USES. 431 



trees, to our knowledge, this year producing abundant crops, when 

 no specific disinfecting agent has been applied, while trees forty rods 

 distant have all their fruit destroyed. Salt, sulphur, lime-water, etc., 

 ect., as variously recommended, is not a certain specific ; and he who 

 uses is just as liable to lose his crop of fruit as he who uses not. 

 Hanging iron hoops in the trees, etc., etc., is a little like the old 

 Salem practice of nailing horse-shoes over the door ; and the one as 

 valuable as the other. The natural instinct of the insect teaching it 

 to seek such place of deposit for its egg as will insure successful 

 production, avoids all trees where the soil is daily stirred under- 

 neath, or where causes are that the fruit shall drop ere required by 

 the larva? of the insect ; hence the value of plantations mad where 

 swine are to run, or the planting of single trees where daily passing 

 subjects them to chance loss of fruit. So also that of paving, and of 

 trees standing on sites where water becomes the recipient of falling 

 fruit. Heavy soils are just as much subject to destruction of plum 

 from curculio as light soils. Soils termed wet are less subject ; but 

 here the tree does not flourish as well. In large orchards, where 

 there is much fruit to save, a man constantly employed with a pole 

 of about ten feet long, having a small cup or basin fastened at one 

 end, passing from tree to tree, and scattering dirt freely, will well 

 repay the cost, in the amount of fruit saved ; while, for small gardens, 

 the plan first introduced, more than twenty years since, by one of 

 the most estimable horticulturists of the States, David Thomas, of 

 New York, is the best. It is, in first preparing a short pole, having 

 at one end a cushion made of several thicknesses of cloth or India 

 rubber ; place this cushion against the body of the tree early in the 

 morning, (having first spread a sheet or large cloth on the ground, 

 the diameter of the branches ;) then strike the end with a heavy 

 mallet : the jar causes the insect to drop on the cloth, when it may 

 easily be gathered and destroyed. 



Uses. The best varieties are by many esteemed delicious for the 

 dessert. Others, and even the unripe fruit, are used in pies, tarts, 

 conserves, and sweetmeats. Our own taste compels us to place the 

 plum in the lowest state of cultivated fruits, and mainly from the 

 fact that, unless perfectly ripe and fresh from the tree, if eaten in a 

 raw state, they tend to flatulence and disease. Dried or cooked, 

 they are regarded valuable, and are an article of considerable com- 

 merce as imported to this country under name of French prunes or 

 dried plums. By a selection of the richest varieties, there is no 

 doubt that prunes superior to those of foreign preparation might be 

 easily obtained. The following description of an oven purposely 

 built for prunes, and doubtless, with some modifications, well adapted 

 to the drying of other fruits, is given in Liegel's Treatise (German), 

 as quoted in the Horticulturist. The amount of heat obtained by a 



