514 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



a favorable effect on curl-leaf. Nitrate on strawberries I found beneficial 

 when there is potash; when not, you must use ashes with it. 



H. Chatfield. I got some nitrate of soda to experiment with on 

 curl-leaf. I sowed it late in the season and thought it had a slightly bene- 

 ficial effect. I also used it on strawberries and currants but could see no 

 such result. I think we must fall back on barnyard manure. 



Mr. J. H. Crane: Mr. Hale wrote me that muriate of potash would 

 cure yellows, and I said: ''You can not make people around here believe 

 this." I tried it and found no beneficial result. 



Mr. Morrill: " Commercial fertilizers" has a very extensive meaning. 

 Nearly all fertilizers come under this head, including ashes, and there are 

 many combinations. The results depend usually upon how much of the 

 different ingredients are in the soil. Some companies furnish complete 

 fertilizers, and there are many of these, and a trial might show in one case 

 a benefit and in another a loss, and in another no result. Unless it makes 

 a proper combination it is of no use and should be used supplementary to 

 the use of barnyard manure. 



A paper was read by Mr. J. F. Taylor, on yellows. In substance he 

 said : The presentation of this subject has become old and trite. For twenty 

 years this disease has been studied and remedies sought, yet the secret of 

 the matter .has not been found nor the cause of the germs of this scourge. 

 Three methods have been practiced. First, that of letting it alone, by 

 those who have little interest in this subject; second, the medical one — 

 some have had to take their own medicine with damaging results — for full 

 description see Michigan Horticultural society reports; and after twenty 

 years, only those who have applied the axe have produced good results — 

 this is the axe method, and so far as we know is the only way to remove 

 this infectious disease. Cut and burn as soon as possible. 



A question was asked, " Do bees spread yellows?" 



Mr. W. A. Taylor: There has nothing come under my observation to 

 show that bees do spread yellows. Prof. Smith says that he has no evi- 

 dence that bees spread the disease or that inoculation in the blossom s 

 will spread it: but by budding he has proven that yellows can be produced 

 and that it will remain dormant for two years in the bud. 



Mr. Pearce: I have known of cases where yellows existed with hun- 

 dreds of hives of bees and the disease has spread but slowly; and while I 

 do not know, yet I hardly think, a tree could escape if the bees spread it. 



Mr. Chatfield : We sometimes find one peach on a tree has yellows, 

 and it seems as though the bees might have done it. 



It was stated that drawing the branches of trees infected with yellows 

 through the orchard would infect the orchard. Mr. Taylor said in regard 

 to this, that there might be danger in the contact of the trees ; but he had 

 bees in his orchard and he did not believe that the bees communicated the 

 disease. Thomas Bixby at South Haven told me that he drew a tree 

 infected with yellows and infected seventeen rows of trees: and in plowing, 

 he thought, the horses carried the infection from one tree to another. 



Mr. Lannin : I have seen two trees interlocked : and while one rotted 

 down with yellows the other was not affected. 



Mr. W. A. Brown of Benton Harbor : I do not see how any one can 

 doubt that yellows is contagious. Commencing at Benton Harbor, it 

 spread north. We pursued the let-alone policy and doctored the trees and 

 lost them. We are not afraid of it now, and while we have fine orchards 

 we do not have yellows : and still we know no more about it than we did 

 fifteen years ago. There is no cure for it except eradication. 



