PEACH BELLOWS. 345 



takes great pains to select these varieties or others which mature in the same 

 ■way, one after "another. To such an extent is this now carried that in the 

 more favored localities, such as Maryland and Delaware, the "peach season" 

 begins early in July and lasts until mid-October, there being between these 

 dates a nearly unbroken succession of varieties. In a given latitude each one 

 of these many varieties ripens, year after year, so nearly at a given date that 

 months in advance the grower can tell to within a very few days at what time 

 it will be necessary to pick and market any variety, and can arrange all his 

 work accordingly. Soil, situation and weather exert some influence, e. g., 

 peaches on light, warm soil usually ripen a few days in advance of those on 

 clay. 



Manifestly, if these varieties should ripen out of season or at nearly the 

 same time, either the markets would be glutted and the price of peaches 

 would fall below the cost of production, or else the fruit, unexpectedly ripe, 

 would rot upon the trees for lack of sufficient help to pick it. In either event 

 great losses would result. 



This is very nearly what happens when an orchard is attacked by yellows. 

 The disease is characterized by the following symptoms: 



FIRST YEAR OF ATTACK. 



The diseased fruit ripens prematurely, and frequently in such a way that 

 varieties, ordinarily maturing several weeks apart, are ripe all at once, often 

 quite unexpectedly. There is no time to gather this fruit, even if it were 

 perfect, and much of it decays on the trees. It is also rejected by drying 

 and canning establishments and by commission merchants, except in years of 

 scarcity. 



Diseased trees exhibit great variability as to time of ripening their fruit. 

 Sometimes this period precedes the normal time of ripening by only two or 

 three days ; sometimes it precedes it by as long a period as six weeks or even 

 two months, in which case healthy peaches on the same tree or on adjacent 

 ones are not half grown. As a rule it may be said that such peaches ripen 

 at least two or three weeks in advance of the proper time. 



These prematurely ripened peaches differ from healthy ones very mate- 

 rially in color. Once seen they can never be mistaken. Generally they have 

 more color than healthy peaches, but the essential difference lies less in the 

 amount of color than in the peculiarity of its distribution. Instead of being 

 delicately punctate with minute crimson dots or imbued with uniform masses 

 of color, like the ruddy cheek of a healthy peach, the surface is coarsely 

 blotched with red and purple spots of variable diameter, but usually not less 

 than one-sixteenth of an inch across. These give to the peach a mottled or 

 .speckled appearance unlike that produced by any other disease, and so entire- 

 ly different from the healthy appearance, that the yellows might, in many 

 cases, be diagnosed from a very small fragment of the skin of a single peach. 

 Sometimes these spots are infrequent; sometimes they are very numert)us. 

 Usually they are somewhat sharply defined on a much lighter background, 

 but sometimes they coalesce, giving to the whole peach a dark crimson or 

 purple color, or, more rarely, a brown purple or dull red. 



These red or purple discolorations are not conflned to the skin of the peach, 

 but extend into its flesh, appearing on tangential section as roundish crimson 

 spots, and on radial section as more or less irregular dots, streaks, splashes or 



