1863 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
113 
busliels of -wheat are running away in this man¬ 
ner ? Hints thrown out by the Agriculturist about 
saving manure, led me to look into my own sys¬ 
tem of making a return to the laud for what had 
been taken off. I thought of the rich stream 
that was flowing from the barn yard through a 
ditch that had been dugiuto a field, for the pur¬ 
pose of drying the yard, which was not only a 
waste, but was also spoiling a piece of good land 
along the ditch, where little but weeds would 
grow. To remedy the evil, I made a pond near¬ 
ly as long as the width of the yard, twelve feet 
wide, and eighteen inches deep. With the 
coarsest dirt I threw up a bank on the lowest 
side; the remainder was thrown in the pond 
again. The yard has inclination enough to run 
the liquid into the pond, and as fast as anj- li¬ 
quid makes its appearance there, I throw in any 
kind of muck, good soil, rubbish, chip dirt, leaves 
from the woods, etc.” Where notliingbetter can 
be devised, such an arrangement as this will add 
many loads of the best manure to the amount 
that should be used on thousands of farms. 
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Fig. 1. 
Some Observations on the Plum Knot. 
BY C. F. AUSTIN. 
This disease is not produced, as many sup¬ 
pose, by that great bugbear the curculio, nor by 
any insect whatever ; neither is it a “ cankerous 
disease produced by vitiated sap,” as some 
imagine, but is simply a fungus, which, germi¬ 
nating on the bark of the plum or cherry tree, 
penetrates to the wood, and increasing rapidly 
in size, ruptures and displaces the bark, sooh 
forming an irregular naked excrescence, six 
inches or more long by about one-half inch 
in width. Its fungoid character was detected 
more than 40 years ago, by L. D. von Schwei- 
nitz, a renowned botanist of Pennsylvania, and 
described in his “ Synopsis Fungorum Caroliniance 
Superiwis ,” under the name of Spliceria morbosa. 
Yet it is evident, from his remarks in his “ Second 
Observations on Fungi,” (published in Trans. 
Philos. Soc., Phila.) in 1832, that he had never ex¬ 
amined the excrescence further than to find its 
fungoid character, and seems to have held the 
idea that it was produced by the joint action of 
a fungus and an insect. That it is a fungus is 
evident to any one acquainted with this class 
of plants. Even the sub-genus to which it be¬ 
longs may be readily determined without the 
aid of a lens, and its habit is so different from 
that of galls, that it is to be presumed no per¬ 
son who is accustomed to watch the operations 
of insects would pronounce it an insect-gall. It 
always appears on wood at least one, and sel¬ 
dom on that less than two years old, and always 
ruptures the bark or cuticle, and exposes itself 
to the influence of air and light: while, on the 
other hand, galls always appear on the present 
season’s growth, and possess a covering formed 
from the cuticle of the plant upon which they 
grow, by cell multiplication. Their internal 
Fig. 2. 
substance is formed directly from those cells 
existing at the time it was stung by the insect. 
In the Plum Knot the case is entirely different; 
its substance originates (covering and all) from 
a spore, such as is represented in Fig. 3. One 
of these spores, under favorable circumstances, 
when attached to the bark of the plum or 
cherry, divides itself into two cells, each of 
these into two or four, and each of these again 
into two or four others, and so on until very 
quickly a large tumor is formed, which oc¬ 
cupies the place of the bark which it has forc¬ 
ed off. How deeply it penetrates the wood, 
my limited observations do not reveal. I 
have not found it extending to the pith, but it 
penetrates the present and, sometimes at least, 
the former season’s growth, splitting it up into 
bundles that are frequently widely separated 
from each other by the loose cellular tissue 
which this parasite, by its own proper growth, 
has thrust between them, appropriating their 
sap, and arresting their growth. They make 
their appearance from May until October, and 
at a certain stage of their existence become 
thickly covered on their outer surface with 
perithecia, (spore cases,) which, though small, 
are quite distinct to the naked eye. Fig. 1 re¬ 
presents a magnified cross-section of a diseased 
branch. (In this figure the dark lines and shad¬ 
ed portion, except at B, represent the fun¬ 
gus ; while the white portions represent the 
proper wood of the branch.) A, perithecia, 
(spore or seed bearing organs): some of them 
cut longitudinally, showing the cavity in the 
upper part, which contains the spores. B, old 
bark. G, the present year’s growth unaffected 
by the fungus. D, D, the same affected, the 
fungus penetrating it and splitting it up into 
bundles. E, previous year’s growth, unaffected. 
