1885.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



207 



my whole arbor, but I intend this year to have 

 some fine specimens. I have eight to ten vines, 

 young ones, of Delaware and Concord that I am 

 taking especial pains in pinching in and have 

 been plucking the leaves also, thinking sunshine 

 an essential ; but will desist now and note result. 

 I insert a bunch in a small bag and then give it a 

 vigorous twist at top and it remains there secure 

 until removed. 



[We have paid close attention to the bee ques- 

 tion, and have no more doubt that the destruction 

 is wholly the work of the bees than that we are 

 writing this. The only remedy we know is to 

 trap the bees and destroy them. This can be 

 easily done. — Ed. G. M.] 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Cultivating Orchards. — A correspondent 

 sends us the following from California, as reported 

 of a speaker at a late meeting of the State Horti- 

 cultural Society ; and remarks that it coincides 

 with what the Gardeners' Monthly has always 

 taught about the proper arrangement of orchards: 



" Mr. Aiken : A neighbor of mine has an apple 

 orchard that he has cultivated for more than ten 

 years. It hasn't borne anything this year. But a 

 near neighbor has an orchard that has not been 

 cultivated for ten years — never been taken care of 

 whatever — and they are very near together, and 

 the orchard that has never been taken care of or 

 plowed has a large crop of healthy, fine apples. 

 The man who had cultivated his orchard so taste- 

 fully and carefully said to me : ' It is a question of 

 doubt whether it pays to take so much care of an 

 orchard. Where I ought to have a thousand 

 boxes, I haven't a hatful.' " 



To some extent it does coincide. We have to 

 be, however, careful of assuming too much in 

 these cases. Sometimes there are other elements 

 at work besides mere grass or mere clean surface. 

 Where there is plenty of food for both grass and 

 for the trees, and all other things equal, the grass- 

 clothed orchard will always be the best. 



Artificial M.\nures. — Notwithstanding the 

 analyses of chemists, in regard to the perfection of 

 chemical manures, and the fact which they so 

 easily demonstrate that the greater part of stable 

 manure is nothing but water and other material 

 of no possible value and costing immense labor to 

 handle, it is remarkable that the demand for 

 stable manure is greater than ever. People find 

 it best in spite of chemistry. 



Peach Yellows. — There sgems to be some mix- 

 ture of ideas in the minds of some who have given 



thought to this subject. A well known fruit grower 

 of great experience recently spoke vehemently 

 against the idea that fungus in the earth was the 

 cause of the peach yellows. Later in the conven- 

 tion some one asked how long it would be safe for 

 one to leave the ground in which a yellowed peach 

 stood before planting another, and the speaker re- 

 plied, "about one hundred years." This would 

 seem to imply that in spite of his argument against 

 root fungus, he thought the trouble was in the 

 ground somewhere. If not root fungus, one can 

 conceive of no reason why a new peach tree 

 should not be planted at once where the other one 

 grew. Mr. Gully, of South Haven, Mich., writes 

 to Purdy's Fruit Recorder that there are plenty of 

 trees from one to six years old near there growing 

 in spots where trees with the yellows had been 

 taken out. Indeed, the digging up of earth and 

 exposing it to the atmosphere is often sufficient to 

 destroy the fungus. Some years ago Mr. Alfred 

 Cope, of Germantown, had a white pine tree badly 

 infected with the yellows. It was a fine tree near 

 the entrance gate, and which he was reluctant to 

 lose. He took out with fork and spade as much 

 of the earth as possible, as if he were going to 

 transplant the tree, and then filled in the whole 

 with fresh earth, and the result was that the tree 

 wholly recovered. In the cases of pines and 

 spruces the diseased plants are found to have the 

 growing fibres covered with the silky or cobwebby 

 spawn of the fungus, just as they are in the early 

 stages of the peach tree yellows. 



Fire Blight in the Pear.— Reading a new 

 work recently in which horticultural knowledge is 

 professedly brought down to the present time, we 

 find " pear blight " referred to in precisely the 

 same language and terms as would have been in 

 order over a quarter of a century ago. A dozen 

 different diseases are all confounded as " pear 

 blight," and it is quite evident that the great trou- 

 ble " Fire Blight " was not at all understood by the 

 author. The idea that fire blight is contagious or 

 even infectious, is surely thoroughly exploded ; and 

 the advice to drop all other important work at 

 once, and go to work at any cost to cut away and 

 burn the " infected " tops, seems very strange at 

 this late date. 



We really believe that a number of our good 

 friends among the professors of horticulture in 

 schools and colleges, to judge by some of their 

 professional work, are a long way behind the age, 

 and a good course of reading through the horti- 

 cultural publications of the past twenty-five years, 



