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EDITOK'S TAULE. 



Tho best of the joke is, that hundreds of individuals in northern Ohio, and particularly in the 

 noighborliood of Cleveland, have been cajolled to buy of them a new, delicate, and very large 

 Grn]>o — the Excehior — at the moderate sum of from If2 to $5 i>er plant, aiid the foliage of the 

 last season's growth lin^ already disclosed tlie fact that is is no oilier tlian our common Fox 

 Grape. These same purelm^ers would have grudged the jiayment of fifty cents to a regular and 

 responsible nurseryman for the best Grape ■\vliich was ever produced. 



You observe in the article from Germantown, Ohio, that " this fellow undoubtedly believes 

 the fools are not all dead vet." He knows they are not; and furthermore, in common with all 

 classes of shrewd impostors, he is aware ihat mankind are more willing to sustain impostors and 

 quacks in all pursuits in. life, than upright, responsible, and well-qualified proficients in the same 

 calling. 



At the time these traveling horticulturists had just commenced their winter's campaign of 

 imposition, the police was informed of them — of their then locality, their jilans, <tc. — but paid 

 no more attention to the report than a tabby -cat would, while sleeping by the side of the cook- 

 ing stove, to your report that a colony of rats were depredating on the grain in the barn. It is 

 full time their impositions were broken up. Will not Editors throughout the country j)ut their 

 readers on their guard ? M. — Maumee, Ohio. 



Black -K\OT ox Pi.uji Trees. — About ten years ago I purchased from Jlcssrs. Ellw.^ngeu <t 

 B.\nRV, of Mt. Ilope, Rochester, N. Y., a lot of Plum trees of the different leading varieties, yilantcd, 

 cultivated, and drove them right up into bearing, and for the last four years have had full crops 

 of truly noble and luscious specimens of each, and, what is highly gratifying, the trees are entirely 

 free from black gum, or black knot, and are kept so by freeing the branches from all diseased or 

 rotten fruit as soon as it appears. 



Strict and close observation for many years past, and the examination of branches upon which 

 the rium has undergone the process of decomposition in the warm months of August and Septem- 

 ber, has served to settle the question with me beyond a doubt I will here refer the reader to 

 trees in his own grounds, say Wa^-hington, Jful'nKjs Superb, and White Magmim Bontim. Take 

 your knife, go to any of these that may have dried Plums on ; take them off, examine and cut, and 

 in many cases you will find a mortal wound, black, cankered, bark burstcd, swollen, and perfo- 

 rated full of holes. These were made by the same worms and insects that were feeding on the 

 decaying fruit, after which fails they find nearly the same food in the well -saturated and decom. 

 posed bark, immediately under the rotten fruit, which they feed upon for a certain time and then 

 pass away. They were attracted hither for food only, and not to perpetuate their progeny. They 

 are not the real first cause of the disease, as some have it, yet they hasten the complaint by eat- 

 ing holes in the bark through which the deadly and poisonous gasses and juices enter, and so get 

 into the circulation and is carried to the extremity of said branch, and if a scion is cut from such, 

 the young tree will show it even in the nursery row. Tlie worst cases will be found where the 

 Plum rots on the top, or upper side, of a horizontal branch about an inch or so in diameter, yet I 

 have found even spurs and the smallest branches badly affected by the same, and many killed 

 the first summer by the deadly juices of the affected fruit. 



All who grow Plums well know that many varieties bear in clusters, and also know that when 

 a cluster is attacked with the rot, if the diseased Plum is not timely removed the whole cluster 

 will be lost (particularly so in the finest sort^) in a few days. Just so, on the other hand, if the 

 same poisons enter the circulation and get into the body and very heart of a tree, death is certain, 

 though, unlike the fruit, it will take years, instead of days, to accomplish it 



I look upon the above as the true cause of black knot, and as destructive to the Plum as the 

 bite of a mad dog, or as the juices from the flesh of a human being in a state of decomposition, 

 be to ourselves if applied in a similar manner. The subject is worthy of consideration, 

 some able pen take it up? Wm. H. Read. — Port Dalhouaie, C. W. 



