CARE AND NEGLECT. 225 



Mr. Ives. There is one consolation in regard to the canker- 

 worm : we may live to see the time when we shall not see one. 

 Twenty-five years ago, the rose-bug was so prevalent that it 

 used to enter the grape-houses. I have not seen one for years. 

 There is the army worm, which made such terrible havoc — 

 we do not see many of them now. I have heard but little 

 complaint of late years of the onion-worm. But the thing that 

 is the most fearful is the attack of something that you do not 

 know. Take the plum-tree. I had some forty odd varieties. 

 I wanted to kill the curculio. I bought six hogsheads of salt 

 and put it on one acre of land in the month of March, and I 

 had the greatest crop of plums that year that was ever seen in 

 this part of the country. But these excresences that come 

 upon the plum-tree, we cannot find out what they are. When 

 this excresence first comes, it is about the consistency of cheese. 

 I have dissected it a number of times, and I could never find an 

 insect in it until it got to be wood. All I can say is, it is the 

 want of something in the soil that produces that, but what it is 

 I cannot tell. It is involved in mystery to this moment. 

 Nobody can explain the cause of these excresences. I took a 

 great deal of pains to ascertain whether they are natural to the 

 plum. I found them on the Plum Island plum, which satisfied 

 me that they belong to the original plum. I think this thing 

 was not known some years ago in New York ; and, indeed, 

 twenty-five years ago, the curculio was hardly known. 



Mr. Harrington. I was called into a gentleman's orchard 

 this fall, and was astonished to see his trees loaded with the 

 Williams, the Gravenstein, the Porter, the Baldwin, the Minister, 

 the Russet, the Rhode Island Greening, the Spitzenberg ; while 

 his neighbor, to whom he had leased two acres of the same 

 piece of ground, had no apples on his trees at all. The gentle- 

 man of whom I speak was offered sixty dollars for the fruit on 

 one of his Minister trees, and refused to take it. I asked him 

 how it happened that there was such a difference between his 

 trees and those of his neighbor, on the adjoining land, with 

 only a stake put down between them, on the same soil. He 

 said : " I have taken care of these trees, and he has taken no 

 care of those. For twelve years I have persevered and taken 

 care of my trees, and now I am amply rewarded for my twelve 

 years' patience." He took from three acres and a half about 



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