No. 6. DE:PARTM,ENT OF AGRICULTURE. 453 



the State of Virginia has had an unusual attack of yellows for the 

 last two years. This lerent outbreak of yellows is one of .the most 

 severe that I have ever witnessed. If it continues unchecked, it is 

 likely to put an elfectual damper on peach growing in the area 

 mentioned. In A\'estern New York, and in the State of Michigan the 

 yellows is being fairly well controlled and has not behaved unrea- 

 sonably for the last few years. However, in some parts of the 

 Michigan peach belt, where the growers become somewhat care- 

 less, large blocks of trees were lost from this disease. Peach yel- 

 lows has been considered by us the easiest of all orchard diseases to 

 control. However, it is the most exacting in its requirements. 

 Thorough eradication, namely, the rooting out of all diseased trees 

 as soon as they have developed visible symptoms, is the treatment 

 of this disease. A tree to tree inspection at least three times a 

 year is necessary for successfully finding the diseased trees. One 

 should be nia;!e in -July, one in August and one late in September, 

 or during tlie tiisl part of October, shortly before the trees shed 

 their leaves. This procedure i^s well known to peach growers over 

 the eastern part of the United States, yet the curious and unexplain- 

 able fact remains tliat only a very few of them put it into practice. 

 Go into almost any district where yellows occurs and you will find 

 everywhere about affected trees, usually in all stages from recent 

 attacks to those two, three or four years old. Yellows behaved un- 

 usually during the last two years. Certain symptoms or certain 

 forms of the dis(\^se Avhich have been comparatively rare have be- 

 come the prevailing forms in some orchards. For example, the 

 flesh of the fruit is usually red spotted, .especially when it is all 

 over the tree, the foliage begins to show signs of yellowing and 

 drooping. However, occasionally it has been observed in the past 

 years that trees with typical red spotted yellows fruit still carried 

 dark green normal foliage, or perhaps abnormally dark to some ex- 

 tent. This disease occurred in New York and Pennsylvania in many 

 orchards when a majority of the trees were affected in this pe- 

 culiar and heretofore considered exceptional way. Another form 

 of yellows that is somewhat exceptional is that which, instead of 

 having fruit red spotted, has it prematurely, rather watery in tex- 

 ture and scarcely spotted at all, with only a few spots or red flecks 

 in the flesh. This occurred in Southern Pennsylvania and there were 

 all grades of trees, making it almost impossible to draw the line be- 

 tween diseased and healthy specimens. A third unusual symptom 

 consists of the drooping and curling of the leaves, even of tliose on 

 the end of the branches, slightly or not at all yellowed. Nearly 

 all the yellows trees, especially or^ the younger and more vigorous 

 trees in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut this 

 year, had a peculiar droop and curl of the leaves, heretofore com- 

 monly regarded as a symptom of the little peach. In fact this droop- 

 ing and rolling upward of the margins is so common on peach trees 

 as they approach normal leaf fall at the end of the season that here 

 again it becomes very hard to draw the line between trees jiremature- 

 ly curling and ripening and those doing so normally. Curiously 

 enough these twigs with the drooping Igxives have very little ten- 

 dency to throw the characteristic bushy or wiry sprouts which is so 



