326 THE PEAR. 



perhaps continue to grow the whole season and bear fruit, as if 

 nothing had happened to it, drying down to the shrivelled spot 

 of bark the next spring. The effect, in this case, is precisely 

 that of girdling only, and the branch or tree will die after a 

 time, but not suddenly. 



From what we have said, it is easy to infer that it would not 

 be difficult on the occurrence of such an autumn when sudden 

 congelation takes place in unripened wood to predict a blight 

 season for the following summer. Such has several times been 

 done, and its fulfilment may be looked for, with certainty, in all 

 trees that had not previously ripened their wood.* 



So, also, it would and does naturally follow, that trees in a 

 damp, ricn soil, are much more liable to the frozen-sap blight, 

 than those upon a dryer soil. In a soil over moist or too rich, 

 the pear is always liable to make late second growths, and its 

 wood will often be caught unripened by an early winter. For 

 this reason, this form of blight is vastly more extensive and de- 

 structive in the deep, rich soils of the western states, than in the 

 dryer and poorer soils of the east. And this will always be the 

 case in over rich soils, unless the trees are planted on raised hil- 

 locks, or their luxuriance checked by root-pruning. 



Again, those varieties of the pear, which have the habit of 

 maturing their wood early, are very rarely affected with the 

 frozen-sap blight. But late growing sorts, are always more or 

 less liable to it, especially when the trees are young, and the 

 excessive growth is not reduced by fruit- bearing. Every nur- 

 seryman knows that there are certain late growing sorts which 

 are always more liable to this blight in the nursery. Among 

 these we have particularly noticed the Passe Colmar and the 

 Forelle, though when these sorts become bearing trees, they are 



* Since the above was written, we have had the pleasure of seeing a highly 

 interesting article by the Rev. H.W. Beecher, of Indiana, oneofthemostmtelligent 

 observers in the country. Mr. Beecher not only agrees in the main with 

 us, but he fortifies our opinion with a number of additional facts of great 

 value. We shall extract some of this testimony, which is vouched for by Mr 

 B., and for the publication of which the cultivators of pears owe him many 

 thanks. 



"Mr R. Reagan of Putnam county, Ind., has for more than twelve years, sus- 

 pected that this disease originated in the fall previous to the summer on which 

 it declares itself. During the last winter, Mr. Reagan predicted the blight, as 

 will be remembered by some of his acquaintances in Wayne Co., and in his 

 pear orchards he marked the trees that would suffer, and pointed to the spot 

 which would be the seat of the disease, and his prognostications were strictly 

 verified. Out of his orchard of 200 pear trees, during the previous blight of 1832, 

 only four escaped, and those had been transplanted, and had, therefore, made lit- 

 tle or no growth. 



Mr. White, a nurseryman, near Mooresville, Ind., in an orchard of over 150 

 trees, had not a single case of blight in the year 1844, though all around him its 

 ravages were felt. What were the facts in this case? His orchard is planted 

 on a mound-like piece of ground, is high, of a sandy, gravelly soil ; earlier by a 

 week, than nursery soils in this country; and in the summer of 1843, his trees 

 grew through the summer, ripened and shed their leaves early in the fall, and 

 during the warm spell made no second growth." 



