THE RURAL W E W-Y0 R KER 
o 
with a piece of cloth is also effectual. Acting 
on the same principle, I have always recom¬ 
mended, for the protection of any tender tree 
or shrub during the winter, that the protection 
be placed on the south and east sides of it, iu 
preference to the north or west sides. It is 
not the severe freezing which injures the tree, 
but the sudden thawing of a portion of the sur¬ 
face which works the mischief, as I have al¬ 
ready intimated. 
The pear blight proper is no new disease. It 
has been noticed and described at different 
periods duriug the past 150 years. Heretofore 
it seems to have prevailed but for a few suc¬ 
cessive years at the most, iu any one locality, 
while during the years of its absence, the trees 
have become vigorous aud fruitful. This fact 
alone is sufficient to prove that it is not pro¬ 
duced by climatic iutluences, and that it is en¬ 
tirely distinct, from the frozen sap blight, 
which is liable to appear after any unusually 
mild fall, which chances to be followed by a 
severe winter. It is also, as already intimated, 
distinct, in its appearing later in the season, 
frequently as late as August, or even in Sep¬ 
tember, after the fruit is partially or fully 
formed. The progress of this blight is usually 
rapid, so that iu a very few days after the first 
indications of it are discovered, the leaves be¬ 
come blackened, and die, without any previous 
withering, and the wood becomes shriveled, 
dry and hard, so that it is difficult to cut it 
with a knife, and there is none of that fetid 
smell in either the wood or bark, which usual¬ 
ly accompanies the sap blight. A careful ob¬ 
server will rarely be at a loss to determine to 
which class any particular case of blight prop¬ 
erly belongs. I am aware that pomologists 
have heretofore been quite inclined to attri¬ 
bute the latter form of blight which 1 have 
described, to the work of an insect, which 
some have even attempted to describe. But as 
that theory seems now to be pretty generally 
abandoned, I will not occupy space hy repeat¬ 
ing what I have so recently said iu regard to 
it, in the Rural of March 22. 
Mr. Batcham assumes “ the fact as estab¬ 
lished. that the blight is of a fungus nature.” 
This, I submit, is adopting a theory “not 
fully sustained by the facts.” He admits that 
the theory is not new, but believes " it has uot 
been distinctly slated before.” By examining 
the Report of the U. 8. Department of Agri¬ 
culture for 1872, at page 188, he will find an 
article on pear tree blight, by *' Thomas Tay¬ 
lor, Microscopist,” in which the theory is dis¬ 
tinctly stated, and the article lias the merit of 
giving evidence of careful study and patient, 
scientific investigation. And yet he falls into 
the too common error of confounding the sev¬ 
eral terms, frozen sap blight, leaf blight, summer 
blight, twig blight, etc., some of which I claim 
are entirely distinct. To quote bis own words, 
he says : *‘ My experience leads me to suppose 
that the pear blight is a local fungus fermenta¬ 
tion of the genus Torula, aud which may be 
developed under any one of a uumber of caus¬ 
es.” These causes he specifies to some extent. 
Now this fungus theory, although seemingly 
founded on careful, microscopic examination, 
under varied circumstances, is still not put 
forth by him with auy great degree of positive- 
uess, as the language I have quoted will show. 
Undoubtedly he discovered, in some cases, 
fungi in the diseased parts of the tree, as he 
asserts, yet they were not always thus dis¬ 
covered, for he admits that he “ failed to find 
any fungi inhabiting those portions of the 
blighted bark, which seemed deficient in albu¬ 
minous matter.” And even if there were no 
exceptions of this kind, is it certain that the 
fungi originate the disease ? May it not be 
that the fungi are only one of its consequences ? 
