"spiting" A Neighbor

"Spiting" a Neighbor.
The workmen employed at one of the chair making works in an English town were cutting up a large cherry tree at the circular saw bench when something squirted in the sawyer's face and ran over the bench in all directions. The engine was stopped, and an examination showed that the saw had struck a cavity in the tree and liberated a considerable quantity of quicksilver, afterward estimated as half a gill. The log was carefully examined, and it was found that many years previously a hole had been bored in a slanting downward direction through the heart of the tree, the quicksilver poured in and the hole carefully plugged. The rings of the tree showed that it was ninety years old, and that after the hole had been plugged the growth had covered the head of the plug with several 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" used to be held, it was though the quicksilver 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 "grudges" against their neighbors. It was usual to do this in the dead of the 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 failure, for except where the quicksilver had lain (it had not penetrated some inched beyond the end of the boring) the tree was sound. --Notes and Queries.
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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Argus