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"spiting" A Neighbor

"spiting" A Neighbor image
Parent Issue
Day
26
Month
May
Year
1891
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The workmen employed at one of the chair making works in an English town were cutting np a large cherry tree at the circular saw bench when soinething squirted in the sawyer's face and ran over the bench in all directions. The engine was stopped, and an exaxnination showed that the saw had struck a cavity in the tree and liberated a considerable qtiantity of quicksilver, afterward estimated as half a gilí. The log was carefully examined, and it was found that many years previously a hole had been bored in a slanting downward directibn throngh the heart of the tree, the quicksilver poured in and the hole carefally plugged. The rings of the tree showed that it was ninety yejrs old, and that after the hole had been plugged the growth had covered the head of the plug with severa] inches of solid wood. As it was known the tree came out of an old cherry orchard at Allerton, Yorkshire, where yearly "a cherry feast" usod to be held, it was thought the qnicksilver had been put in the tree in connection with some old ceremony, but later it was found that up to thirty or forty years ago quicksilver was thus employed to kill fruit or other trees by those who had "grudires" against their neighbors. It was usual to do this in the dead of night. A piece of bark was first carefully taken off, the hole bored, quicksilver poured in, the hole plugged, and last the bit of bark was carefully replaced. The tree from the next rising of the sap began to wither. In the present case the attempt was a faüure, for except where the quicksilver had lain (it had not penetrated some inches beyond the end of the boring) the tree was sound.

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News