THE CRACK IN PEARS. 95 



of the best pears, if we can grow it smoothly, has cracked badly 

 this year. The theory has been, that in a dry season, the rains 

 coming on, the moisture has been furnished so suddenly that 

 the skin could not expand quickly enough, and consequently it 

 was broken. Now we have had rain enough this season, and 

 yet they never cracked so badly as this year. The St. Michael, 

 the Stevens Genesee, the Flemish Beauty and the Beurre Diel 

 are varieties that have always cracked with me, more or less ; 

 they are subject to that defect ; but I cannot say that I have 

 noticed that the Seckel, the Bartlett, the Clapp's Favorite, the 

 Lawrence or the Vicar have shown any tendency to crack until 

 this year in my ground ; so that it must have been owing to the 

 peculiar season. 



Mr. Bull. One thought suggests itself to me in regard to 

 the exemption of Dana's Hovey. That is a new variety, and for 

 the first three or four crops a tree is less liable to disease than 

 at other times. After it has got well established, if the begin- 

 ning of the season should be dry, there will be a tendency to 

 crack. I think the cause of this defect is that the grown tree, 

 with abundant fruit, losing part of its roots in a dry season, 

 becomes incapable of supplying the abundant foliage with sap 

 as fast as it consumes it, and at the same time keep up a healthy 

 growth of the fruit. It has got to adapt itself to the new con- 

 ditions. • It must make new roots ; then it has got to make its 

 wood and fruit-buds ; and so you will find, after the tree has 

 been barren for a couple of years, that it begins to bear again. 

 Now, when a pear tree is young, has just got established, the 

 balance between root and top is in good proportion, and it is 

 exempt from this tendency to crack and from other diseases ; 

 but when it has got large and well established, these things come 

 in to affect it. Some of these new varieties, at first exempt, 

 come at last to crack. I suppose that may be the explanation 

 of it. 



With regard to corn, we had, during the whole of the fore 

 part of the season, wet weather. The corn started well, and 

 did not suffer from drought. It continued to grow, and the 

 latter part of the season was warm and dry, and ripened the 

 crop well. The late pears were the best. All I got that were 

 fit to eat were those that ripened late, and were not too forward 

 when the warm weather came. 



