VITALITY AND LONGEVITY IN FRUIT TREES. 



129 



tather a peculiar case of " frozen (?) sap- 

 blight," is it not? 



A third fact, which I mention merely as 

 a fact, though I am not aware that it has 

 any connexion with the main subject of 

 my paper : Some of my pear trees are 

 now bearing fruit, and are ten or twelve 

 years old. I noticed in May that the 

 leaves began to assume a peculiar appear- 

 ance, which has continued to this present 

 time. It is a disease which to appearance, 

 so far as the leaf is concerned, bears a 

 striking resemblance to tubercular consump- 

 tion in the lung of the human subject. At 

 first, small spots, all over the central por- 

 tions of the leaf, appear, a little paler green 

 than the healthy parts ; these spots next 

 assume a yellowish cast, and rise into an 

 apparent tubercle or wart on both sides of 

 the leaf, thickening, and extending, and 

 ulcerating, and running together, until at 

 last whole patches of the middle or extremi- 

 ties of the leaf turn black, and fall out dead 

 as though seared with a hot iron. In other 

 words, they seem to ulcerate and slough 

 off, while still the tree, in other respects, 

 continued to grow and look healthy. 



I find this disease on other trees in this 

 vicinity. I can hardly think it the effect 

 of either insects or heat. What is it ? I 

 cannot tell. Such extensive injury to the 

 respiratory organs must impair the real, if 

 not the apparent health of the tree. 



But I will, for the present, leave these 

 facts, and proceed to apply the principles of 

 vitality and longevity, laid down in the 

 April number, to some of the diseases in 

 trees in the west. If the principles there 

 defended are correct, we should of course 

 naturally suppose that the greater the part 

 of a grafted tree which came from the seed, 

 all other things being equal, the greater 

 the vitality and longevity of the tree. Hence, 

 the best of all ways of grafting would be to 



let the seed expand its vitality for some 

 eight or ten years, and then graft, or bud 

 the scions into the outer twigs and branches 

 of the grown tree. But as this would be 

 laborious: and expensive, and as the cutting 

 off of large branches Avould mutilate the 

 tree so as to endanger a local disease, we 

 must find some practical medium. But I 

 believe it will be found that the entire trunk 

 and root of the tree, at least, should in all 

 cases be made from the seed, and not from 

 the scion ; and if more of it, still so much 

 the better. 



The next best mode would be to put a 

 scion into an entire seedling root ; the next 

 best, into a part of a young seedling root ; 

 and the worst mode of all, would be to 

 graft from the sprouts or roots dug up 

 around an old tree ; for aside from the want 

 of vital force, such trees are very liable to 

 be affected with latent chronic diseases, 

 analogous to consumption and scrofula in 

 the human system, which, in fact, causes 

 them to throw out these sprouts so bounti- 

 fully from the root. That all such trees 

 are worthless here, in the west, has already 

 become notorious. Most of the sprouts upon 

 which our pears in this vicinity were grafted, 

 were taken from an old barren pear tree in 

 Alton, and the scions put in the root below 

 ground ; and I do not know of one in the 

 county, so made, that has lived fifteen 

 years. But so far as I can learn, this pro- 

 cess of mutilation has been going on all 

 over the United States with the cherry and 

 the pear for several generations of scions, 

 without any attempt to refresh them in new 

 seedling stocks, except where emigrants 

 have gone to new settlements and carried 

 pear seeds with them, and thus of necessity 

 recruited a worn out scion with the vital 

 force of a fresh seedling. 



In this state of things, can it be wonder- 

 ful that our most delicate varieties of cher- 