F, pith, unaffected. 
The perithecia (A) are of a shiny black color, 
oblong—club-shaped, or bud-shaped, with the 
sfyex at first rounded, then flattened, and after¬ 
ward depressed: soon a little hole appears in the 
center, which increases in size until finally they 
become cup-shaped (fig. 2 and fig. 1, A). In the 
upper part there is a round cavity filled with a 
white substance composed of 
asci (spore sacs), fig. 3; these 
are club-shaped and contain 
several oblong spores as re¬ 
presented in the figure. The 
asci are mixed with a glutin¬ 
ous and filamentous substance. 
Some of the perithecia have 
very numerous smaller elliptic¬ 
al spores (fig. 4), which do not 
appear to be contained in sacs; 
these are considered by botan¬ 
ists as the antheridia, or male spores of the fungus. 
Fig. 3. 
Remedy. —This deadly disease, can be more eas¬ 
ily eradicated than any other we are acquaint¬ 
ed with. Let every person having plum or 
cherry trees, attend to cutting off and burning 
the excresences two or three times each year—. 
say in June, July and September, always being 
careful to eradicate every particle of the fungus, 
for if a solitary uninjured cell of it be left, it 
will rapidly increase by multiplication exactly 
as if it were a spore, and will soon break out 
again. In the mean time let the trunks and 
larger branches of the trees be thoroughly scrub¬ 
bed with strong brine, say twice during the 
season to destroy any spores that may have 
lodged on the bark, and at the end of three 
years this pest will have become almost literally 
exterminated. After that it can easily be kept 
down with proper care. 
I believe it does not exist in Europe, and in 
this country is confined almost exclusively to 
cultivated species of the plum and cherry; and 
as long as the practice so common in this coun¬ 
try of depending upon the suckers to keep up a 
supply of these fruit trees is continued, we may 
eradicate this disease, but another will surely 
come in its place, and doubtless one that it will 
be impossible to get rid of without returning to 
a more rational method for our stock of trees. 
It is a notorious fact that not a single race of 
cultivated plants in this country is ever perma¬ 
nently injured by any disease either of insects, 
fungi, or the rot, that has not for a long time 
been propagated by some method other than 
the seed, to a greater or less extent. Mature ab¬ 
hors imbeciles and sickly creatures, and has her 
troops of obedient servants in all parts of the 
earth which she employs to remove them from 
her sight. Let us remember that all her pur¬ 
poses are fashioned by the highest Wisdom. 
I have never seen this fungus upon our native 
species of the plum and cherry, except in old 
fence-rows where they had 
become sickly through re¬ 
peated attempts to extermin¬ 
ate them with the bush-liook, 
and where the suckers would 
still persist in encumbering 
the ground, though they had 
so far degenerated as to be incapable of assum¬ 
ing one-tenth of their normal size. In such 
places I have seen it on all our species except 
the Beach-plum, which is probably protected 
by the salt atmosphere peculiar to its locality. 
These excresences split up the bark of the 
tree, forming admirable places in which insects 
may deposit their eggs, and which they are not 
slow to discover; but out of scores of speci¬ 
mens examined, I have not been able to find 
either their eggs, or lame, except in old aud 
partially effete ones; yet that they themselves 
are subject to the depredations of insects, I 
have not the slightest doubt; it would be a 
wonder were this not the case. 
Are Earth Worms Injurious? 
A. Beebe, Medina Co., O., writes to the Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist as follows: “In three instances 
where my garden had been treated freely with 
stable and barn-yard manure for a series of 
years, and thoroughly worked—never when too 
wet—angle worms, in a measure, destroyed its 
productiveness, and added more than twenty¬ 
fold to the labor of working it. In the spring 
plowing and spading, I have often plowed up 
and thrown out bunches of angle worms near¬ 
ly as large as a man’s double fist, where there 
was not as much as a spoonful of dirt among 
them. I think that all over my garden, the 
weight of the worms was fully equal to the 
weight of one-twentieth part of all land stirred 
by the plow. The land would plow moderate¬ 
ly mellow, with some lumps. But three days 
