14 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



yellow in a few days, and their bodies blackened in spots. He attributed the 

 disease to some morbid aflFection of the air. 



In the same work we. find an extract from an article written by Mr. Noyes 

 Darling of New Haven, and published in the second number of the Albany 

 Cultivator of 1845. He says: " There are two marks or symptoms, by which 

 the presence of the disease is indicated. One is the shooting out from the 

 body or limbs of the tree of very small, slender shoots, about the size of a hen's 

 quill. The leaves upon these shoots are commonly destitute of green color, as 

 if blanched, or as if grown in a dark cellar; and, like the shoots which bear 

 them, are of diminutive growth, rarely exceeding an inch in length. These 

 shoots do not usually start from the common, visible buds at the points where 

 the leaves join the stem, but from unseen, latent buds in the bark of the trunk 

 or large branches. The other symptom is, the ripening of the fruit two to four 

 weeks before its natural season of maturity. Most generally, also, the fruit, 

 whatever be its natural color, is more or less spotted with purplish-red specks. 

 If shoots, such as above described, appear upon a tree, or without them, if the 

 fruit u[)on any part of it (not wormy) ripens before the proper time, it may be 

 certainly known that the tree has the Yellows. These are not the only marks 

 or symptoms of the disease ; but they are those which are the most readily 

 discovered. 



The ordinary leaves of the tree, or at least those upon the diseased portion 

 of it, commonly undergo a slight change of color. Instead of a bright glossy 

 green, they take on a dull yellowish tinge. The wood also, when the disease is 

 considerably advanced, becomes unelastic, so that its branches, when moved by 

 the wind, instead of the graceful waving of health, have a stiff, jerking motion. 

 The Iruit, the first season of attack, usually grows to its proper size. What- 

 ever be the natural color of the fruit, red, white, yellow, or green, it is more 

 or less, when diseased, colored with purplish red ; generally in specks, or coarse 

 dots. The flesh, quite to the stone, is often colored, and most deeply around 

 the stone. In the first summer of disease it is not always that the whole tree 

 appears affected. The slender shoots may show themselves on one branch only, 

 the rest of the tree having every appearance of health. In like manner, the 

 fruit upon one branch may ripen four weeks too soon, upon another, two 

 weeks too soon, and upon the rest of the tree at the natural time. The second 

 season, all the fruit will ripen three or four weeks too soon. The tree some- 

 times dies the next year after the appearance of the disease, and sometimes 

 lingers along with a feeble life for two or three years. Soil, whether of clay or 

 sand, whether moist or dry, whether cultivated or in grass, manured or unma- 

 nured, does not appear to me, clearly, either to increase or diminish the 

 liability to disease." 



QUESTION NO. 3. 



Where, in your vicinity, and under what circumstances, did tlie disease first show itself? 



There are several theories afloat respecting the origin of the Yellows at any 

 given point, and this question is asked for the purpose of eliciting information 

 from localities where the disease is supposed to exist, with regard to its intro- 

 duction into that locality. Was it a sudden development of the disease among 

 the trees of an apparently healthy orchard ? Or did it first make its appear- 

 ance among trees brought from an infected district ? Were the stocks of the 

 trees thus affected grown from pits of the fruit of diseased trees ? Were the 



