If it is desirable to bring barren trees into bearing, or to rescue them from decay and death those in an unhealthy state, measures of a more radical and expensive character must be taken, measures similar to those which have been practiced for centuries with the grape vine, with complete success. These measures consist either in removing the earth under the trees and putting new and fresh earth in its place, as practiced with orange trees in Louisiana, and on the coffee plantations in the tropics, or in digging a deep and wide ditch around the tree, inside the outer diameter of the branches, and refilling it with near half the earth removed and half such mineral fertilizers and amendments as tree leaves and refuse decaying vegetable matter of any sort for the other half. But nothing more than a general outline of the course to be pursued can be indicated here; and nothing more is necessary for the intelligent amateur, fruit-grower, or orchardist, who feels the strength of the proof, and accepts the situation. In these latter days most of the diseases which afflict humanity are believed to be attributable to improper nutrition and faulty hygiene, and are relieved or cured by a more or less radical change in food and habitat. In the animal world, the truth appears in a still stronger light; while in the vegetable kingdom, nutrition counts for almost everything. Still, in the case of the peach yellows and pear blight, both appear, on first sight, to be distinct diseases, neither yielding to any remedy yet applied to them, and both being attended with the present fashionable bacteria, which are made responsible for many diseases and all epidemics. But has anybody yet made the experiment whether water supplied copiously to the spare and thin roots of the pear will or will not prevent the blight, or tried the same thing with the peach? We all know the gigantic and venerable pear trees of the Wabash and Kaskaskia country were planted on the sandy second bottoms of the rivers named, where in their early youth, if not in their mature age, water was always within easy reach of their roots; and we have seen the item in the agricultural papers telling how one experimenter at least, has saved his pear trees from blight by copious watering. The prairie and timber country both are drying out and losing soil moisture very much faster than we have any conception of. Situations where moisture in the soil was abundant enough for all crop purposes twenty-five years ago, suffered quickly after a brief drought now, and would be benefited by irrigation where it would have been injurious fifty years before. Beside, we have borrowed many of our ideas from the fruit-growing experiences of the East, and they from the cooler and moister countries of Europe. And in that way the amount of right teaching has been too attenuated, until it is in many respects practically worthless. B. F. J. THE MODEL ILLINOIS NURSERY.