WINTER MEETING. 305 



If trees are imported, it should be known beyond question that they 

 are from regions where this disease does not occur. The mere fact 

 that the nursery stock is healthy at the date of shipment is not a suffi- 

 cient guaranty that it will continue so. 



(2) Characteristics of the Disease. — The primary and peculiar symp- 

 toms of peach yellows are only two: (1) The red spotting and ab- 

 normally early maturity of the fruit ; and ( 2 ) the premature germina- 

 tion of ordinary winter buds or of obscure buds buried in the bark of 

 the trunk and limbs or formed in the cambium. All other symptoms 

 result from these, or are only the common indications of disease and 

 decay in plants. 



High-colored, premature fruits are one of the conspicuous symp- 

 toms of the disease, and are easily distinguishable. In July, 1891, I 

 saw hundreds of bushels of this worthless fruit in upper Maryland and 

 Delaware, and the entire loss thereby in 1891 certainly exceeded half 

 a million dollars. 



Gradually or simultaneously, as the case may be, all of the limbs 

 develop the same symptons. Consequently, the tree falls into a decline 

 and finally dies. Trees once attacked rarely, if ever, recover. This 

 statement is still in dispute, but I feel quite sure. Hundreds of yellowed 

 and decaying orchards on the upper part of the Chesapeake and Dela- 

 ware peninsula bear witness every day to the truth of this assertion* 

 In a very few instances I have had trees pointed out to me as once 

 diseased aad now recovered, but no such cases have ever come under 

 my own observation. 



The duration of the disease varies greatly. If the symptoms pro- 

 gress slowly from limb to limb, the tree may live a long time. If the 

 whole tree is speedily involved, decay and death are correspondingly 

 rapid. I have known trees to die at the end of the first season, but 

 such is not usually the case. In Maryland and Delaware, as well as in 

 regions farther north, the affected trees generally live from two to five 

 years, and possibly longer in some cases. Incidentally I am keeping 

 watch of several hundred trees to determine this point more accu- 

 rately. The trees are worthless from the start and should be removed 

 . as soon as the disease appears. If allowed to remain, complete death 

 occurs, very frequently, the third or fourth year, the last feeble sign of 

 vitality being a few yellowish tufts on the trunk or some of the limbs. 



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