n to treat our fruit trees
as we do our hogs and our hens, and see if we can not be favored with
corresponding results. It is doubtless true that many of the diseases to
which our trees are subject are caused by starvation, or by improper
feeding; and a sickly tree is much more certain to be attacked by
insects than a healthy one.

Rare, indeed, is the case where a tree is carefully fed and cared for,
and its wants regularly and bountifully supplied, that it does not repay
as bountifully in its life-giving fruits.

T. G.

PEAR BLIGHT.

THE TWO THEORIES WITH REGARD TO ITS CAUSE, AND THEIR PRACTICAL VALUE.

It is assumed that this pest has cost agriculturists many millions of
dollars during the past decade; not only in the loss of trees, but the
time--as it seldom appears until after the first crop--consequently the
land, manure, labor, enclosure, and taxes are not insignificant items.
Climate, soil, and cultivation have utterly failed, so also the
nostrums, such as "carbonate of lime" suggested by the best authority,
and the experts now admit that parasites (such as cause the rust or smut
in our cereals) are the cause of this mischief. The only question is
whether they act directly or indirectly: this question determines
whether it is remediable. If these parasites accomplish all this
mischief by direct contact, as in the case of rust, their ubiquitous
character is so demonstrated that we are utterly discouraged; whereas,
if we prove that their indirect action is the only one that is to be
dreaded, and that indirect action is remediable we are encouraged to
cultivate the pear, though we have lost more than five hundred of one
variety and almost all of the other varieties before we discovered the
real cause of the failure. "Where you lose you may find;" success does
not indicate merit, and "fools never learn by experience." As a
celebrated surgeon said in his lecture. "A good oculist is made at the
expense of a hatful of eyes."

The celebrated Johnson who wrote the Encyclopedia of Agriculture a few
years since, is now regarded as an old fogy, because he assumed that the
spores of smut travel from the manure and seed of the previous crop in
the circulation of the plant to the capsule, and thus convert the grain
into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This
monstrosity on the rye grains is called ergot, or spurred rye, and when
it is eaten by chickens or other fowls their feet and legs s