178 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Profitable Pear Trees. 
A gentleman near Vicksburg, Miss., recently 
sold fruit from two hundred and fifty pear trees, 
occupying about two-and-a-half acres of land, to 
the amount of five thousand dollars, in a single 
season. They were packed in boxes, holding 
about three pecks each, and sold for four dollars a 
box. The varieties were principally the Bartlett, 
and the Beurre Diel, and each box contained from 
four-and-a-half to five dozen pears. The fruit on 
a single tree sold for eighty dollars. 
An amateur in the same vicinity, sold last sea¬ 
son from a single tree planted ten years ago, one 
hundred and twenty dollars worth of fruit. The 
variety was the Beurre d’Amalis, and the quanti¬ 
ty twenty-six boxes, of seven to eight dozen 
each. Two years ago, the same tree produced 
twenty-five boxes, when it had been planted but 
eight years. It bears only in alternate years. He 
had many other trees of the same age hearing from 
five to fifteen boxes. It is needless to say that 
these trees had careful culture, and a plenty of 
food. [The above item is from the pen of an As¬ 
sociate who has been at the South since last Au¬ 
tumn. He lias been successful above many others 
in growing pears in New-England, and is justly 
entitled to speak enthusiastically of the value ol 
pears as a paying fruit. But so far as our obser¬ 
vations have extended over the country general¬ 
ly, we can not commend the culture of pears as 
certain to he a safe and sure paying crop. They of¬ 
ten do well, and pay well, and no one should fail 
to try them on a small scale for home use at least. 
But to depend upon the growth of pears for a 
livelihood or a fortune is, to say the least, a 
hazardous enterprise—with the great majority of 
persons. Great crops, like those referred to above, 
are by no means uncommon, but they are noted 
more as an exception than as results to be gener¬ 
ally looked for.— Ed ] 
To obtain Fruit from Barren Trees. 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist: 
I wish to describe to you a method of making 
fruit trees bear that I blundered on to. Some 
fifteen years ago I had a small apple tree that 
leaned considerably. I drove a stake by it, tied a 
string to a limb and fastened it to the stake : 
The next year that limb blossomed full, and not 
another blossom appeared on the tree, and as 
Tim Bunker said, “ it sot me a thinking,” and I 
came to the conclusion that the string was so 
tight, that it prevented the sap returning to the 
roots ; consequently, it formed fruit buds, flay¬ 
ing a couple of pear trees that were large enough 
to bear but that had never blossomed, I took a 
coarse twine, wound it several times around the 
tree above the lower limbs, and tied it as tight as 
I could. The next Spring all the top above the 
cord, blossomed as white as a sheet, and there was 
not one blossom below where the cord was tied. 
A neighbor seeing my trees loaded with pears, 
used tiiis method with the same result. I have 
since tried the experiment on several trees, al¬ 
ways with the same result. I think it a much bet¬ 
ter way than cutting off the roots. In early Sum¬ 
mer, say June or Joly, wind a strong twine sever¬ 
al times round the tree, or a single limb, and tie it, 
the tighter the better, and you will be pleased with 
the result: the next Winter or Spring the cord 
may he taken off. James R. Russell. 
Trumbull Co., 0. 
Remarks. —The above plan is similar in effect to 
“ringing the grape vine,” described in the Decem¬ 
ber Agriculturist, Vol. 17. It is frequently made 
use of by fruit groweis to hasten the bearing of 
young trees. Wire is sometimes used, but it must 
be removed before the next season’s growth, or 
it cuts into and deforms the tree or branch : on 
this account the lead wire spoken of on page 212 
of last volume will be preferable, because it 
compresses the bark sufficiently, but yields in 
length, and finally breaks with the increased 
growth.—E d. 
-«o>~«--*-©*- 
Labels on Fruit Trees. 
The labels generally attached to trees and 
plants when sold from the nurseries, are not de¬ 
signed to remain permanently upon them. The 
twine will soon rot off, or the wire cut through 
the hark, if the tree grows, or he so deeply im¬ 
bedded that it can not begot out without injury 
to the tree. At the very first leisure, after the 
hurry of planting, zinc, or other indestructible 
labels, should be made and applied. To make a 
cheap and lasting label, take a strip of thin sheet 
zinc, about four inches long, and three-fourths of 
an inch wide at one end and tapering to the other 
end. Write the name on the broadest part, and 
bend the narrow part around a small branch, and 
it will expand as fast as the growing tree requires. 
To make the ink : “ Take of verdigris and sal-am¬ 
moniac each 2 drachms ; lampblack, 1 dr.; water 
four ozs.; to he well mixed in a mortar, adding 
the water gradually. Keep the ink in a vial with 
a glass stopper.” In writing, use a quill pen, 
shaking up the ink well before using. If thor¬ 
oughly dried before being exposed, the writing 
will last a dozen years and often much longer. 
