1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FAKMER. 



425 



such thoroughness ;— from the highest to the low- 

 est, every man meaning to be master of his art. 



***** 



They have approved their Saxon blood, by their 

 sea-going qualities; their descent from Odin's 

 smiths, by their hereditary skill in working in iron ; 

 their British birth, by husbandry and imm.en&e 

 wheat harvests ; and justified their occupancy of 

 the centre of habitable" land, by their supreme abil- 

 ity and cosmopolitan spirit. They have tilled, build- 

 ed, forged, spun, and woven. They have made the 

 island a thoroughfare ; aud London a shop, a law- 

 court, a record-office, and scientific bereau, invit- 

 ing to strangers,_ a sanctuary to refugees of every 

 political and religious opinion ; and such a city, 

 that almost every active man, in any nation, finds 

 himself, at one time or other, forced to visit it, 



I find the Euglishman to be him of all men who 

 stands firmest in his shoes. They have in them 

 selves what they value in their horses, mettle and 

 bottom. On the day of my arrival in Liverpool, a 

 gentleman in describing to me the Lord Lieuten- 

 ant of Ireland, happened to say, "Lord Clarendon 

 has pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies;" 

 and, what I heard first, I heard last, and the one 

 thing_ the English value is pluck. The cabmen 

 have it; the merchants have it ; the bishops have 

 it ; the women have it ; the journals have it ; the 

 Times newspaper, they say, is the pluckiest thing 

 in England, and Sydney Smith had made it a 

 proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the minis- 

 ter, would take the command of the Channel fleet 

 to-morrow. 



They require you to dare to be of your own 

 opinion, and they hate the practical cowards who 

 cannot in aflaiirs answer directly yes or no. They 

 dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all 

 the commandments, if you do it natively, and Avith 

 spirit. You must be somebody ; then you may do 

 this or that, as you will.— J?, jf. Emerson's English 

 Traits. 



For t/ic Neto England Farmer. 



DISEASES OE THE PLUM. 



I have, Mr. Editor, for several years been among 

 the croakers in regard to plums. I have been ap^ 

 prehensive that this, one of the finest and most de- 

 licious of all the fruits of the earth, was destined to 

 become extinct imder the combined attacks of the 

 black wart and curculio. But I begin to hope for 

 better things, and I hasten to give my brief expe- 

 rience of a few months past, in the hope that it 

 may accomplish something towards arresting the 

 decadence of the plum. 



I have a few young and thrifty plum trees in 

 my garden, of choice varieties, some of which have 

 just begun to bear. For two years past, I have 

 been in the habit of cutting away with a knife the 

 fungus called the black wart, as fast as it m.ade its 

 appearance, and sometimes at the expense of cruel 

 amputations of quite large limbs. I almost de- 

 stroyed one 01- two of my JFinest trees in that way. 

 Late last spring, however, one of my neighbors 

 told me that he had cured his plum trees of the 

 wart by sewing up a small quantity of common salt, 

 (say half a pint) loosely in a cotton bag, and plac- 

 ing one m the lower crotch of each tree. An ex- 

 periment so easy and simple, you may rest as- 

 sured, I was not long in trying ; and I am happy 

 to say, with gror.t apparent success. Some verv 



trifling excrescences have since made their appear- 

 ance, but nothing to interrupt or injure the growth 

 of the trees, which now show extraordinary thrift. 

 Had I begun the experiment earlier in the spring, 

 I am quite confident that the M^arts would have en- 

 tirely ceased. As it is, I have cut away perhaps 

 half a dozen very small ones, and rubbed the wound- 

 ed place with salt, and I feel that I have got the 

 mastery of the disease, 



I believe fruit growers are not agreed as to the 

 cause of the black wart in the plum. There is cer- 

 tainly a minute insect in the case ; liut whether it 

 is the cause, or only the result of the disease, I am 

 unable to say with certainty. My impression is, 

 however, that the insect poisons* the tree, inter- 

 rupts the flow of the sap, and thus creates a fungus, 

 which becomes black by exposure to the sun and 

 air. A similar excrescence, but of a reddish brown 

 color, sometimes appears upon the quince bush, and 

 I have seen the fruit of the quince dv/arfed into a 

 kind of hard substance, which, when cut with a 

 knife, resembles the wart on the plum. If the dis- 

 ease be occasioned by an insect, I can readily con- 

 ceive that the salt in the bag, dissolved somewhat 

 by each successive shower, and thereby covering 

 the bark, might be offensive to the insect, and ar- 

 rest its progress up the tree. 



As to the curculio, which attacks the plum in 

 preference to all other fruit, in consequence of the 

 smoothness of its skin, I think it can be kept off' in 

 a great degree by the apphcation of tar around the 

 tree, the same as the canker worm is kept off". The 

 curculio is a kind of beetle with wings, but uses 

 those wings very reluctantly in ascending into the 

 tree. It greatly prefers to m-ike its way up the 

 trunk by crawling, and in all such cases, the tar 

 would prove a pretty sure remedy. Mr. Kenrick, 

 in his "i^merican Orchardist," suggests that the 

 curculio dislikes the smell of tar, and that coal tar, 

 especially, placed in the tree, might keep off" the 

 insect. In my own case, I placed some tarred pa- 

 per around my plum trees, and applied fresh tar, 

 mixed with oil about twice a week, to keep off the 

 canker worms which I shook from the trees, I 

 continued the application a few days after the can- 

 ker worms had disappeared ; and all I can say is, 

 that among the few plums on my trees, there is no 

 appearance of the bite of the curculio. A neigh- 

 bor of mine threw lime freely upon his plum trees ; 

 but, although it killed many of the leaves, it did 

 not prevent the curculio from biting a large portion 

 of the plums. I feel quite confident that the tar, 

 if applied from the time the plums have attained 

 the size of a pea until they are half grown, will 

 prove a more eff"ectual remedy than any yet 

 known to fruit growers. e. c. r. 



Somerville, 18o6. 



Instixct of Hoeses.— It is asserted as a fact, 

 says the Cincinnati Times, that some of the horses 

 in the service of the Fire Department become en- 

 tirely restless, and seem anxious to "be off'" the 

 moment the fire-bell commences ringing — and 

 though gentle at other times, are no sooner in the 

 traces of an engine, than they dart off" at the top of 

 their speed. They seem to partake of all the ex- 

 citement of the firemen on such occasions. An in- 

 cident, resulting rather seriously to Mr, John Wil- 

 son, a member of fire company No, 10, exhibiting 

 thi.^ inr-tinct, occurred vesterday afternoon. Mr. 



