POTATO AND BUTTONWOOD DISEASES. 



10. Have you tried trenching or deep plowing an orchard or nursery, or where pear 

 seeds were sown, a:td with what results? 



11. Have you mulched newly planted as well as estahlished trees, and have these been 

 more exempt from the disease than others in the same orchard not mulched? 



12. In a locality where the disease exists, are pear seedlings always healthy if raised in 

 new land? 



13. Have you steeped pear seeds in any solution previously to sowing, and with what 

 success ? 



14. Have you pared and burned the surface soil intended for the seed bed? 



15. Have you dusted flour of sulphur on infested leaves or shoots, or inserted a por- 

 tion in a hole in the stem, or applied a weak solution of sulphuric acid to the soil around 

 a diseased tree and with what results? 



16. Have you applied any special manure to your trees, which exercised any marked 

 influence, beneficial or otherwise? 



17. Have you observed the character of the weather immediately proceeding the develop- 

 ment of the fungi, and whether in the same or different seasons their growth and increase 

 seemed to be favored with peculiar atmospheric influences? 



18. Have you tried any experiments with a view to cure or prevent the disease, or can 

 you supply any additional information calculated to throw light on the subject, and which 

 is not comprised in these queries? KespectfuUy, J. Townlet. 



Moundville. Marquette co., Wis. 



THE POTATO AND BUTTONWOOD DISEASES. 



Dear Sir — After all the time that has elapsed since the potato disease made its appear- 

 ance, and the many speculations that have appeared, pray inform me if anything is con- 

 sidered as settled on the subject? Is there any well ascertained cause for this malady? 

 That there has been no certain remedy discovered, I am well aware, nor does it appear to 

 me there is likely to be, so long as we remain wholly in the dark as to the origin or cause 

 of the disease. 



The same remarks apply to the disease under which the buttonwood still suffers in all 

 parts of the country; I should say, perhaps, such as are not already killed by it. It is 

 now some ten years since this disease made its appearance. At that time the plane tree, 

 or buttonwood, (sycamore it is often incorrectly called,) was one of our fairest and most 

 majestic forest and shade trees in all parts of the United States. At the present time, 

 hundreds and thousands of the trees — many of them of fifty or sixty years growth — are 

 entirely dead, most of the remainder are either half dead, or in the last stages of decline 

 and debilit)'-, and it is a very rare thing, indeed, to find a healthy and luxuriant specimen 

 anywhere in the Atlantic states. The loss of the plane tree is not such a positive loss to 

 be counted in dollars and cents, as that of the potato crop, still it is worthy of being no- 

 ticed, that one of the hardiest and most luxuriant of all our native forest trees, which has 

 evidently never suffered in this way before, (vide, the fact that sound trees were to be found 

 200 years old, in a sound and healthy state before this malady,) should be a marked tree, 

 to be visited by such a plague, while all the other trees of the forest remain healthy and 

 vigorous. Can nothing be done for the sycamore? Will you, or some of your correspon- 

 throw a little light on the subject. Yours, A Constant Reader. 



York^ June, 1851. 



