260 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



tree is a rapid grower, and when fifteen or twenty years old is subject to 

 the bhick excrescence, which in ten years more kills the tree. Young 

 trees are rarely affected. Somebody has said it is ' too tough to have the 

 excrescence.' , 



" It is almost proof against the curculio. That is, while the curculio 

 does me the favor to thin out one-third to one-half of the excessive crop 

 which every year loads my trees, it does no injury to the rest, and I get a 

 good supply of plums, which are either eaten up or sold every year. That 

 same somebody has said ' the plum is too ugly to be bitten by the curculio;' 

 but I consider that a great slander, probably a spiteful grudge, owing to 

 the origin of the tree, which was, that an old skinflint of a tree seller, 

 when I was a very young boy, sold them about town here for five or ten 

 cents each; and grow they would, and would not die anyhow. Indeed, 

 they were about as persistent in growing and resisting the curculio and 

 excrescence as the old codger was in selling a lot of them ' for a dollar,' 

 whether anybody wanted to buy them or not. I say, all this is a slander 

 on the tree — a willful libel, in fact; for in scarce years I always have plums 

 to eat and sell, even though I have stuck the cheap trees in the toughest 

 ground I have got, where they stand all sorts of neglect and abuse without 

 a murmuring word. That all this is a ' wicked shame,' is evident from the 

 fact that nearly every year, from ten to fifty miles distant, these plums are^ 

 sent for, as a necessary part of the year's supply of preserves. 



" I have forgotten to say, some years it is so much whitened by the light 

 blue bloom as to be considered a blue, not white plum. 



"Its greatest fault as a tree is that, as you in the Club say of wheat 

 and sugar cane, it ' tillers ' off a lot of young trees every year at the root; 

 so that the person I bought them of has trees to sell every year. Owing 

 to this tendency, which we careful farmers out west here haven't time to 

 nip in the bud, which is a nice way to treat w^eds and other articles on a 

 farm, I have a few trees to give away every year to anybody who wants 

 to try the thing. 



" Somehow, in the last dozen or more years, this 'pesky plum ' has given 

 us most of our plums, and we have sold more than of all others. May be 

 it is a good tree, after all, as its account book foots up well. 



" The other fruit I want to ask the Club about is a pear tree that was 

 thrown in with a lot of trees by the old tree-seller, to 'make up the dollar's 

 worth.' 



" This tree, too, is as tough as a pine knot. There is no die to it, that I 

 know of; never anything the matter with it; takes care of itself; never 

 bothers anybody; bears nearly every year, and always a full crop. You 

 can't flatter it by any of your attention with manure, nor compliment it by 

 spading. Forking up the ground, and killing the grass about it, it treats 

 with perfect contempt, as useless modern humbugs. The only thing that 

 the tree seems really grateful for is to be let alone; though, once in a ten 

 years' time, breaking off a foot or two of the ends of the branches seems to 

 be agreeable to it. 



"It is not a very large pear. Resembles somewhat the Seckel and 

 Washington, as figured in the third volume of Agriculture, of the Natural 

 History of New York, State Reports, It has the peculiarity that, until a 



