42

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

STOCK OF PETER A. REMSEN, ESQ. THE western part of the State of New York has, for some years, possessed several large herds of cattle of great excellence. Among the largest and best for a long time, was that of Peter A. Remsen, Esq., of Alexander, Genesee county. This gentleman has, during the present autumn, removed with a large reserved lot of his herd as it stood in 1842, (having sold from it, as a draft, some one hundred and twenty-five head during 1842 and 1843,) to Maryland, where he proposes making his future residence. His departure to a distant state, and to a home among strangers, prompts me to a notice of himself and his stock, due alike to both, that his neighbors among whom his new lot is cast, may know how Mr. Remsen and his stock were valued by those whom he has left, and among whom for many years he and his family dwelt. The prize-list of the late State Agricultural Show has heralded his cattle abroad, and, of course spread their fame in advance of themselves to their place of destination. Their success, so widely known, carries with it a high recommendation; and this might render any notice unnecessary, had any agricultural paper, either of itself or through its correspondents, given any account of his herd, or had his imported cattle and their descendants been placed on record. This not having been done, allow me to do it, and at the same time, seize the occasion to speak of him as a man, as well as a breeder.

Mr. Remsen, although a northerner, was for many years resident in Alabama, and mostly at Mobile. Engaged largely in trade, he yet possessed and cherished a fondness for stock, the result of early occupation and education, and his wealth was used as a means of gratifying his tastes. In 1831 he purchased a large estate in Genesee county; it was most judiciously selected, just at the base of the hills which form the grazing country of the south part of the county, and at the head of the alluvial valley of the Tonawanda, covering both the valley and the last spurs of the subsiding hills. Here the upland has lost its exclusive grass-growing character, and is equally adapted to the production of hay and grain. Its position is commanding, giving views of great extent and beauty. From the uplands beautiful brooks of the purest water flow down in profusion upon the intervale. Upon it he erected a noble mansion, a fine feature in the landscape as viewed from the vale below, and looking down on that vale of beauty, each adding to the charm of the other. Here Mr. Remsen made his summer residence, and his family their permanent one. With an enterprise worthy of his means and his tastes, he ordered from England the nucleus of a herd of cattle. The commission was for the best, without limitation of price. The execution of the order was intrusted to Mr. Wilson, to whom it was given, to Mr. Samuel Scotson of Toxteth Park, Lancashire, a breeder, widely and favorably known. Mr. Scotson, through his friend Mr. Robert Thomas of Engholme, near Darlington, procured a bull and a heifer, bred by Mr. May

nard of Harsley Hall, Yorkshire. From Mr. Severs of Richmond, in the same county, was purchased another heifer; and to these was added a selection from the herd of Mr. Scotson, consisting of a young bull and a heifer. This importation was made in 1834. At a subsequent period, Mr. Remsen increased the number by a heifer from the herd of the Rev. Henry Berry, and a heifer from another source in England, which, however, died without produce. To these was added a selection of American bred cattle. With such materials for an origin, a herd large in number, beautiful, and choice, soon spread itself over his fine lawns, alluvial meadows, and swelling hills. At once, was Mr. Remsen among the first breeders of New York, indeed, of the country at large; and richly was the sagacious enterprise which created all, rewarded. His tastes were gratified, and his investment profitable; his pleasures and his interests at once coincident. An immediate demand sprang up, and so great was it, and so superior were even his grades, that he repeatedly sold them for prices as high as thorough-breds would command; and this demand continued until the present depressed value of cattle checked all desire and inducement to rear or acquire stock, either crossed or pure. In all this Mr. Remsen had a most capital assistant in his interesting wife. Like him she possessed a fondness for a rural life, for flocks and herds. Among them she found consolation for the absence of her husband, whose business yearly called him south. and for many months detained him there. In her he found a guardian to whom he could well intrust them, assured that a taste congenial, an interest identical, and a judgment scarcely inferior to his own, would be ever watching over and superintending them, and of course in his necessary absence during the winter, the care and direction of the herd were hers. As a proof of her good management and tact, I may mention that she frequently sold grade cattle, both heifers and bulls at prices as high as $150. Added to this business ability in Mrs. Remsen, were all the charms which render the woman and the wife interesting-amenity, frankness, intelligence, and polish. Is not this a wife indeed?