By many it haB been claimed that the black- 
knot disease which blights our plum and cherry 
trees is of fungoid origin, while others have 
argued with equal pertinacity that it is caused 
by an insect, because the larva of the cureulio 
or other iuscet is often found in them, the in¬ 
sect having punctured the excrescence with its 
ovipositor while it was in the soft or spongy 
state. But Dr. Bitch, our N. Y. State Ento¬ 
mologist, after careful investigation, arrives 
at the conclusion that “these excrescences are 
not of insect origin, and are not a vegetable 
fungus, but are properly a disease of the tree, 
in muny respects analagous to the cancer in 
the human body." 
Now, may not the opinion of this learned 
entomologist, furnish us with a key to the so¬ 
lution of the vexed question as to the cause of 
the pear blight ? May we not well consider 
that, also, to be a disease of a cancerous na¬ 
ture, spreading and extending, and causing 
ultimate death, if uot checked in, its progress ? 
The fact that the most certain remedy yet dis¬ 
covered is the prompt and thorough excision 
of all the affected parts, would seem to give 
color to that view of the matter. Tbe theory 
seems certainly more plausible than either the 
fungoid or the insect theory. The twig blight 
of which I spoke in my recent article, by its 
not extending downward, thereby affeetiug the 
matured wood, shows itself to be laeklug in 
that cancerous character which so generally 
marks the pear blight. 
Oneida Co., N. Y., March 25. 
lortiraltural, 
HOW I PLANTED MELONS. 
The difficulty iu startiug melon, squash and 
cucumber seeds early, is in getting the ground 
warm enough to force an early growth. Mar¬ 
ket gardeners grow cucumbers in hot-beds 
where the soil is heated by steam pipes, and in 
such circumstances the vines thrive luxuriant¬ 
ly. I have sometimes made a deep hole where 
the seed was to be planted, filled it two-thirds 
full of coarse manure and then put enough fine 
earth to even it with the surface and make a 
good seed-bed. The manure ferments and 
furnishes beat early, but it is apt to become 
excessively dry late in the season and thus 
prove a positive injury. This spring I thought 
I would try au experiment. Digging a hole 
not so deep as usual, I filled it partly with fine 
manure mixed with earth and on this ! 6tre\vcd 
some good unleached ashes to liberate tbe am¬ 
monia, which it did quite freely. Then I poured 
in a quart or more of water as nearly at the 
boiling point as I could get it, covered quickly 
with fine rich earth to the depth of two or 
three inches, and in this I planted the melon 
seeds. Of course, this heat will rise, aud if 
uuchecked, be radiated from the surface, but 
I provided against that by covering the hill, or 
rather the place where the seed was planted, 
with a shingle. This serves in part to keep 
the grouud moist and warm during cool nights. 
Of course, the covering will be removed before 
the plants are np. 
The effect of this hot water will, I think, be 
manifest through the Beason. It takes a long 
time for the sun to warm the earth downward, 
as the natural tendency of heat is the other 
way. The water was purposely made hot in 
order that less might be required. Possibly a 
better way would be to dig a much deeper hole 
and place in the bottom some heated stones. 
Burying stones is often an economical way of 
getting rid of them, and if they can be heated 
very hot aud buried where some plant needing 
much heat is to grow, two good purposes will 
be accomplished with little extra expense. 
The effect of ashes on highly ammoniated 
manure may be objected to, I used hen ma¬ 
nure aud though partially mixed with caglh 
before the ashes were put on, there was a per¬ 
ceptible Bmell of ammonia, showing that some 
was escaping. But I am sure that much more 
was absorbed by the earth in contact with the 
manure. So soon as the hot water was put on 
and the whole covered with dry earth, all smell 
of ammonia ceased. Ye.t the effect of the 
potash in liberating ammonia was going on 
the same as before, and probably more rapidly 
from the effect of the heat. The result is, that 
uuder the hill the roots of the melous will revel 
in the richest kind of plaut food. It is proba¬ 
ble that being covered up from air and light, 
the potash and ammonia will form a nitrate of 
potash, one of the very best manures for auy 
plaut. In fact, I used the ashes so as to econo¬ 
mize manure. Two or three shovelfuls of 
rich manure on ground already rich from fre¬ 
quent manuring, are a waste for a hill of melons 
or cucumbers. By no possibility can the 
plants need so much, and we only apply this 
superfluous quantity because it is better to 
waste some than have the plants suffer a lack. 
