ABOUT FKUITS, FLOWERS AND FAEMING. 341 



BLIGHT AND INSECTS. 



In an article on employing suckers of fruit-trees for 

 stocks, which we shall copy, Dr. Kirtland says : 



" The practice of grafting and budding pears upon this 

 quality of stocks has extended a diseased action, a kind of 

 canker among our pear orchards, that has, in some instances, 

 been mistaken for blight, a disease that has its origin in the 

 depredations of a minute coleopterous insect, which has 

 been satisfactorily described ii\ all its stages of transforma- 

 tion by Dr. Harris, and other Massachusetts entomologists." 



That the fire-blight is, to any considerable extent any- 

 where, but especially at the West, occasioned by an insect, 

 is an idea, we believe, totally unsupported by facts. That 

 some injury has been done by the scolytus pyri, the investi- 

 gations of Mr. Lowell and Professor Peck leave no room to 

 doubt. But we are not satisfied that, even in these cases, 

 they were the cause of the blight, but only an accidental 

 concomitant. Did Mr. Lowell or Piofessor Peck always 

 find this beetle upon blighted trees? Was it found in 

 every blighted limb ? Did not blight occur without these 

 insects? Has any one of New England since found the 

 blight to proceed from the gnawings of this beetle ? 



Has any one found this beetle before the blight occurred 

 at its mischievous work, or is it only after the blight is seen 

 that the beetle is found ? If the scolytus pyri has been found 

 only after the tree is thoroughly affected, there is reason to 

 suppose that it did not come until after the disease had pre- 

 pared the way for it. 



We are seriously skeptical of this alleged cause. What- 

 ever may be true of the blight at the East, the blight in the 

 West is unquestionably not an effect of the scolytus pyri. 

 We have examined with the utmost pains, multitudes of 

 trees m all soils — several of our shrewdest nurserymen have 

 searched year by year, and we have, unfortunately, had too 

 much opportunity and too many subjects, and yet no insect 