Among Mr. Remsen's selection of grade cattle in the formation of his herd, were some cows with a Devon and Short-Horn cross. They were the get, in part, of the fine Devon bull Holkam, bred by the late William Patterson, Esq., of Baltimore, from the herd of the late Earl of Leicester (formerly Mr. Coke); in part, of the Otto bull, à Short Horn; and, in part, the get of Holkam upon the cows got by the Otto Bull. From these Devon Short-Horns Mr. Remsen has reared oxen and steers whose equals are rarely, and whose superiors are never found. He has now a yoke of oxen six years old, (which received the first prize for working oxen at the State Show at Rochester), which have been worked every year since they were two years old, and have never been fed anything but hay and grass, that weighed 2,300 pounds each, in September last.

It would be useless and too prolix to attempt an enumeration of all his cattle, full-bred and grades.

fruit. Now if frost was the evil, these trees, particularly those protected, coming out first, and liable to the same frosts as the peach, should blister up and die with the yellows.

It must be one of the causes enumerated below, which produced the disease in question.

First. Some sickly tree must have been imported, or some deleterious locality must have produced the disease called yellows, (I know of no better name,) and by its contagious qualities, disseminated itself throughout the country, like the small-pox, and other contagious diseases. Some sensible nursery-men, in the state of New York, would as soon have a case of yellow-fever in their nursery of children, as a tree infected with the yellows in their nursery of trees. To be sure, nothing similar in the vegetable kingdom is known; in fact, the death and corruption of seed, and the decay and rottenness of the tree, are the food of their progeny. But if this doctrine be the true one, we may have some relief in quarantine laws and sanitary regulations as to the transportation of trees. Trees and plants might be smoked, as, in some countries, they smoke letters!

Again, is it reasonable to say that although for a hundred years the peach-tree bore without being affected by frost, yet for the last thirty years there has regularly been a frost each year sufficient to destroy the peach-fruit, and kill the tree? The state of the atmosphere, easterly winds, &c., are all about the same as when the peach-tree was in perfection, no material change is alleged by anybody. We therefore dismiss all these doctrines, and adopt the only rational one in our judg ment; that the yellows in peach-trees is produced by insects. To prove our position, we shall mainly refer to written authority of the most valuable character.

Mr. Keen, the great English gardener says, that "in 1834, when the blossom-buds of his peach-trees were as large as hemp-seed, a solution of lime, sulphur, and soot, was thrown on his trees, and not a single blistered leaf was to be seen." Now it is believed that the blister of the leaves is an invariable precursor of the yellows. The soot and sulphur would not keep off frost. The American Orchardist, a Boston work, rep

Second. The next possible cause of this disease, we enumerate the climate, including changes of weather, warmth, rain and drought, frosts, and easterly winds. Many intelligent persons attribute the disease of the peach to one or more of the causes above mentioned. In confirmation of this, might be quoted the European opinion, that frost has at several different periods killed the sycamore, and it is said in the United States, that the American sycamore was killed in 1841 by frost; and well-informed persons think this tree since 1841 has continued to be affected, especially in the state of New York, by frost.

Now I enumerate the following reasons as conclusive, in my mind, against the theory that frost has anything to do with the yellows, or the general declension of the peach.

Our climate has not changed, but is the same as it was when the peach produced abundantly. Neither tables, nor tradition, represent any material alteration; to frost we have always been subject. The peach is not a tender tree. The October cling-stone is frequently in fine health, and with fruit on, long after the frost, when all the potatoes, all the melons, peppers, beans, &c., are cut off. The apricot, and nectarine, which come forward and bloom before the peach, grow well in the gardens in our cities, and in the country, when well protected, and give abundance of

enemy of the peach. The author says, "he never saw the yellows in New England." Now New England is less subject, from the cold, to insects, and more liable to injury from frost, and yet according to this authority, there is no yellows there. New York, and the states adjacent, may have produced insects unknown in New England,―though the writer believes that the yellows is in New England, and the insects producing it, too. The statements hereafter, although they tally (and on that account this article has been written) with the experience of the writer, yet the main facts and opinions expressed are from the most modern European and American authorities.

The aphides, or plant-lice, are the enemy which produces the yellows, and destroys the peach-tree. This family of insects embraces a great variety. The apple-louse, the cabbage-louse, rose-louse, and willow-louse, of popular desiguation, for they are best named, for our purpose, by the particular tree or plant selected as their domicil. These different kinds of lice subsist, sometimes on the roots, particularly the cabbage, and among flowers, on the roots of the asters, but on the peach they attack the leaves, bark, and tender twigs. The applelouse commences at the surface of the ground, attacking the different parts of the tree.

