406 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



western States, where the late and warm autumns render 

 orchards more liable to winter blight than New England 

 orchards. An Orange Bergamot, grafted upon an apple 

 stock, had about run out ; it made a small and feeble growth, 

 and cast its leaves in the summer of 1843, long before frost. 

 It escaped the blight entirely ; while young trees, and of the 

 same kind (we believe), standing about it, and growing vig 

 orously till the freeze, perished the next season. I have 

 before me a list of more than fifty varieties, growing in the 

 orchard of Aaron Alldredge, of Indianapolis, and their history 

 since 1836 ; and so far as it can be ascertained, late-grow 

 ing varieties are the ones, in every case, subject to blight ; 

 and of those which have always escaped, the most part are 

 known to ripen leaf and wood early. 



5. Wherever artificial causes have either produced or 

 prevented a growth so late as to be overtaken by a freeze, 

 blight has, respectively, been felt or avoided. Out of 200 

 pear-trees, only four escaped in 1832, in the orchard of Mr. 

 Reagan. These four had, the previous spring, been trans 

 planted, and had made little or no growth during summer 

 or fall. If, however, they had recovered themselves, dur 

 ing the summer, so as to grow in the autumn, transplant 

 ing would have had just the other effect ; as was the case 

 in a row of pear-trees, transplanted by Mr. Alldredge in 

 1843. They stood still through the summer and made 

 growth in the fall were frozen and in 1844 manifested 

 severe blight. Mr. Alldredge s orchard affords another 

 instructive fact. Having a row of the St. Michael pear (of 

 which any cultivator might have been proud), standing- 

 close by his stable, he was accustomed, in the summer of 

 1843, to throw out, now and then, manure about them, to 

 force their growth. Under this stimulus they were making 

 excessive growth when winter-struck. Of all his orchard, 

 they suffered, the ensuing summer, the most severely. Of 

 twenty-two trees twelve were affected by the blight, and 

 eight entirely killed. Of seventeen trees of the Bell pear, 



