Fungous Diseases of Plants, Pi-ach Yi-llows 173 



Lieutenant John P. Tinlcy, Professor Harrington, G. H. Failyer, 

 anJ others not directly connected with phint work, wrote also 

 appreciatively. During the spring of 1889, Smith began new 

 experiments to test the validity of the theory that peach yellows is 

 a nutritional disturbance resultini? from soil exhaustion or starva- 

 tion. He selected an orchard in the north part of Kent County, 

 Maryland, and, utilizing ten representative plats which were sub- 

 divided and treated with Kieserite. muriate of potash and dissolved 

 bone black, and ten equally representative plats for comparison 

 he launched the experiments which lasted over three years and 

 in 1892 were reported in detail to the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science.^- These were not the most important 

 peach yellows investigations made by Smith. But these, together 

 with other studies of the disease, would have been sufficient to 

 make his reputation as a research scientist memorable in plant 

 pathology." On May 7, 1889, L. H. Bailey, professor of horti- 

 culture at Cornell University, advised Smith that his preliminary 

 report on peach yellows would be reviewed in Garden and Forest, 

 probably that summer. He wrote: " I am much interested in 

 your proposed experiments. You are doing the best, most practical 

 work on a plant disease of anyone in this country." 



Smith was not made a member of the Society for the Promotion 

 of Agricultural Science until the year 1893. Although already a 

 member of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, his appearance at Ocala, Florida, before the American 

 Pomological Society February 20-23, 1889, to present the first of 

 his elaborate study of "The chemistry of peach yellows"®* was 

 an event of real significance. He had spoken before scientific 

 societies, but never with the same role of prominence as now. 

 Part II of his paper was presented two years later, September 

 22-24, 1891, at the twenty-third session of the Society, meeting at 

 Washington, D. C. By the time this study was completed. Smith 

 was maintaining that "we are to look for the cause of Peach 

 Yellows and the means of prevention in an entirely different 

 direction [from that of] the Goessmann-Penhallow method of 



*- E. F. Smith, On the value of superphosphates and muriate of potash in the 

 treatment of peach yellows, Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 41: 226, 1892. 



*^G. P. Clinton, Erwin Frink Smith, Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Set. 70 (10) 

 577, 1936. 



^^Proc. Amer. Pomol. Soc. 22: 38-41, 1889- 



