218 OBSERVATIONS ON lU.ICllT. 



tbrthwith play the most amusing and incredible vagaries ; 

 bearing blossoms instead of leaves, leaves instead of blos- 

 soms ; twisting into corkscrews stems which ought to be 

 straight, and making straight as sticks those which, as the 

 scarlet-runner and hop, ought to twine ; sometimes, as in the 

 peach, making the leaves hump up in the middle, and causing 

 the tree to look as though it had a famous crop of young 

 fruit; making apple-trees bear blossoms on their roots, and 

 causing roots to grow out of their young shoots ; and, by 

 tormenting orchards in this way, preventing the fruit from 

 ripening, and making it woolly, tasteless, and without juice. 

 Our china-asters often owe a good deal of their beauty to 

 these vermin ; they act as a spur to make them blossom beyond 

 their strength and nature, and then die off without bearing 

 seed. It is amusing to see with what regularity the blights 

 station themselves on the young shoots of tlie guilder-rose, 

 crowding so close together that not a morsel of the rind is to 

 be seen, and not unfrequently forming a double tier, or two 

 thicknesses ; the poor sprig losing its formal unbending 

 upright position, and writhing itself into strange contortions. 



Blights are of all colours, but green is their most fashionable 

 hue ; those of broad-beans are black as soot, and velvety, — and 

 these, if attended to, do but Httle harm ; they cluster at the 

 very top, and each bean should be topped just below the 

 blight, and the top carried away and burnt, — not thrown on the 

 ground, — or else they are sure to climb up the bean-stalks again, 

 and, stopping here and there at the best landing-place, increase 

 and multiply, and soon cover the whole plant; nor should 

 they be buried in the ground, for they take care to outwit you 

 by living underground for months, and when the gardener's 

 spade turns them up again, they make for the beans 

 directly: the plan of topping the beans does not injure the 

 crop, but, if carefully done, rather improves it. The blight of 

 the willow is very large, and, at first sight, looks greyish, but 

 under a glass is beautifully variegated with black and white ; 

 when crushed it gives out a deep blood-coloured die, which 

 stays on your hand several days in spite of frequent washings. 



I have taken a good deal of pains to find out the birth and 

 parentage of true blights; and for this purpose have watched, 

 day after day, the colonies of them in ray own garden, and 

 single ones which I have kept in-doors, and under tumblers 



