160 Blight in Fruit Trees. 
In the first place it may be proper to state, that for some yeans 
past I had observed a disease in the form of blight on different 
sorts of fruit, as well as some forest trees. Of the former, the 
apple, the pear, peach, and quince trees, which more especially 
showed its effects in all of them, except the peach. The disease 
was so well described in the article referred to, that I deem it 
unnecessary to say anything further on the subject. But the 
effect on the peach tree is somewhat different. For instance, of 
the affected leaves and branches, dying and curling up, the leaves 
only curl and assume a reddish appearance, while the growth is 
retarded, but do not, like some other trees, dry and turn brown; 
but still the growth is retarded, and in the course of a few years 
death is the consequence. 
The blight has not affected the apple trees in this vicinity to as 
great an extent as it appears to have done in some other parts; 
still they are affected more or less, and especially the Spitzenburg 
variety. 
Having observed that this disease was on the increase, that it 
gained on the trees affected with it every year, I began to think 
that unless a remedy could be found for it, and it should continue 
to increase, it would not be long before several kinds of fruit 
would be totally lost. 
Having already become convinced that the disease which was 
destroying the potato crop was caused by an excess of oxygen 
in the atmosphere, it occurred to me whether it might not be the 
cause of the blight in question; I had also a lot of young grafted 
apple trees which had blossomed for several years, but bore little 
fruit, and what they did bear was poor and knotty. Many of the 
leaves, by midsummer looked sickly, and some of the young 
branches, with their leaves turned brown, and died. 
I noticed also that this was the case with plum and quince trees, 
more particularly the latter. I also observed for several years, 
instead of the blossoms falling off in a healthy state, the petal 
ends of the pears turned brown while on the trees, as if they had 
been in contact with fire, and consequently there had been but 
little fruit. 
In consideration of these things, and having become confident 
that the disease was atmospheric, I concluded to try fine lime on 
the trees when they were casting their blossoms. I did so, by 
taking a damp day, when there was little or no wind, and threw 
the lime up in handfuls among the branches as high as I could, 
leaving the upper branches without the lime. The result was 
that almost every blossom made an apple as far as the lime reached, 
and the branches were so loaded with fruit, long before the time 
of maturing, that the ends were resting on the ground; the fruit 