Thus we waste fertilizers which are always 
scarce aud needed elsewhere, because they are 
not in shape to be UBed. I never put so little 
manure uuder melon and cucumber hills be¬ 
fore ; but I have no doubt that the vines will 
be as thrifty as usual. 
Plants which have been forced as above de¬ 
scribed, should be protected after they are up 
by square boxes over the hills which should be 
covered at night to retain the heat. The boxes 
may be kept on until the plants are nearly 
ready to run, by which time the weather will 
be warm enough for them to grow rapidly in 
the open air. w. J. e. 
Monroe Co., N. Y. 
-- 
NATURAL HYBRIDIZING. 
Some thirty years 6ince while visiting in the 
south part of Albany County, N. Y., I was pre¬ 
sented with some very large white pale or 
climbing beanB, a kind I have never seen in 
market. I was much pleased with the produce 
from them. A friend visiting the fair of the 
American Institute of New York a few years 
after, obtained a dozen of the beans called the 
“London Horticultural.” He thought them a 
new variety hut they were known to me as the 
Cranberry Bean.” From these I planted one 
hill at the eDd of a row of my pet whites, but 
did not think enough of them to save any of 
the produce. The next season I was surprised 
to see the blossoms of my beaus, which were 
before of a snowy white, mixed in with bright 
scarlet ones and the beans mixed nearly one 
half with beans of the same size aud shape as 
the whiteB, but in color delicately mottled with 
purple on a dark, nearly black, ground. This 
was accompanied with an increased yield but 
no change in flavor. I have occasionally 
raised them since, but they dwindle in produce 
and are now nearly seven-eighths colored. 
I raise a few watermelons for family use and 
always save seeds from the best, and when I 
plant I take all the seeds I have, and mix them, 
plant what I want and save the rest till next 
year, so that some of the seeds are likely to be 
quite old. I often had melons with white cores 
and black seeds, but think I never saved seeds 
from them, but am not sure. My melons were 
generally small with red cores and dark-brown 
seeds. I never saw white seeds till this past 
year when all my melons were cither large or 
of good size, all white seeds, red cores, skin 
delicately striped or clouded witli green and 
milky white, melons weighiug 20 to 35 pounds 
and of excellent flavor. There being no other 
melons within 100 rods for years before, I must 
conclude that there is much benefit from the 
mixing of seeds, or that Naturehas taken special 
pains to improve my melons. S. B. Peck. 
- *-.»-*- 
WEEVIL-EATEN PEAS. 
Some time ago we noticed a short article in a 
contemporary in which the writer pronounced 
weevil-eaten peas utterly worthless for seeding 
purposes. Later we read in an article by Prof. 
Riley a statement entirely contradictory of the 
above, saying that such peas would grow al¬ 
most as well as sound ones. 
To satisfy ourselves on this point we selected 
70 weevil-eaten peas and carefully planted 
them. Of these 70 peas only one. grew, pro¬ 
ducing a very sickly plant, so we cannot en¬ 
dorse Prof. Riley’s statement in regard to the 
vitality of such peas. Sometimes the embryo 
is injured, at others uot; but it stands to rea¬ 
son that though the plumule should be un¬ 
touched the vitality of the peas must necessa¬ 
rily be weakened, as a considerable portion of 
the nourishing matter in the cotyledons is eat¬ 
en away. 
The pea weevil, Bruchus pisi, is a very small 
beetle only about one-tenth of an inch in length. 
