partly decayed, or broken, or full of tangled and cross limbs, I would be a little 

 severe with it at first, but not otherwise. 



This is the season when a shrewd old digger should go over his peach and 

 plum-trees, scrape away the earth about the bottom of the trunks, and look for 

 that little rascal, the peach worm. If he is there, expecting that "there is a 

 good time coming," now that he is in such comfortable winter quarters, you will 

 know it by the gum, by which the tree always shows to its natural protector the 

 presence of its enemy. Wherever you see this gum, take your knife, open tlie 

 bark, and take out the vile grub. If he stays there a few months longer, he will 

 completely circumnavigate the trunk ; and, after he has been round the world in 

 this manner, there are no more peaches for you. It is a matter of five minutes to 

 a tree ; and, if you grudge that pains, for rareripes, the grub will take five 

 months at it, and get the better of you. 



If you are planting fruit trees, don't be so foolish as to set " tender trees," such 

 as apricots, nectarines, and so forth, in warm, sunny places, on the south side of 

 walls, fences, and gardens. Such are, depend on it, the very spots to kill them — 

 between the extra heat of mid-summer, and the constant freezing and thawings of 

 the trunks in winter. You had better choose a west, or, if not too far northward, 

 even a due northern exposure. The latter is much the best in the Middle States. 



!Never plant a tree with small roots and large top — when the roots have been 

 made small by the spade in digging — without- making the latter small also. There 

 must be some ballast in the hold to carry so much sail on the mast, as an old salt 

 would say ; and you will gain in the health and size of the tree, three years hence, 

 by shortening back the ends of the longest limbs till you have struck a fair balance 

 between the part that collects food and the part that consumes it. 



Yours, An old Digger. 



SCIENCE AND HORTICULTURE. 



PEAR BLIGHT. 

 BY R. R. SCOTT, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



An article in the last Horticulturist, by " Terra," somewhat timidly suggests 

 the probability of the disease known as '^^ Leaf blight and cracking of the Pear,'''' 

 being caused by a fungus somewhat similar to the vine mildew, or O'idium. The 

 writer need not be the least timid, even though his idea should conflict with the 

 theories of our ablest American pomologists, which I admit it does. Not one of 

 them can offer anything m.ore plausible or as much so, as this, for which there is 

 the highest European authority, that of "M. J. B." of the London Gardeners'' 

 Chronicle, also the most eminent Continental cryptogamic botanists. "With sncli 

 opinions on his side, he can readily dispense with the confirmations of merely 

 practical fruit growers, whose opportunities and pursuits shut them out from the 

 difficult and obscure field of microscopic botany. Let no sneers deter the earnest 

 and hutnljle inquirer from his purpose. The intelligence and powers of reasoning 

 with which man has been endowed, urge him to persevere until the hidden and 

 marvellous phenomena of nature hitherto unapproached by the naturalist shall be 

 clearly defined. Man's manifest destiny and jjrogressive spirit demand that he 

 shall declare the truths of science in the face of all human ignorance and opposi- 

 tion. 



This very reasonable cause has been laughed at by many known writers in th 

 country, but this will not render it any the less true or plausible. 



