File:Birds and nature (1903) (14755026242).jpg

Identifier: birdsnature141903chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ropagated by seeds, cuttings, lay-ers, budding and grafting, but its sensi-tiveness to climatic conditions has mate-rially limited its distribution in the UnitedStates. Thus Pear culture has alwaysbeen precarious in the great interiorbasin, while the heat of the southernStates and the severe winters of thenorthern prairie areas are unfitted tobring about satisfactory development.The trees do not produce fruit on thewood of former years, but on spurs whichgrow out of wood less than a year old.On the points of these, buds are formedand flowers are produced, and while manyof these fall, such as remain are thus en-abled to develop larger fruit. As a rule, Pear trees are not to anygreat extent subject to fungus blights.The most common of these is probablythe Roestelia cancellata, which causes theleaves to become covered with largeraised spots, at first yellow, but soonturning red. Cracking in Pears may bedue to several causes, the most commonbeing a fungus on the leaves and twigs 228 3 c/)
Text Appearing After Image:
which prevents the fruit setting, or ifthey do set, they are crippled and injuredin growth and crack as they ripen. Themost serious, however, is the fire blight,which occurs during moist seasons. Thisis a distinctively American disease, andis caused by microbes which enter thegrowing points and gradually work downthe stem, killing the tissues and causingthe leaves to die. Of the more than seven hundred va-rieties of Pear trees, some attain to alarge size and become hoary with age. Atree in the village of Garmouth, NewBrunswick, is over one hundred and fiftyyears old. Its trunk measures twelve feetin circumference and reaches to a heightof forty feet. In one year it producedtwenty-eight thousand six hundred Pears.Another tree on the turnpike, betweenWorcester and Tenbury, England, has atrunk fourteen feet in circumference andfifty-six feet in height. There are Peartrees in France which are said to be morethan four hundred years old, and a speci-men in the parish of Holm-Lacey, Here-for

Note About Images