Fruit Company, and situated on'the James river, near 
Scotland, Va., had for a number of years been unfruit¬ 
ful. It was thought by Mr. Davis that the unfruitful¬ 
ness might be due to blight attacking the flowers or to 
diseases affecting the trees. Early in the spring of the 
present year Mr. Waite was authorized to visit the or¬ 
chard and make such observations as might throw light 
on the cause of the trouble. It was found that the or¬ 
chard consisted originally of 20,000 standard Bartlett 
pear trees, about five-sixths of which were still living. 
The orchard was planted seventeen or eighteen years 
ago, and although yielding fairly remunerative crops for 
the first few bearing years, it has been almost a dead 
loss during the past six or seven seasons. Several dis¬ 
eases were found in the orchard, blight being among the 
number. The general failure of the orchard, however, 
could not be satisfactorily accounted for by these causes, 
consequently attention was turned to the pollination of 
the flowers. A large number of the flowers were bagged 
and many others were pollinated by hand. The hand 
pollinations consisted in the application to the pistils of 
pollen from the following sources : (i) From the same 
flowers. (2) From another flower of the same cluster. 
(3) From a different cluster on the same branch. (4) 
From another tree of the same horticultural variety. 
(5) From another tree of a different variety. The flow¬ 
ers in the foregoing experiment had all their stamens 
removed previous to the hand pollinations. The results 
of this work, although carried on with a comparatively 
small number of blossoms, agreed with those obtained 
the previous year at Brockport, N. Y. No fruit what¬ 
ever was formed where Bartlett pollen was applied to 
its own pistils even though it was taken from a separate 
tree. On the other hand, wherever the pollen of an¬ 
other variety was employed a high percentage of fruit 
was obtained. There seems no reason to doubt that 
the unfruitfulness of this large orchard is due largely to 
its isolation and to the fact that it consists, with less 
than a dozen exceptions, of Bartlett trees, which are in¬ 
capable of self-fertilization. In other words, there is 
not sufficient pollen of the right kind in the orchard or 
in the neighborhood to fertilize the immense number of 
Bartlett flowers, and consequently little or no fruit is 
