88 1M.AIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors' 

 ; he showed me a board naileil for convenience of a 

 clothes-line upon one of the lar^e limits of the- tree; he said 

 he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb 

 dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did 

 not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any 

 scientific mind. 



"Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal 

 over a, few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight, 

 size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring 

 around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The 

 oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia, 

 which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every 

 part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of 

 the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in 

 many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of 

 life, via Tomb. I think if the ladies should drive some 

 small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with 

 any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and 

 I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be 

 found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a 

 limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of cater- 

 pillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the 

 result will pay for the nails." 



Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start 

 for the orchard ; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail, 

 and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with 

 a nail, and the "ammonia evolved" will finish his 

 functions ! 



The Southern Planter is out with a backer tp the Boston 

 Cultivator : 



" A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was 

 mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke, 

 of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neigh- 

 bor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every 

 tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of 