It pierces the pod and deposits its eggs in the 
peas within as soon as these are formed. The 
larva is footless and lives within the pea, feed¬ 
ing on the rich juices ; though very small, it is 
large enough to be readily seen with the naked 
eye. By the time the peas ripen it eats through 
the 6eed coats, and, remaining iu its cell, as¬ 
sumes the pupa state. During the winter it 
changes to the imago, and on the arrival of 
spring leaves the pea, mates, and is ready to 
begin its destructive work as soon as the young 
peas begin to form. 
pairu |jusbaitkg. 
CREAM-RAISING. 
L. S. HARDIN. 
Like Brother Bliss, I too have received a 
pressing call to say something on the subject 
of the “ cream-rising” of Dr. Hoskins or the 
" cream raising " of Brother Bliss. One trouble 
with me in giving a learned opinion on this 
subject, is that T have written several articles 
lately wherein I expressed the opiuion that no¬ 
body had yet discovered the correct theory of 
cream “ appearing at the top of milk." It 
hardly becomes me, therefore, to settle this 
question finally and for ever, as my learned co¬ 
temporaries have done. The fact is, the theo¬ 
ries of both these gentlemen seem to possess 
so little solid matter that no man need feel op¬ 
pressed with their profundity. Now, if Mr. 
Bliss’s butter globule does not “rise," then a 
balloon doesu’t. In fact, nothing can rise, ac¬ 
cording to this philosopher. He tells us that 
“cream, in common with all other matter, is 
iuen. and cannot act or move except aB it is 
impelled by some external foree.” Why can¬ 
not the cream rise up as well as the milk go 
down ? Perhaps it is the rising of the Cream 
that causes the milk to go down. Such things 
have been. Webster, for instance, tells us that 
a fog rises from the river. Here is something 
(water) heavier than air, actually forcing its 
way np, so that it rises and compels the lighter 
air to go down. May there not be some simi¬ 
lar trouble between Bkim-milk and cream ? 
However, I am getting too profound now for 
the average dairyman, and am not exactly cer¬ 
tain I understand what I am talking about my¬ 
self. 
Mr. Bliss says he is not willing to test milk 
by the number of pounds it requires to make a 
pound of butter, because he can name Borne ob¬ 
jections to this method, as the breed of the cow, 
time since calving aud quality of feed, all tend¬ 
ing to change the quality of the milk. Theo¬ 
retically this is true, but practically outside of 
the Jersey cow—which can easily be avoided— 
it is not hard to find ten cows that yield collec¬ 
tively an average quality of milk in midsum¬ 
mer. Cows’ milk is a crazy substance at best, 
and it is a rare thing to get similar results from 
a couple of glveu sets of experiments, but the 
idea of weighiug the skimmed milk, as Mr. Bliss 
says he does, to determine whether or not the 
milk is fully creamed, strikes me as the most 
impracticable of all methods. Is not the skim¬ 
med milk of a Jersey heavier than that of a Hol¬ 
stein or Durham ? Is the skimmed milk of a 
cow nearly dry the same in weight as that of 
the same cow when she is fresh ? Does food 
cut no figure in the quality of skimmed milk? 
Is it possible that all these conditions affect 
the quality of the cream, but have no effect on 
the cheese quality of milk ? Mr. Bliss, you 
must prove this before we will believe it- It is 
hard at best to let go of an old practice that 
has served us long aud well. 
I must still insist that Mr. Bliss's pet theory 
of “currents" will “carry” butter down as 
well as up. A current, to use his own philoso¬ 
phy, “impels inert matter by external force.” 
so to speak. I agree with him that no process 
of “creaming milk” gets all the cream. It 
would require the nicest chemical analysis to 
accomplish this, hut at the same time there are 
few who appreciate the quantity of cream they 
daily lose by imperfect methods of setting milk. 
This, however, can readily he discovered by a 
few experiments in different methods of set¬ 
ting. Apply the test of number of poutids of 
milk to the pound of butter, and if Mr. Bliss 
does not always use the same quality of milk 
in his experiments, then how can he tell wheth¬ 
er or not by weight his skimmed milk is always 
the same ? 
