PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 79 



"The pear tree (a Flemish beauty) about which I wrote you a short time 

 since has leaved out fresh and green as any tree I possess, and notwith- 

 standing Mr. Carpenter says there is no remedy for it, I am going to try 

 one experiment upon the bark, to wit: I am going to cover the bark on the 

 body of the tree with a thick coating of tar. Tar is said to possess heal- 

 ing virtues for sore lungs and other ailments of the human body, and I am 

 going to see what effect it will have on my pear tree. I can't say I have 

 much faith in my medicine; I don't believe it will injure it any. 



" I ought to have told you in my other letter what 1 supposed caused my 

 pear tree to show signs of disease. It stood not far from a spout which 

 conducted off the water from the roof, and the rain of last summer was so 

 frequent and liberal, that the water from that spout sank into the ground 

 at the roots of the tree, and drenched them to almost drowning. I shall 

 have to make a conductor to convey the water off from the tree, or my tar 

 will be of no avail. 



" If I succeed in saving my tree I will let you and the Club know. If I 

 fail, perhaps the symptoms of its final dissolution and departure from this 

 sublunary sphere I will watch and send you." 



Mr. Carpenter. — I think that Mr. Pettit will kill the tree. 



Mr. A. S. Fuller. — Some years ago I removed a good many trees from a 

 nursery, where they had stood ten or twelve years, and afterward found a 

 large number of them affected more or less with this black blight. A few 

 of them died, and others recovered. I noticed that the disease afiiicted 

 some varieties much more than others. Those which naturally produce a 

 rough bark appeared to be affected the most. Some of the smoothest 

 barked varieties escaped entirely. I have never found any remedy for this 

 disease. If good cultivation is given to the ground, and the right kind of 

 fertilization, and for this ashes are valuable, the trees will often outgrow 

 the disease. The only benefit of tar would be to preserve the dead wood 

 from decay until the scar might be partially healed over. 



Mr. John G. Bergen. — It is possible that tar has sometimes killed young 

 trees, but I doubt it unless it was coal tar In our neighborhood young 

 trees are often tarred to prevent the goats from eating the bark. 



Dr. Bliss. — A few days since I was at Hoboken, N. J. I saw a number 

 of young trees planted out; they were all tarred; it appeared to prevent 

 all shoots from starting on the tarred part, but above the tar they were 

 growing vigorous. 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — If tarring fruit trees will kill them, nearly all the 

 orchards in the eastern part of Connecticut would have been destroyed 

 long ago, for they were tarred regularly every day for some weeks during 

 every spring, when I was a boy, to keep the canker worms from ascending. 

 The tar used was that procured from pine trees. 



Mr. Wm. S. Carpenter. — I have one fact about tarring trees. I had a 

 cherry tree which was liable to being gnawed by horses, and I tarred it to 

 prevent that, and the tree died; I don't know that tar killed it, but I should 

 be afraid to try further experiments. 



Mr. A. S. Fuller. — Well, I am not, and I will try it upon a variety of 

 trees, and know to a certainty whether tar will kill them. 



