TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 65 



the gold mines of California! We have gold in Michigan if we will but 

 " dig" it out. Our hills produce the finest fruits on the continent. Our 

 valleys bring forth the best grain and vegetables in the Union; our pine 

 forests furnished lumber superior to any other state; our iron and copper 

 mines are the richest in the world; and, last, but not least, our marshes and 

 swamps, which but a few years ago were pronounced worthless, now supply 

 over sixty-three millions of people with — celery. 



PEACH YELLOWS IN MARYLAND AND DELAWARE. 



The following paj^er by Prof. L. H. Bailey of Cornell University and 

 the New York State Experiment Station was read by the secretary: 



I suppose that the largest peach-growing region in the world lies in 

 Delaware and the Chesapeake peninsula. America is peculiarly a peach 

 country, and this mid-region of it appears to be one of its very best 

 portions. The soil is light and warm, the climate mild, and the rainfall 

 abundant. The trees, therefore, attain a great size and age and they are 

 almost uniformly j)roductive. Six-year-old trees in the Chesapeake 

 peninsula are about as large as eight and nine-year-old trees in Michigan, 

 and as a rule, especially when young, the trees appear to have a more 

 upright habit of growth. The peach season is from a month to six weeks 

 earlier than the Michigan season. 



The markets are unusually good. Shipments are made chiefly to New 

 York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. To a large region lying 

 east of Chesapeake the bay affords direct water communication wnth Phila- 

 delphia and Baltimore. Peaches have been almost uniformly profitable 

 in this region between the Delaware and Chesapeake bays until the yellows 

 scourge has overtaken it. Many spacious residences are monuments to 

 the profits of peach culture, and a number of important towns originated 

 as shipping points for peaches. 



The orchards are usually larger than the Michigan orchards, especially 

 in Maryland. The extensive methods of farming which prevailed in slave 

 times are still largely in practice, and it is not unusual for one grower to 

 own a hundred acres of orchard, and sometimes they are much larger than 

 this. 



Necessarily, the homesteads are widely scattered, and in this fact is to be 

 found the chief hindrance to the control of yellows. 



Yellows has been known in the neighborhood of Philadelphia for a 

 hundred years and moi'e. It has spread slowly until comparatively recent 

 years because orchards were small and isolated. Shortly after the war, 

 however, peach-growing began to attract great attention and large orchards 

 appeared in southern Jersey, Delaware, and eastern Maryland. Soon 

 yellows began to sjjread. At first it was not recognized as a specific or 

 well-defined disease, and it has never been seriously fought. As a result, 

 the peach interest has been constantly driven further south, it has become 

 precarious in all the older peach regions, and in many sections it has been 

 abandoned. It has been practically given up in northern Delaware and 

 adjacent Maryland. The southern half of Delaware is now the center of 

 peach-culture in that state. This fact is well attested by the comjDromise 

 made upon the yellows law by the last legislature. Some growers in the 

 northern half of the state opposed the law, because, it is said, the remaining 

 orchards were so much diseased that nearly all the trees would have to 

 come out if the law were passed. As a result, the law applies only to the 



