PEACH YELLOWS. 283 



how one can be certain of procuring genuine Southern pita from unbudded 

 trees unless he collects them himself, or deals directly with Southern men of 

 well established character. Moreover, in recent years, the demand for this 

 kind of seed has probably exceeded the entire available product of the small 

 unbudded orchards of Tennessee and other Southern States. In the South 

 as well as in the North the large orchards are of choice budded fruit. Finally, 

 granting that some pits are genuine and come from Tennessee, there is in 

 this fact no absolute guaranty of safety, because yellows probably occurs to 

 some extent in that State, and is nowhere restricted to budded fruit. Nursery- 

 men will probably do best by personally inspecting orchards in fruit season 

 and selecting pits from .such as are entirely healthy. If these orchards are 

 in regions where yellows has not appeared, so much the better. Nurserymen 

 have received much harsh criticism, but as a rule I believe them to be an 

 enlightened and honorable class of men, ready to adopt any methods likely 

 to be for the interest of their patrons. Quite often I have found them better 

 informed on horticultural questions, yellows included, than any other persons 

 in the community. 



DISEASED BUDS. 



Can yellows be transmitted by budding? This question has an important 

 bearing on the aetiology of the disease. If it can be answered in the affirma- 

 tive, I do not see how it is possible to avoid the conclusion that yellows is a 

 contagious disease. 



So far as I know, William Prince was the first to assert that peach yellows 

 can be spread in this way. That was in 1828. He states explicitly that a 

 healthy tree when inoculated from a diseased one becomes itself diseased, but 

 he does not state when, where, or by whom this was observed. 



In the spring of 1831 Noyes Darling, a most careful observer, inoculated a 

 healthy young tree with a bud from a diseased one. The bud died and the 

 stock remained healthy. The evidence in this case is simply negative. 



In 1841 Eobert Sinclair, another careful observer, states that on one occa- 

 sion, before he had a nursery, he inserted into healthy peach stocks twelve 

 buds from a favorite, early purple peach, which he suspected of yellows but 

 desired to preserve. The buds were taken from the healthiest branch, but 

 when they had grown about three feet they showed the disease so plainly that 

 they were pulled and burned. 



In 1843 or 1843, discussing yellows in his "Catalogue," A.J. Downing 

 states that it may be transmitted from infected trees by grafting or budding, 

 but we are not told whether this statement was a result of his own observa- 

 tion. Mr. Downing often appropriated and digested the statements of other 

 men without credit, and this may have been an instance of that kind. 



In December, 1844, Noyes Darling, who had been making additional 

 observations and experiments since 1831, reported again as follows: 



If a bud from a diseased tree is inoculated into a healthy stock, whether peach, apri- 

 cot, or almond, the stock will become diseased and die. * * * i took some buds 

 from a tree having sj'mptoms of yellows, and inserted part into peach, part into apricot, 

 and part into almond stocks. Some of the inoculations took well, but all showed marks 

 of disease next season. The peach and almond stocks with their buds died the second 

 winter after inoculation. One apricot stock lived five years, but its peach top grew in 

 that time to be only about three feet high. 



It is to be regretted that some account of the symptoms which preceded 



