I have been a learner for the last fifty years, a large portion of it devoted to Horticulture. My zeal has prompted me to a close scrutiny of the various phenomena that often cross the Horticulturist's path, the solution of which has not always been as satisfactory as is desirable. This is especially the case with the Pear, the trees and the maladies to which it is subject. The cause of the fire-blight, so called, I think I fully understand, experience confirming the correctness of the views presented by me on former occasions in the pages of the Horticulturist. This summer has afforded another opportunity for testing them. Those who have paid attention to the matter will probably remember that I suggested, that with the return of a wet summer, we should have the fire-blight, which seemed • almost to have disappeared for several years. This has proved so, most fatally so, in some situations destroying very fine trees. I have had much of it in my own trees this summer - some very severe attacks in large and small trees, on the Quince and on their own stocks. I have however succeeded in checking it in every instance and saved my trees.

And as a knowledge of the saving or curing process is of more importance to the cultivator, as that is a practical operation within his reach, and the other, the cause of it, is not, with our present enfeebled stock of trees, I will here give more fully my method of checking it than I have elsewhere, that others may practice it if they will.

The moment I discover symptoms of Blight, I proceed with the knife; if in the limb, I lop it off until I come to the sound and healthy wood, then I examine downwards ; I often find other branches, and sometimes the body of the tree affected. This is very readily discovered by the dark and unnatural appearance of the bark; this will sometimes be found in streaks up and down, at other times in blotches, at times encircling the branch or body of the tree. If there is any doubt about it, it is only necessary to cut into the bark a little, when its unhealthy condition will appear. Just so far as this is discoverable, I carefully take off with my sharp knife, the outward bark, to the sapwood, being careful to do this as little harm as possible. It will be found that the injury is in this outward bark, that it has not yet seriously affected the sapwood, and the inner coating of vitality, but which it soon will if per. mitted to remain. I have invariably found when I have attended to this process in , time, that soon a new and healthy bark is formed, and the remaining unhealthy parts are thrown off. The tree resumes its usual healthy action in the forming of wood and the maturing of fruit.

This I have proved not only once, but in twenty instances or more; and not one year, but a series of years. Trees treated thus years ago, are now healthy and full of fruit. I have been pained to witness the destruction of valuable trees in other collections for want of timely and proper attention, the proprietors holding on to the old notion of insect poison, and in hopeless despair looking on the work of destruction. It is not safe to delay one moment after it is discovered to exist in a tree, but instantly to apply the knife. This disease may, with great propriety, be termed vegetable mortification, which extends rapidly inward to the sap vessels, to the vitals of the tree; when these are once reached on the body of the tree, all hope to save it is at an end.

A remark, if you please, on the singular freak of my White Doyenne trees, in producing fine, splendid fruit for years after planting, then for the space of nine or ten years uniformly cracking and producing only unsightly and worthless fruit; then suddenly to resume their former habit in the production of as fair and handsome fruit as you could wish to look on, or to eat; and this without any apparent cause, or the least change to the soil or any thing being done to the tops. This to me is altogether an unaccountable mystery. I had attributed the return to their former habit, of the production of fair and good fruit to the last two or three unusually dry summers, but this being an unexampled wet one, and my fruit being now fully formed and grown, without the blemish of a crack, I am just where I started, a "know nothing" on that subject. And I think the facts developed in my trees up-set all the theories that have been started as to the cause. At all events, they prove conclusively that it is not to the variety having run out by old age, or that the trees had absorbed from the soil all the particles necessary to their healthy action, and the perfection of fruit.

As I have observed in a former communication, my trees are scattered over my grounds, some in cultivated land, and others in grass; the latter have never been disturbed about the roots, some the first fruited; the others have shared in the benefits of the other crops in the cultivation, and yet all have acted precisely alike. I feel very desirous for more light on the subject; can you or some of your numerous subscribers furnish it? I certainly shall feel myself greatly obliged for it.

Philadelphia has lately been visited, by a deputation of the Councils of Rochester, New York, who have discovered that by the late connections or links of Railroads they reside nearer to tide water via Pennsylvania than by their own roads, and accordingly they had a good jollification. Ex-Mayor Smith of Rochester, made the following remark respecting the nurseries of that place: -

" Allow me to mention one other branch of industry, whose results are permanent and which is in fact a growing branch; that is the cultivation of fruit trees, which already employs in the vicinity of Rochester at least one thousand persons, with sales last year reaching half a million of dollars. More fruit trees are raised in Monroe county than in all the United States besides, and these find a market in every hamlet from the interior of California to the northern borders of Maine".