AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
911 
Enemies of the Pear Tree. 
We refer now not to those who write against 
the pear tree—and we confess that our own oc¬ 
casional ill success in its cultivation tempts us to 
throw our quill at it now and then—but we allude 
to the unintelligent enemies which infest its bark 
and leaves and fruit. And, enough for this time if 
we speak only of the slimy slug which attacks 
the leaf. It pounces upon your trees all at once ; 
suddenly, before you are aware, the leaves are 
riddled, the soft part of the leaf is eaten up, leav¬ 
ing only the net-work, resembling a piece of loose 
gauze. The slug is about a quarter of an inch 
long, dark brown, slimy, and shaped like a tad¬ 
pole. 
Every fruit grower should inspect his trees 
frequently during the months of June and July, 
and as soon as the slugs appear he should be 
armed and equipped to give them a warm welcome. 
Prepare a loose bag of coarse cotton cloth, putin 
two quarts of air-slacked lime or fresh ashes, 
fasten the bag to the end of a ten-foot pole, and 
in the morning, when the dew is on the leaves, 
raise the bag over the infested trees, and give the 
pole a few raps with a mallet, moving the bag 
about among the leaves until every slug gets his 
breakfast; they will want no dinner. Five min¬ 
utes’ work will answer for each tree. For 
dwarf pears and young standards, diluted whale 
oil soap applied with a broom, sprinkling-pot, or 
better, a hand-syringe with a sprinkler at the end, 
will answer an excellent purpose. As the depre¬ 
dations of the slug are confined almost wholly to 
the upper surface of the leaf, there is little need 
of the garden-syringe with upturned nose, ex¬ 
cept on trees beyond the reach of the watering- 
pot. 
Ravages upon Trees by Mice. 
Under the above head, a writer in the N. Y. 
Observer says : “ Our vinery (a cold house) has suf¬ 
fered very much this Winter from their attacks, 
some of our best vines, two inches in diameter, 
having been cut clean off about four inches under 
the soil. Before laying down the vines I took 
precaution to guard against their attacks by wrap¬ 
ping sheets of tin around the lower part of the 
vines, as far down in the soil as the roots would 
allow, but all to no purpose, as they cut the main 
stem off below where the roots put out into the 
soil I have tried every remedy I could think of 
to get rid of them, but to very little purpose. 
They will not touch poison in any shape, and they 
scarce ever come to the surface of the ground, 
so that we might catch them with traps. The 
drainage of our border affords them a secure re¬ 
treat and nesting place, and consequently they are 
always on hand to trouble us, and our border be¬ 
ing light and porous, they work through it with 
ease. Can anything be done or applied to keep 
them off, or could any composition be mixed with 
the soil close to the stems that would be offensive 
to them, or how can their ravages be prevented ?” 
This is a new case, but not at all surprising, 
after the havoc made among our own trees, and 
shrubbery, by the mice, during the Winter of 
1855-6', where they did us injuries, both in number 
and extent, which can never be repaired. That 
Winter, we apprehend, has scarcely been equaled 
in the memory of man, for the extent of damage 
done to fruit trees by the field mouse; and no 
sooner had it been ascertained, and told of, than 
the agricultural and other presses, from the Bay of 
Fundy down to Opelousas, were running over with 
all sorts of specifics to prevent the mice afore¬ 
said, or those which might come after them, from 
repeating the mischief. And not a single one of 
these nostrums, detailed with so much confidence, 
would be worth a copper to either prevent or 
repair the damages such as we saw and suf¬ 
fered. 
We care not to repeat them here, for many of 
them have been repeated annually in almanacs, 
and receipt-books, and newspapers, ever since we 
were old enough to read, and in given cases may 
do well enough. But damages of such extraordi¬ 
nary kind as then occurred, no possible foresight 
or ingenuity could guard against. The mice gir¬ 
dled our trees six feet above the ground, where 
the snow-drift encircled them—even out on to the 
extremities of the limbs ; and from the crutch of 
the trees down to six or eight inches below the 
surface, cutting off roots as large as our thumb, 
so that when the frost left the ground in the Spring, 
the trees fell out, sharpened at the ground end like 
a bean-pole shaped for sticking. Such extraordi¬ 
nary ravages as these may be set down with “fire, 
pestilence and famine,” intended to root out and 
destroy, beyond the precaution of man, his long 
cherished labors and loves. 
Treading down the snow, piling up earth round 
the roots, wrapping tin or sheet-lead about the 
trunks, may do very well in ordinary times, but in 
such extremities as we have witnessed, and as are 
above detailed, it is hard either to guess that they 
will again occur, or to devise a preventive. 
Where do the mice come from 1 In June, per¬ 
haps, you can scarcely find a field-mouse in the 
fields. In November they will be in thousands, 
and with a light, feathery, early snow, lasting all 
Winter, you will find myriads of them in the 
Spring, and almost every living thing, of grass, 
herbage, and trees, thoroughly cut up and girdled, 
when the ground becomes bare ! 
