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Show The Pear Orchard. Among many of our western farmers farm-ers growing pears is considered In tb light of speculation. Pear blight is the deadly enemy that has Bet at naught the efforts of our orchardlsts, especially when they try to grow most of the old standard varieties. Recently, Re-cently, that is, within a few years, new varieties have been brought forward for-ward that are more or less blight-proof. blight-proof. Some of these are inferior in quality, but may prove to be a valuable valua-ble foundation for hybridizing with the other varieties. Thus a pear of good quality that can resist the blight may yet be produced. If a man wants to grow pears, about the only thing he can do is to keep on trying. His soil should be heavy, quite rich, and the trees should have a, good start When he comes to the question of cultivation ho will receive a good many different hinds of advice. Here and thero are men that declare that trees will not blight if kept in sod. They think this because they have not traveled fur enough to And the orchards that have blighted to death on sol land. But what Is true of sod land is also true of cultivated land, so far as the blight Is concerned. Evidence points to tho fact that cultivation and non-cultivation non-cultivation have little effect on the blight The cultivation of pear orchards orch-ards is followed by somo of the most successful growers of pears in the East. Other things being the same, tho orchard that is cultivated has the best chance to resist the attacks of blight, Just as a well-fed person has tho best chance of escaping disease. Tho poorly fed tree, and the tree that has Us nourishment stolen away from it by the roots of grasses, has not the thrift to resist attack. As to varieties, the man that attempts at-tempts to grow new and untried ones in large quantities is very certain to make a failure, becau'so among a certain cer-tain number of new varieties only an occasional one proves to be as good as the standard varieties. It has been found that hardiness and high quality of pears do not go together. This is true also of other fruits. It is a fact that the pears of medium and poor quality are more often successfully suc-cessfully raised than are those of high quality. Thus Kelffer is not a very excellent pear, but it Is more successfully success-fully raised than any' other. |