THE DISEASES OF THE PEACH TREE. 15 



stocks raised from pits from healtliy trees and then budded with buds from 

 diseased trees ? These are queries that the question would suggest, and that 

 the owner of a diseased orchiird would be likely to notice, and trace out, with 

 a view to avoiding a like course in the future. 



QUESTION NO. 4. 



Judging from observation, do you think the disease contagious ? 



Sometimes the word contagious is used in a pretty broad sense. Webster 

 defines contagion thus: Literallii, a touch, or touching. Hence the communi- 

 cation of disease by contact, or the matter communicated. More generally, 

 that subtile matter whicli proceeds from a diseased person or body, and com- 

 municates the disease to another person. Contagious, containing or genera- 

 ting contagion ; catching, that may be communicated by contact, or by a 

 subtile excreted matter. 



Now, if we find that by contact, or in some other way, the disease is carried 

 from one tree to another, we may say the disease is contagious, though perhaps, 

 strictly speaking, the kine-pox is not contagious. Yet it is communicated from 

 one to another by inoculation, to prevent the taking of the small-pox by con- 

 tagion, by the touch, the breath, or the immediate presence of a small-pox 

 patient. 



Perhaps question Number 10 would be in a more appropriate place than it 

 now occupies in the circular, should it stand next to No. 4. For present use 

 we so place it. It reads thus : 



QUESTION NO. 10. 



Have diseased patches been noticed, by you, on the limbs of young peach trees before they 



have blossomed ? 



In the article from which I have already quoted, the author says: "I took 

 a blossom from a diseased tree, and applied the pollen to the blossom of a 

 young tree in my garden. The tree thus exposed to infection showed no mark 

 of disease, either in that or the succeeding year. I took some buds from a 

 tree, having symptoms of the Yellows, and inserted part into peach, part into 

 apricot, and part into almond stocks. Some of the inoculations took well, 

 but all showed marks of disease the next season. The peach and almond 

 stocks, with their buds, died the second winter after inoculation. One 

 apricot stock lived five years, but its peach top grew, in that time, to be only 

 about three feet high." 



A. J. Downing says: " It Avas conjectnred by the late William Prince that 

 contagion takes place when the trees are in blossom, the contagion being 

 carried from tree to tree in the pollen by bees and the wind." The Yellows 

 sometimes first shows itself on a limb of a tree in close proximity to a fruit, 

 hence the theory that the disease was received by that tree through the action 

 of pollen brought from a diseased tree and deposited in the blossom of the 

 healthy one by bees or the wind, thns infecting the tree through the blossom 

 and the fruit. If it could be shown that these patches of disease are found 

 upon young trees before they have blossomed, this fact would help to prove 

 that the pollen theory is incorrect, therefore the question. 



QUESTION NO. 5. 



Have you any theory of your own with regard to the cause and cureof said disease ? If 



you have, what is it ? 



^ This question needs no explanation. Its object is to obtain from peach cul- 

 tivators their views with regard to the cause and cure of the Yellows. 