The damage having occured, how is it to be re¬ 
paired, asks every one 1 Some, with more of 
theory than practice, recommend inserting young 
scions into the separated barks, above and below 
the girdling, thus tying the barks together, and 
so repairing the tree by a new connection of the 
sap vessels. Such a plan is indeed plausible, 
and has been now and then apparently success¬ 
ful. but it is of little account; for although it 
will connect the sap vessels together, and keep 
the tree alive, the denuded wood is perfectly 
dead, and in a few years will rot away, the 
young scions, although they may grow, will 
never unite side by side, to make a solid trunk ; 
and in a few years more the tree will break off 
and die. Some trees, when the entire bark is not 
cut off, will still grow, and if only a thin film re¬ 
main, so that the sap will circulate through, may 
finally recover. Such has been the case frequent¬ 
ly, and by the application of various unguents, 
the tree has lived, while the parties applying them, 
not knowing that the film of bark was left, but 
supposing the girdling had been complete, notified 
the world that they had restored completely gir¬ 
dled trees by their applications ! They were only 
mistaken as to the fact, in supposing that their ap¬ 
plications had restored the bark, when in reality 
the entire bark had not been destroyed, and 
would have recovered without the application. 
We never knew a completely dissevered bark 
restored—indeed, it is physically impossible that 
it can be. No new bark can grow from bare 
wood. The bark is as much a distinct organ of 
life as the leaf itself, and no other distinct part of 
the organization of the tree can supply its place. 
We would gladly relieve the complainant above, 
in relation to his grape vines, but unless he ex¬ 
terminates the mice beforehand, or stops his 
drains, so that they no longer afford a retreat for 
the vermin, we not see that we can help him. In 
the case of all such destruction, when it is known 
to be fatal, our best advice is to root out the 
plants, be they what they may, and replant others 
in their place. A radical injury of that kind is 
scarcely ever to be recovered by tinkering. 
----■» »».. i » - 
The Failure of Young Eruit Trees. 
The complaint is often made by farmers and 
other fruit-growers, that their trees do not suc¬ 
ceed. They look well when first received from 
the nursery, but soon many of them begin to 
droop, some become stunted, and others die. 
The planter gets discouraged ; he blames the nur¬ 
seryman, or he thinks that his soil and exposure 
are unsuitable for trees, or he concludes that 
there is some mystery in fruit-raising which he 
cannot master ; so that, on the whole, the busi¬ 
ness falls into bad repute with him. Happily, this 
is not the experience of all; but it is with not a 
few, and for them we now wish to say a few 
words 
Dear unfortunates, how did you plant your 
trees 1 Perhaps the nurseryman was in haste 
when he took them up for you, and he cut the 
roots rather short. That was to be regretted, but 
did you try to mend the matter by shortening the 
tops a little, before planting, so as to restore the 
balance between the limbs and roots'? And did 
you pare off the ends of the bruised roots with a 
sharp knife, so that they might heal over rapidly ? 
The trees, as they grow in the nursery, had the 
advantage of an excellent soil. The cultivator 
was run often between the rows, and the hoe fol¬ 
lowed after, keeping the ground light and clean. 
Insects were not allowed to harbor in the bush or 
foliage, and the pruning knife, skillfully used, kept 
the trees in good habit of growth. Now, how 
has your treatment compared with this ? You 
set some of your trees in tough, green sward, 
making a hole just large enough to crowd the 
roots in, throwing back the sod upon them, 
and ramming it down with the heel of your boot. 
“But we set some of them in plowed land, and 
they did only a little better.” Yes, in plowed 
land, but without manuring the soil, and then you 
planted corn in the same field, so that the trees 
were soon overtopped and smothered by the corn. 
Tour plowman, moreover, was careless in doing 
his work, for he allowed his horses to run over 
the trees, and his whiffle-trees to bark them. 
You should, also, have tied up your trees, the 
first year, to stakes with withes of straw, to 
prevent their being blown about by the winds. 
It should never be forgotten that trees, like ani¬ 
mals, need good food and care, in order to prosper. 
Remove well-fed stock from the barn and compel 
them to pick up their living by the road-side, and 
they will show the change in their condition at once. 
So with trees. Take them from the well-tilled 
nursery and set them in sterile soil, in naked fields, 
exposed to bitter winds, and where their trunks 
will be barked and their limbs broken by horses 
and cattle, and where they will receive little or 
no cultivation, it is no wonder that they should 
often fail. We had almost said they ought to fail; 
the farmer does not deserve to succeed if he takes 
so little care of his trees. 
Now, to conclude our exhortation, we counsel 
unsuccessful planters to read the papers and books 
which treat of tree culture, and to visit their 
neighbors whose fruit orchards prosper. Ask these 
men the secret of their success. Undoubtedly 
you will find that there is no great mystery about 
it, and that all your trees need is a little more 
skill and care on the part of their owner. 
