266 THE PEACH AND NBCTABIlfB. 



a printer dressing — of which nnx Totnica, tobacco juice, snlphnr, and 

 soap are the chief ingredients — this goes far to justify, their opinion ; 

 one, however, which it must be added, I cannot endorse from experience. 

 The beat preventive to blistering is careful spring protection by some 

 of the means described in a previous chapter. Cure there is none. The 

 leaves should be picked off and burned, to make sure of destroying the 

 germs of mildew and nests of aphides that are found in the curled and 

 twisted leaves, and the trees be encouraged to make fresh leaves by 

 overhead sprinklings, top dressings, &o. Mildew is very apt to accom- 

 pany or follow blister or curl j therefore, it may be wise to top dress 

 with sulphur as soon as the blistered leaves are picked off. 



V. — Sunstroke. 



This is quite a different disease from blister. It seldom affects the 

 leaves at all, though they are occasionally burnt into white blotches 

 or patches on hot south walls when the sun bursts forth suddenly 

 after a few large drops of rain that may remain whole on the 

 leaves. This is not what is here meant by sunstroke, but irregular bums 

 on the young shoots, small and main branches, and even the trunks of 

 peach trees on walls. This often utterly ruins trees, and not seldom 

 proves a serious drawback to the preservation of their symmetry and 

 beauty. The best means of preventing sunstroke is to keep the trees 

 BO fully furnished with young wood and leaves as that they shade 

 most of the branches. It is unnatural to expose bare boughs to the sun 

 without shade of overhanging twigs or leaves. The heat is also greater 

 on a wall than the peach is subjected to in its native cUtnate. Young 

 shoots may often be tied over bare branches, for the express purpose of 

 shielding them against sunstroke. The boles of peach and other wall 

 trees are cruelly treated in this matter. As well send f, man to stand in. 

 the sun all day without his hat and expect him to thrive under it as 

 back a plum stock with a peach mounted on its head against a south 

 wall, to be half-baked all day, and not suffer from it. Long tiles are 

 sometimes set up against the boles of such trees to keep them cool. 

 The worst of these is that the tops of the tiles, which get excessively 

 hot, rest agaiast the main stem of the trees and bum a deep line all 

 round it, which is worse than an ordinary case of sunstroke. The best 

 possible protectors for the boles of trees are long straw sheaths, similar, 

 but longer and wider, to those used for champagne and spirit bottles. 

 Next to these a neat hay-band, or roU or two of common mat, are among 



