SECRETARY'S REPORT. T 



of dry gangrene. In some seasons the fruit is so much affected 

 that the crop could hardly be disposed of in the market, in 

 consequence of the large proportion of discolored beans, and in 

 all seasons if the pea beans offered in the market be carefully 

 examined, more or less of them will indicate the influence of 

 the disease by a black discoloration at the point where it 

 touched the pod. 



Most varieties are liable to the attack of this pest, but some 

 are much more susceptible of its influence than others, the Saba, 

 Horticultural, and Case Knife, being most commonly affected 

 among the pole beans, while the bush varieties are equally 

 subjected to its pernicious effects, and neither varieties of soil 

 nor differences of season appear to affect its extent or its 

 progress. 



Nothing particularly new upon the disease of the apple tree, 

 described in the report of 1860, has presented itself, but a more 

 careful and extended examination of diseased trees tends to 

 confirm the conclusion that trees trimmed or injured previous 

 to the 1st of May are more liable to take on the disease at the 

 point of injury than those upon which the operation is performed 

 at a later period. One marked case, illustrating this point, it 

 may not be improper to relate. In the month of November, 

 1856, an old apple tree, the top of which was much decayed, 

 was trimmed for grafting in the ensuing spring. Two large 

 trunks, measuring more than twelve inches in diameter, were 

 sawn off, the stumps being left without protection from the 

 influence of the weather, the chief portion of the old wood being 

 thus removed by the saw. About the middle of the following 

 April the young limbs which grew below the stumps made in 

 the preceding autumn, were grafted with the orange sweeting. 

 At the present time the large stumps sawn off in November, five 

 years ago, are perfectly sound, and although not healed the wood 

 is very hard, almost like iron, and the bark entirely free from 

 blackness, while nearly, if not quite all the stocks grafted in April 

 are more or less diseased. Another fact bearing upon a theory 

 sometimes advanced — that this disease originates in the excoriat- 

 ing character of the sap — deserves notice. It is this : that the 

 disease commences often upon the upper side of the grafted limb, 

 where no sap flowing from it could by any possibility be applied. 

 Instances are not wanting of this disease in other varieties of 



