REPORTS OF AUXILIARY SOCIETIES. 275 



There is more value in its absence. It is impossible to detect yellows with 

 certainty except wheu the tree is in leaf. Yellows is contagious and will infal- 

 libly spread, but not always to the next adjoining trees ; and it will surely 

 spread by pruning unless the shears be cleaned in carbolic acid after the cutting 

 of each tree. 



Secretary Garfield said Mr. G-. S. Woodard of Lockport, N. Y., put out 

 thirty acres of peach trees a few years ago, and now he is taking them all out, 

 before having got a crop, all being diseased with yellows. He thinks they 

 must stop raising peaches there. Mr. Garfield first saw the St. Joseph region 

 in 1871. The orchards then were almost everywhere, the peach trees being 

 among the apple trees, each about twenty feet apart. Now there is scarcely 

 one left. The growers there say the yellows did the work of destruction, and 

 they are now trying to get the trees all out and begin anew. He had found 

 yellows in isolated places in Cass county, where there were a few trees on each 

 farm, all having yellows. 



Mr. Fuller said that when, several years ago, the committee of the State 

 pomological society was ready to report to the legislature upon the condition of 

 the peach orchards at St. Joseph, and recommend a law requiring removal of 

 the trees, the St. Joseph people protested, saying such a report would ruin 

 their market; and they thought they could cure the disease. The report was 

 withheld ; they tried to cure, but with what result we now see. 



Mr. Sailor thought the winters more than yellows had killed the St. Joseph 

 peach orchards, as they are often much more severe than ours. One orchard 

 of sixty acres, over there, was killed in one year — yellows don't work like that. 



Mr. Lyon said that as to how yellows is communicated by an affected tree to 

 trees at a distance, there were many theories, but nothing is absolutely known 

 of it. The disease of course affects the blossom, and pollen, carried by bees, 

 would be likely to produce yellows. It might be carried to one or more blos- 

 soms on a tree or to many. Thus a single twig may be affected. But this is 

 only a possible explanation, though the possibility has been demonstrated. A 

 tree can not escape if even one peach becomes diseased ; it will die in two or 

 three years. 



Mr. T. W. Sithes of Millgrove showed branches of the Morris White, with 

 fruit both in a normal state and affected by yellows, from the same tree, and 

 asked Mr. Lyon if he should cut out the tree. He was advised to do so. Mr. 

 Sithes then stated that last year the yellows commissioner found on one of his 

 Early York trees a twig, the fruit of which he said showed yellows. Mr. Sithes 

 said he cut the twig off, and this year the tree was as healthy as any in his 

 orchard. 



Mr. Lyon said the twig might not have had yellows; would like a patent on 

 the process of cutting out if it would cure yellows, and he thought if yellows 

 was in Mr. Sithes' orchard, he was doing a dangerous thing for himself and 

 neighbors by allowing it to stay there. 



Mr. Smith of Hopkins told how he had cut off limbs affected by yellows, 

 and soon afterward the fruit in other parts of the tree showed the disease. 



Mr. Dean of Kent county had cut out of a tree exhibited on the ground, 

 some of the yellows sprouts, and reported that he found them not to reach the 

 pith but to originate in the wood of one or two years back. 



Mr. Lyon said all the yellows buds are so. They extended into the branch 

 only as far as the wood originating the disease ; all such are adventitious buds ; 

 all buds of the first year's growth extended to the pith. 



