2S« STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fruitless endeavors to eradicate the disease after it has made its appearance in orchards, 

 and tlie only result arrived at is the necessity for replanting new trees to take the place 

 of the old ones at short intervals of time. Many applications to trees have been recom- 

 mended, and potash, lime, tobacco, banking up trees in winter, etc., have had their 

 advocates. 



Although individual cures may have been effected, or decay for a time have been 

 arrested by the remedies, yet such instances are extremely rare; and when applied on 

 a ]a.Ttj:e scale are shown to be without value. The disease, a true consumption, still 

 ■continues and will continue, unless some radical method is adopted to eradicate it. 

 From my own observation and experience, I am led to the belief that this formidable 

 disease has been much aggravated and spread throughout the country by budding from 

 trees containing in themselves the seeds of incipient consumption, not' yet externally 

 developed. A bud may be taken from a tree apparently sound, but after a time both 

 trees will be affected and decay. * * * That the disease, however it may have 

 oi'iginated, has not its origin in either the soil or climate of this latitude is pretty evi- 

 dent. Natural trees can now be found in great numbers of many years' growth along- 

 side fences and other neglected situations, perfectly sound and likely to remain so. 



lu 1878 yellows was still quite prevalent near Philadelphia. 



Mr. Smith next traces the progress of yellows from this vicinity of Phila- 

 delphia, where it seems to have originated, first uotiug its spread to the north 

 and northeast. 



Its presence and disastrous course in New Jersey was noted at various times 

 up to 1858, when Edward Wilkins, a Maryland grower, found that "nearly the 

 whole of the peach orchards of New Jersey had been destroyed by a disease 

 known as the yellows." Other writers are quoted proving the continuous 

 existence of yellows in more or less of the state, from that date on till the 

 present. 



In eastern New York, yellows was reported by Wm. Prince in 1801 and by 

 A. J. Downing in 1814, but the latter notes in 1849 that by practice of digging 

 and burning the disease had nearly disappeared. Prior to 184G yellows totally 

 destroyed the peach trees on Long Island, but new plantations were then 

 healthy and flourishing. Its presence was continuous, even to the present, 

 although spasmodic to some extent, for in 1878 Charles Downing said yellows 

 had been in the state sixty years, "sometimes continuing for five or six years 

 and then several years free from it." 



Yellows first appeared in Connecticut as early as 1815, and in course of 

 twenty years nearly exterminated the trees, though efforts at cultivation con- 

 tinued to the present but without success. 



Its appearance in Massachusetts is not noted prior to about 1862, "but when 

 it came it swept everything." 



Prof. Smith thus summarizes: So far as its present distribution is con- 

 cerned we may infer that the disease occurs, or is likely to occur, anywhere 

 from the Delaware river north and northeast, through New Jersey, eastern 

 New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, to the extreme 

 limits of peach growing in the more northern New England States. 



It would seem also that the disease did not appear on the northern limits 

 of peach growing until many years^after it had destroyed orchards in more 

 favorable southern locations. 



As to the northwestward and westward march of the disease. Prof. Smith 

 traces its progress through Pennsylvania, although it took till 1887 for it to 

 reach Pittsburgh. Yellows was first reported in Ohio in 1849, but little or 

 nothing more is recorded of it till 1887, when it was reported as generally 

 prevalent throughout the northern part of the state, though kept pretty well 

 in check by early destruction of infected trees. 



In western New York peach growing was begun by whites some years prior 