Curtis, in an excellent article in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, remarks, that there is no tribe of insects so universally distributed, or exceeding in multitudes the plant-lice; that probably there is not a plant from the smallest grass, to the most stately tree, that is altogether exempt from this pigmy. Linnæus considered every plant

Professor Harris says, "These insects are one of the causes, if not the only cause, of the peculiar malady affecting the peach-tree in the early part of summer, called the blight," which is no doubt the yellows of New York. Rieamer, a French author, observed the ground quite moist under peach-trees infested with bark-lice, which was caused by the dripping of the sap from the punctures made by the insects. These little insects are most easily examined on the rose-bush. The varieties are very numerous. In the green-house, two or three weeks will produce a generation, and one parent, in one season, will produce several millions. The authority above referred to, states that eggs are laid by the winged-lice in the fall on the trees, and that they hatch in the spring only females without wings, and that these females, without the presence of the males, give birth to several generations! (not produced by eggs.) But the male being winged, and the two modes of creation being at variance with nature, the writer thinks the statement in the latter particular, doubtful. The facts, however, show how numerous these insects are, many of which can not be seen with the naked eye. These lice have a proboscis with which they perforate the tender bark and leaves, and suck up the sap, which they exude in great abundance by two vents, which exudation is called honey-water, which the ants devour so greedily, that the lice have been called the milch-cows of the ants, who even rub them down, being good farmers, to make them increase the quantity of honey-water.

If the lice only eat enough to support them, it might be said that they did not take enough sap to kill the tree; but they appear to pump it up for the ants, who in different ways, return the obligation. It is not only the quantity of sap they take, but they poison and corrode the remainder, thus stopping up the pores of the bark, and making the tree send out shoots in unusual places, and of an unhealthy character. One who has felt the bite of a louse or a musquito, or has been stung by a hornet, or seen the like or similar insects madden the horse, or considers that a cow, by her milk, will feed a dozen children, but dies in sustaining a quarter of an ounce of lice, will readily suppose a tree would be killed by the parasitical attacks of lice. The eggs of the apple-louse can not be seen but with a microscope, and are to be found in the covering of the bark, in a knob, or cotton-like enclosure, and when full-grown, are but one tenth of an inch in length.

In an article from the London Gardeners' Magazine, another scale is described, of a brown color, pointed at both ends, and less than half the size of the seed of the common flax. Sometimes found on the apple itself, the same scale it is said, is prevalent on the peach-trees. It is also alleged by the same authority, that peaches, apricots, and plums, suffer from the attacks of the mussel-scalethat these insects migrate from one tree to anotherthat standard trees are seen covered with the mussel-scales, the trees bocome hide-bound. They are so minute that you must use a microscope to see them, when in April they first move out.

The apple-trees in England have been most extensively injured for the last 20 years; for nearly the same period, the locust, pears, apples, peach, and quinces, and particularly plums, have greatly failed, and some kinds will not perfect their fruit at all on Loug Island. How is this to be accounted for, but by insects? The locus: of Long Island was free from borers, and a most valuable timber until 20 years since-now it is worthless.

Forests and new countries have few insects, with cultivation and emigration they, like the birds and quadrupeds, are introduced. The horse now roams wild over the southern forests of this continent. The Norway red-rats have come too, and not content to live here in fellowship with our blue-rats, have killed or driven them from the Atlantic border, toward the Rocky Mountains. Since these things are so, it is not difficult to sup pose that as our seeds, plants, and trees, and wrapping-straw, (brought in great quantities from abroad,) have introduced the new vermin and insects of the last 20 years. The tradition is, that the German soldiery of the Revolution, brought the Hessian fly (in the bed-straw) which killed the wheat in New England. But having got the insects, the important point is, how shall we get rid of them? I recommend to begin by quarrelling with their friends.

(To be Continued.)

HARDINESS OF DURHAM CATTLE.

S. S.

I HAVE waited until the experiment was fairly tested, to let you know the result of our introducing the Durhams into our "terra nimbosa," and changing their feed from cultivated English pastures, to our trackless prairies and rush-beds. It was generally supposed that our experiment would be a failure, and that the six months winter and prairie bay would thin their ranks. We selected fifty odd individuals from Mr. M. L. Sullivant's, of Columbus, Ohio, extensive and well-improved herd, and drove them on in September; they were chiefly young heifers, and three or four young bulls, descendants of Cornplanter, Talleyrand, Red Jacket, and Niagara.