112 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



nearly one hundred years in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and that unti! 

 quite recently the only known way to stay its rava.^es has been to dig up and 

 destroy the diseased trees. This has been practiced with varying success for 

 some years, until now it is a pretty well established fact that yellows will 

 sweep out every peach tree in Michigan unless some other means can be dis- 

 covered to arrest its spread. In the Genesee valley, New York, where the 

 disease was not known fifty years ago, there is to-day hardly a bearing tree 

 that has not yellows. There is hardly an orchard in New Jersey more than 

 nine years old that is not abandoned because of yellows, and it is only a ques- 

 tion of time when the orchards of Michigan will be swept away, with only our 

 present knowledge of the disease. Of this I am so thorougly convinced that I 

 would not set another tree, if I did not think that some remedy, in the light 

 of science, would yet be discovered to arrest its spread. I have always thought 

 that the disease was due to exhaustion, instead of parasitic fungi, bacteria, or con- 

 tagion ; but the advocates of contagion or inoculation had so persistently talked 

 it that I had become nearly persuaded from my belief. I have recently become 

 more thoroughly grounded in the belief, by the experiments of Dr. Goessmann 

 of Amherst, Mass., who is professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural college, and who has for a number of years been experimenting with 

 a view to finding an antidote for yellows, and for that purpose has analyzed the 

 peach tree, both in health and in disease, and also healthy and diseased fruit. 

 From these experiments he discovered that the disease was due to exhaustion 

 and not to any fungus, as heretofore thought, and by applying to the soil, at 

 the roots, of an orchard of 200 trees, the elements found to bo wanting, he 

 was not only enabled to keep the trees that were not diseased in a healthy 

 state, but actually to restore trees that were diseased to their normal condi- 

 tion, which he proved to be true by a comparison of the diseased tree restored 

 and that of trees in their normal state. Prof. D. P. Penhallow, botanist and 

 chemist of the Houghton experimental farm, Lawson Valentine, proprietor, 

 Mountainville, Orange county, N. Y., has arrived at the same conclusion from 

 his microscopic examination in reference to the cellular contents of the wood 

 of different trees, including the peach in health and disease. It seems to me 

 that the true way to find out the cause of yellows is by scientific analysis of 

 the diseased tree and its fruit, comparing the results with results of the same 

 experiments with healthy trees and their fruit. Theu, by supplying to the 

 soil such things as are needful to restore or keep the diseased tree in a^healthy 

 condition, we can probably arrest the disease. When a physician is called to 

 see a patient, his first thing to do is to find out what is wanting to restore the 

 patient to a normal condition; or in other words, to supply the system with 

 those things in which it is deficient. In this way, as long as the system is 

 kept in this natural state, there is no danger of disease. 



A well-regulated city's sanitary arrangements are worth thousands upon 

 thousands more to its welfare than the services of its most eminent physicians; 

 and just so in the case of an orchard — an ounce of prevention is worth a 

 pound of cure. Supply to your orchard what is needful to keep it in health, 

 and there is no danger of yellows. Unless this can be done I think there is 

 very little use in any one, however favorable his location or soil, planting an 

 orchard. 



With this accomplished there are large profits in a peach orchard. Without 

 it there is not, nor can there be, any profit. I have just commenced to experi- 

 ment on three acres of orchard with a view to supplying it with the lacking 



