HORTICULTURAL SUGGESTIONS AND MEMORANDA. 



113 



the appearance of disease, until at last they 

 turn perfectly dead and black, and fall out, 

 leaving the rest of the leaf torn and jag- 

 ged, but still apparently in tolerable health; 

 though the whole foliage of the tree is not 

 of so deep and pure a green as when no 

 disease is present. The trees diseased last 

 year are still more so. this year, which 

 leads me to fear for the results more than 

 ever. 



I have on my grounds, say some eight or 

 ten hundred pear trees, old and young, and 

 I cannot find a single tree not affected 

 more or less, whether old or young. Those 

 just beginning to fruit, appear the worst ; 

 Avhile the seedlings of last season, — scions 

 brought hundreds of miles, and even the 

 sprouts that formed their buds in the bark, 

 and came out below the scions after these 

 were set,- — all show the disease alike; the 

 last perhaps more plainly than any of the 

 branches from buds formed last fall. 



I have noticed the beginning of the dis- 

 ease on some trees in other orchards this 

 season, but think I am less likely to find it 

 in all cases where the trees stand in a 

 hard Hue grass sod, which has not been 

 touched for years, than in any other place. 

 My own I shall in part put in that position, 

 on trial, next season, since all other reme- 

 dies which I have tried have done no good. 

 For example, I have applied sulphate of 

 iron to top and root, sulphur, iron-rust, 

 scoria?, bones, lime, ashes, dead carcasses, 

 &c. &c, but to no affect. Plaster of Paris 

 I have not been able to obtain. I have 

 also tried both shade and sun, trimming 

 and not trimming, seedling roots and no 

 seedling roots ; and if this is the disease 

 which your correspondents term the blight, 

 I confess I know nothing about it. It is 

 different from that disease which I have 

 understood to be called the blight, whether 

 of insect, sun, or frost ; and until it ap- 



peared, I supposed I had practically tri- 

 umphed over those other forms of blight 

 which evidently affect the sap or bark, or 

 both, and soon kill the tree. 



But with this, all my former theories, 

 remedies, means and appliances are wholly 

 at fault. But from the facts stated above, 

 I must think it a constitutional disease, if 

 not contagious, independent of insects, or 

 heat, or cold, or even of formed buds ; but 

 affecting in the same way buds formed in 

 summer and those brought hundreds of 

 miles, and grafted on the stock; and still, 

 if it continues to progress, it must inevita- 

 bly destroy every tree I have, unless a tree 

 can live without leaves. Cannot some of 

 your wiser men in the east, help us out of 

 this dilemma? 



Bark-binding. — I ought to have said, in 

 connection with my remarks on cherry 

 trees, that I have a box elder [Ash-leaved 

 maple] tree in my yard, six inches through, 

 against which a post was set, to prevent 

 driving the carriage so as to strike it. As 

 the tree grew and the post leaned, they 

 came in contact at the top of the post, for 

 about four inches, so as to impede the flow 

 of the sap downwards, which was not ob- 

 served until the sap above the place of 

 contact stagnated, and either fermented in 

 the sun or froze, or both, and, as a conse- 

 quence, the bark died and came off from 

 the tree above the lesion, for a space four 

 inches wide, and running up the tree the 

 whole length of the trunk — six feet, — exhi- 

 biting in the spring the same appearance 

 as the cherry tree often does when the 

 bark bursts, and as the pear tree does, in 

 case of that disease I have supposed to be 

 sun-blight. This was on the west side of 

 the tree. Now here is one of our hardiest 

 forest trees, taken from the grove not 50 

 rods from where it now stands, ruined by 

 two causes, — stopping the circulation be- 