I think he makes a good point on Dr. Hos¬ 
kins when he asks why butter-milk and skim¬ 
med milk should differ in quality if cream is 
only butter ungatbered. This would be a very 
simple way of disposing of the butter questiou, 
but I fear the doctor is not the appointed man 
to settle this mixed question. There are a good 
many things iu cream that even churning dues 
not get out. 
I cannot imagine how Doctor Hoskins ever 
got it into his head that any temperature, so it 
be “fixed,” would get all the cream out of 
milk. This theory certainly has the merit of 
novelty. This is bringing us around to the in¬ 
cubating theories ol egg-hatching, where a va¬ 
riation of two or three degrees in temperature 
sometimes raises more “Cain” than chickens. 
The impossibility of this theory being correct 
will appear readily to the mind of the practical 
dairyman when he remembers that milk set in 
summer in thin sheets, so that it responds to 
the slightest change of the atmosphere, will 
throw up all the cream in forty-eight hours, 
while at the same time milk Bet in large, deep 
cans that bold the milk warm and at nearly 
a fixed temperature, yields but one-half or less 
the quantity of cream. There is no theory 
about this—it is a solid fact. The larger the 
body of milk, the less variation or change in 
temperature and the less the yield of cream. I 
would risk my neck before a jury of dairymen 
on that proposition. I cannot admit that the 
doctor has made such a discovery as he seems 
to think he has; but, uuder proper conditions, 
I think bis fixed temperature theory is correct. 
If I could take the milk as soon as it comes 
from the cow, and by an instantaneous shock re¬ 
duce the temperature to 33 degrees iu a vessel 
with a small top to collect the cream, I ivould 
expect to accomplish better results than are 
now attained by any method of setting rniik. 
My notion is that Mi. Bliss and Dr. Hoskins 
are both wrong in thinking that cream does 
not come up iu shallow paus in wiuter. It does 
come up, but cream raised in a cold atmos¬ 
phere is so thin that its consistency Is little 
greater than skimmed milk, and it is, there¬ 
fore, when spread out, in such a thin layer on 
top of the milk that it is very hard to secuie 
and separate it from the skimmed milk be¬ 
low. It is a practical and not a theoretic trouble 
that meets the dairyman at this point. This is 
why I want the milk set in deep vessels. 
The fixed temperature I want also, but it 
must be a very low fixed temperature if the 
milk is set deep, li it is set shallow, then I 
should want a fixed temperature of aboutfiO, so 
that the cream would take on sufficient con¬ 
sistency to be easily secured and the milk be 
iu so thin a layer that the cream could all get 
up before the milk got too thick to let it up. 
These milk theories are interesting as mat¬ 
ters of speculation, but, so far as I have been 
able to see, no practical good has yet come out 
of them. I am, however, still in hopes that 
some of these theorizera will do something. 
About all I have been able to determine in my 
own mind on this subject, is that milk set in 
shallow pans not more than three inches deep 
and at a temperature ranging from GO to 80 de¬ 
grees, will in 48 honra throw up all the cream, 
while milk set In deep cans below 40 and above 
32 degrees will throw up all the cream in 24 
hours. These are, according to my experience, 
the strict limits within which milk can be han¬ 
dled to procure the best results In raising all 
the cream. Others, of course, claim wonder¬ 
ful results; but while there can be no earthly 
objections to men inventing systems of creain- 
raiaiug, and also inventing theories for raising 
it or getting something else to raise it, yet 
there iB a limit to the profit iu this sort of 
thing to the dairyman. We have had pretty 
nearly as much theory as we want, bat there is 
a dreadful poverty of facts to build on. We 
ought to know what the average quality of 
milk will do under all circumstances of heat 
and cold. These things could be tested and 
tabulated with comparative ease, if only some 
one of the hundreds who are paid by State and 