A label got up by B. K. Bliss, of Mass., the ex¬ 
act size of which is here shown, is very neat in 
appearance, and durable. It resembles a locket 
made of zinc, the face being covered with transpar¬ 
ent mica. A slip of paper with the name of the 
tree printed or written upon it is placed under 
the mica, an 1 the edges of the zinc brought down 
closely around it, to hold it tight and exclude wa¬ 
ter. A small ring is attached, by which the label 
may be suspended from the tree with wire. They 
are perhaps too expensive for general use as they 
cost some $4 per hundred. 
A substitute for labels of every kind, is to keep 
an accurate map of one’s orchard or fruit garden, 
in which the name and position of every tree are 
carefully recorded. 
Trees and their Insect Enemies—Mistaken 
STotions. 
1. It is a mistake to suppose that digging up 
the grass for a foot or eighteen inches around an 
old apple-tree, does it any material good. That 
amount of loose soil about tho stem of a newly 
planted young tree, would be of much service. 
It would enable the air and moisture to penetrate 
to the roots, and it would prevent the soil from 
being exhausted of the food which the young roots 
needed. But where are the roots of a full-grown 
apple tree 1 At least, ten or fifteen feet, away 
from the trunk. The great arteries, to De sure, 
are nearer, but the smaller roots, the fibrous 
net-work of spongioles with their thousand hun¬ 
gry mouths are off, a full rod or more ; and they 
laugh (if, indeed, they do not weep,) at the man 
who thinks he is helping them while grubbing 
away around the old trunk I* As well might one 
think that he is feeding his horse, by simply rub¬ 
bing his back with nn ear of corn ! 
2. It is another mistake to suppose that cotton¬ 
wadding tied round the trunks and limbs of plum 
and cherry-trees, prevents the ascent of the cur- 
culio. “But my paper said it would,” exclaims 
an indignant subscriber. Indeed ! but we are sor¬ 
ry to say that mistakes will sometimes get into 
the newspapers, as surely as the “ Grand Turk ” 
will get into the plum-trees, and there's no sov¬ 
ereign remedy yet discovered for either afflic¬ 
tion. “But teli us how the eureulio finds his way 
into the trees 1” Not by crawling only, else the 
cotton would stop his travels ; but he has a good 
pair of wings and knows liovv to use them, and 
so he flies to the forbidden fruit without let or 
hindrance from the great southern staple. 
American. Fruits—Past and Present- -IV- 
BY LEWIS F. ALLEN, ERIE CO., N. Y. 
(Continued from page 147.) 
TIIE QUINCE. 
This is a valuable fruit to all nice housekeepers 
who pride themselves in the possession of a 
choice marmalade, or a delicious preserve with 
which to regale their friends at tire evening tea- 
table, and to that extent is worthy of cultivation 
by those who can succeed with it, or rear it for 
market. Throughout the Atlantic States, north 
of the Potomac, next to the sea-board, and in 
New-York, extending to its farthest western 
boundary, in many a warm and sheltered spot., 
under the protection of fences and buildings, and 
in some severely exposed places it flourished and 
bore fruit in profusion until a few years ago—but 
in very many less places now. In the small lake 
valleys of western New-York, the Genesee 
country, and near Lake Ontario, on to the shores 
of Erie, in good situations it thrived and bore 
wonderfully. Specimens of a pound in weight 
were frequent, and half to three-'fourths of a 
pound common. I had a tree that for an average 
of sixteen years, paid me the interest of a hundred 
dollars annually. But it is so no longer. Thousands 
of vigorous, middle-aged, bearing quince trees 
have bit the dust within the last few years. The 
extraordinary cold of three or four unusually 
hard winters, commencing five years ago, first 
pierced their vitals ; simultaneously the borer at¬ 
tacked them, for which there was no apparent re¬ 
medy in either case, and the trees are—dead. I 
saw quinces selling for three dollars a bushel in 
market, last fall, that would not have brought 
fifty cents five years ago—hardly worth the gift. 
There is a nostrum for the borer, however, as 
there was for the plum, as I have related, and by 
the same party: “Take a knitting needle, or a piece 
of sharp-pointed wire, run into the hole made by 
lhe worm, and punch him t.o death !” Now, it. so 
happens that this worm hardly ever goes straight 
into the tree, but when once a lodgment is effect¬ 
ed, he turns upward or sideways, preying upon 
the soft sap-wood just under the bark, and works 
at his leisure, filling up the track behind him with 
woody excrement, as impenetrable to the wire as 
the wood itself. I have followed him with the 
hawk bill of a pruning knife half round the body 
of a tree three or four inches in diameter, before 
I dislodged him ; and it is useless to say that the 
effort to find him, cutting the way to him, was quite 
