70 



injuries of the skin in the early part of the growth of 

 the fruit, nature patches up in the way we see ; but 

 this new surface is never like the original skin ; it 

 allows the aqueous portion of the pulp of the fruit to 

 escape more freely by evaporation ; hence there is a 

 little shrinking in the part where it happens, and the 

 juices become richer by a kind of inspissation. 

 (Trans. Hort. Soc. vii. 505.) 



Apple Gangrene. — We have observed a peculiar 

 disease affecting the fruit of the apple late in the 

 autumn, and early in the winter of 1846, and less fre- 

 quently in the autumn of the present year. The in- 

 terior pulp becomes brown, but of a flavour more re- 

 sembling that of a ripe medlar, rather than of that 

 bitterness so striking in a decayed apple. Another 

 very marked characteristic of this disease, is the black- 

 ness of the outer skin. The smell of the fruit is 

 rather vinous when cut, and somewhat resembling 

 that of a baked apple. It comes on suddenly, and 

 does not appear to be confined to any particular vari- 

 ety or district, but seems to have been only observed 

 upon the paler and looser-textured kinds. It attacked 

 the Cats-head in Norfolk, and the Gravenstein in 

 Hampshire. 



Moss, as it is popularly called, is a certain indi- 

 cation that the stems and branches on which it pre- 

 vails are too freely supplied with moisture, and 



