254 



THE PEAR BLIGHT AT THE WEST. 



the tentli of May, 1S34, we had the sever- 

 est frost I ever knew so late in the season, 

 except the ever memorable summer of 1816. 

 That sprinfr, 1S34, had been warm, and 

 vegetation had put forth early. 1 well re- 

 member that the foliage of the Locust, 

 which comes late into leaf, was half grown. 

 Nothing that frost could kill survived it — 

 not a fruit bud from the Oak, Walnut and 

 Hickory, to the Apple, Pear and Peach, es- 



Of this character were the ravages of the 

 winter of 1835. Death thus produced is 

 not occasioned by deleterious properties im- 

 parled to the sap, but by the mechanical 

 force of the frost upon the cellular and 

 woody tissues. What intensity of freezing 

 is required to destroy vegetable life, depend- 

 ing, as it does, upon the habits of the plant, 

 and those habits being as various as the cli- 

 mates of our earth, it is not easy to say ; but 



caped. In the fall of that year, the rava- one thing is certain, and that is, that in our 

 ges of the squirrels in our cornfields were climate the freezing of the extremities of 

 terrible. They came from the forests by l trees is as common as the return of the sea- 

 thousands and tens of thousands; for not a ] son of frosts. All our trees are frozen, ex- 

 nut had the frost left them ; yet we heard cept their trunks and large branches, every 

 nothing of pear-blight. We had a severe ■ winter, especially the young and tender 

 frost also on the tenth of May, 1845, and a j wood of the past summer's growth ; and if 

 light one on the same morning the present an elaboration of the sap, injurious in its 

 year. To that of 1845, is ascribed the ex- J consequences, were thereby produced, no 

 tensive blight of that year ; but severe as it | vegetable matter would survive a single 

 was, it was a trifle compared with that of | winter. The economy of the vegetable 

 1834. Like causes should have produced j world rests not on so insecure a basis as 

 like effects long ago. I this would indicate. 



Another objection to the frozen-sap the-! Still one thing is evident — blight is a 

 ory is, that this form of blight attacks old ] disease of the circulation. In proof of this, 

 instead of young trees. Trees which have j in the summer of 1845, 1 visited my friend, 

 for many years borne fine crops of pears \ Mr. Pagan, who showed me his pear trees, 

 are cut down, while the saplings in bur; and the ravages of the blight among them. 



nursery escape unhurt. 



His finest trees presented a melancholy spec- 



Again : the freezing of sap does not | tacle of disease, decay, and death. Our 

 change its properties. That the freezing j conversation being directed to the cause of 

 of vegetable matter in a certain state of i the malady, he mentioned that a few days 

 development produces death, may be ad- j previous, he had, by way of e.vperiment, 

 mitted ; and if this occurs when branch and | inoculated a thrifty young pear tree in his 

 leaf are making their first rapid push in the | nursery with the sap of a blighted tree, and 

 spring, the tree may be killed by the sud- 1 proposed that we should go and examine it, 

 den destruction of its leaves, for they are I which we did. He had made an incision 

 taken away when most in requisition for about three feet from the ground, lifted the 



the elaboration of the sap. By this means, 

 much oak, beech and other large timber, 

 was killed by the frost of 1834. It mav 

 also be admitted that the freezing in winter 

 may be so severe as to destroy the vital 



bark as in the process of budding, and in- 

 jected a small quantity of the diseased sap. 

 We found the leaves of the patient chang- 

 ing color, and emitting that peculiar odor 

 which indicates the incipient state of decay. 



principle as well in vegetable as animal life. ' which is always present in cases of blight. 



