STATK HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 75 



BLACK HEART IN FRUIT TREES. 



By a. W. Sias, of Rochester, Minn. 



" Black Heart in Fruit Trees." This dark and dismal subject 

 naturallj' belongs to the scientist, of whose hidden mysteries 

 1 have as yet been able to obtain but a mere glimpse. And 

 my excuse for calling your attention to it at this time may be 

 found in a letter received from our secretary, wherein he states, 

 *' Mr. Harris says you are loaded for bear on ' Black Heart." Now 

 Mr. Harris very well knows, from my weak attempt to bolster up 

 that "Black Hearted" institution known as the Wealthy apple 

 tree, at our last winter meeting, that my fowling piece was of too 

 small a calibre for even the bacteria, to say nothing of that great 

 black bear, alias "Black Heart," that has been the terror of so 

 many thousands, and deprived nine-tenths of the good people 

 of Minnesota of one of the greatest blessings that Grod ever 

 bestowed on a family, viz., a good orchard. You teach a man that 

 there is no essential difference between animal and vegetable 

 physiology and that a bearing fruit tree should be alive and active 

 from center to circumference, or otherwise worthless; I say you 

 teach a man this false doctrine and make him believe it, and then 

 show him the best so-called iron clad hybrid in the State, say ten 

 or fifteen years old; show him the heart wood and he would tell 

 you that all such trash was wholly worthless, and so would I 

 if I believed as he does. Will the fruit tree that maintains 

 the largest amount of sap wood necessarily be the longest lived, 

 and most prolitable? I think not. For instance, the Baldwin is 

 said to be one of the most, if not the most profitable variety in New 

 England. It is a long-lived tree, although it has not usually been 

 accounted extremely hard3\ And so of the Wealthy and other 

 varieties that fail to maintain quite as much sap wood as the 

 Transcendent, yet may endure as long and prove far more profita- 

 ble. " A tree is known by its fruit." The same is true of men; 

 we judge them by their fruits, of what they have been able to pro- 

 duce or accomplish, and not by their physical development. After 

 a dry summer and severe winter, our hardiest trees contain but a 

 small amount of sap wood. The same is as true of the mammoth 

 tree of California (Sequoia Gigantea) as it is of our hardy fruit 



