INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 415 



This insect is said to eat tlirougli tlie alburnum, the hard wood, and 

 even a pai't of the pith, and to destroy the branch by the separation of 

 part from part, as a saw would. On these facts, which there is no reason 

 to question, we make two remarlis. 



First. That the blight thus produced is limited and probably sectional 

 or local. No accoimt has met my eye which leads me to suppose that any 

 considerable injury has been done by it. Mr. Manning, of Salem, Mass., 

 in the second edition of his Book of Fruits," states that he has never had 

 any trees affected by it. Yet his garden and nursery has existed for 

 twenty years and contained an immense number of trees. 



Second. It is very plain that neither Mr. Lowell, originally, nor Dr. 

 Han-is, nor any who describe the blight as caused by the blight-beetle, 

 had any notion of that disease which passes by the same name in the 

 Middle and Western States. The blight of the Scolytus pyri is a mere 

 girdling of the branches, a mechanical separation of parts, and no mention 

 is made of the most striking facts incident to the gi-eat blight, the viscid 

 unctuous sap; the bursting of the bark, through which it issues; and its 

 poisonous effects upon the young shoots upon which it drops. 



I do not doubt the insect blight, but I am sure it is not our blight. I 

 feel very confident, also, that this blight which, from its devastations 

 may be called the great blight, has been felt in New England in connec- 

 tion with the insect blight, and confounded with it, and the effects of 

 two different causes happening to appear in conjunction, have been at- 

 tributed to one, and the least influential cause. The writer in Fessenden's 

 American Gardener (Mr. Lowell), says of the blight: "It is sometimes so 

 rapid in its progress that in a few hours from its first appearance the 

 whole tree will appear to be mortally diseased. This is not insect blight, 

 for did the blight-beetle eat so suddenly around the whole trunk? No- 

 where is a striking appearance of the great blight confounded with the 

 minor blight, as I think will appear in the sequel. 



This theory has stood in the way of the discovery of the true cause of 

 the great blight, for every cultivator has gone in search of insects, they 

 have been found in great plenty, and in great variety of species, and their 

 harmless presence accused of all the mischief of the season. A writer in 

 the Farmer's Advocate, Jamestown, N. C, discerned the fire blight and 

 traced it to small, red, ellucid insects briskly moving from place to place 

 on the branches. This is not the Scolytus pyri of Professor Peck and Dr. 

 Harris. • 



Dr. Mosher, of Cincinnati, in a letter published in the Farmer and 

 Gardener for June, 1844, describes a third insect, "very minute, brown 

 colored aphides, snugly secreted in the axilla of every leaf on several 

 small branches; most of them were busily engaged with their proboscis 

 inserted through the tender cuticle of this part of the petiole of the leaf, 

 feasting upon the vital juices of the tree. The leaves being thus deprived 

 of the necessary sap for nourishment and elaboration soon perished, while 



