Now that coal has become so common as a substitute for wood for fuel, not only on the railroads and manufactories, but in the villages and on the farms, wood ashes will still be harder to procure. Though not near so valuable for the purposes for which wood ashes is chiefly used in horticulture, it is believed that ashes from the coal has too great a value to be wasted. It should all be saved and applied to some good purpose on the garden or orchard. Has any one tried it as a preventive to pear blight? or mildew on the gooseberry? or the grape rot? or for the yellows or leaf-curl in peach trees? or for the rust in the blackberry and raspberry? In any or all of these it may have a decided value, and should be faithfully experimented with. As an absorbent alone it ought to be worth saving, to use in retaining the house slops and other liquid manures that are too often wasted. ONE CAUSE OF FAILURE in our orchard trees, of which we read and hear so much in late years, is doubtless to be found in the fact that we fail to feed them properly. A hog will fail to put on fat if he is not fed; a hen will not lay eggs if she is starved for food; and is it more reasonable to expect an apple or a peach or a pear tree to thrive and grow and yield of its luscious fruit in perfection while it is being starved? Our fresh soils--some of them at least--contain a fair proportion of the food needed to support the life of a tree; we plant our orchards, and for some years, more or less, they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the dispensations of Providence. Think of it, fellow fruit-growers; let us begin 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.