184 AMERICAN POMOLOGY. 



"4. I recollect reading in that reliable journal, Hovey'a 

 Magazine of Horticulture, some years, since, a statement 

 that the finest prize pears seen in 'the Parisian market, 

 were produced by investing the growing fruits with folds 

 of cotton or linen cloth, and daily, or oftener, moistening 

 them with a solution of sulphate of iron. This treatment 

 was said to result in developing the size, beauty, and quali- 

 ty of the fruits to a high degree, and especially to free 

 them from parasitic blotches. 



" 5. Four years since, Mrs. Weller Dean, of Rockport, 

 Ohio, informed me that blight might not only be prevented 

 in healthy pear trees, but might be successfully arrested, 

 in many trees, after it had made considerable progress, by 

 means of repeatedly washing the bodies of the trees with 

 a saturated solution of sulphate of iron (copperas), at a 

 time when the sap is in active circulation. 



" This was a confidential communication, with the condi- 

 tion annexed that I should thoroughly test the plan, and if 

 it should prove successful, I was to publish it ; and further- 

 more, if any merit or more substantial reward should be 

 deemed due to any one by the public, she was to be the 

 recipient. 



" This plan has yet been only imperfectly tried. Age 

 and infirmities will probably prevent its completion by 

 me. I will therefore report that I have tested it on a 

 number of my partially blighted pear trees, while a greater 

 numbers has been left to die unmedicated. Of the former, 

 not one has yet perished, while of the latter very few sur- 

 vive. It has appeared, in every instance, to arrest the 

 progress of the disease, and to impart a healthy condition 

 to the bark wherever applied. The apparent results may 



