ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 343 



is called a water-core in the apple, its color is of a dirty- 

 greenish hue, soon changing by exposure to brown and 

 black. But if the blight is old, the wood is of a dingy- 

 white, the alburnum colored like iron rust, and the bark of a 

 brownish black. These appearances are incompatible with 

 any idea of exhaustion by the gnawing of the scolytus pyri^ 

 or the suction of aphides, which would result in mere shrink- 

 ing of parts, dryness and death. If insects have a hand in 

 the mischief, it is by the secretion of poison, of which fact, 

 we have never seen the trace of proof, although it has often 

 been suggested, and is by some empyrically aasei*ted. To 

 our minds the insect-poison-theory is imaginary. It is 

 entirely convenient to refer every excrescence, or shrinking 

 of parts, every watery suffusion, wart, discoloration, crump- 

 ling leaf, wilting, etc., to poison, and still more convenient 

 to find the insect so atomic that it cannot he found, and thus 

 to heap the multiform sins of the orchard on the scape-goat 

 of a hypothetical insect. 



As to electricity, as no one knows anything about this 

 elemental sprite, his out-goings or in-comings, we are like to 

 have acted over again all the caprices of witch-times, when 

 elves and gnomes cut up every prank unaginable, and when 

 any prank, which was cut up, of course was performed by 

 them. Everybody is agog about electricity. But we 

 respectfully suggest that it is one thing to ascertain fiicts 

 by cautious, guarded experiments or careful observation, 

 and quite another to set down everything, which one does 

 not know what else to do with, to electricity, simply because 

 it may he so for aught that we know to the contrary. 

 People reason somewhat in this wase ; electricity performs 

 a vast number of very mysterious operations, therefore, 

 every operation which is mysterious is performed by elec- 

 tricity. "We believe electricity to have something to do 

 ■with it, only because it seems to have concern with every 

 living, growing thing. 



We believe that the blight is, in all cases, the effect of 



