CULTUKE. 407 



the curculio are recorded in number more than we care to recount. 

 Suffice it that, as yet, no certain agent or preventive has been found ; 

 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., 

 etc., 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 larvae of the insect ; hence the value of plantations made 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 r having a small cup or basin fastened at one end, pass- 

 ing 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 dia- 

 meter 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 scale 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 



