160 Pathologist U. S. Department of Agriculture 



There is undoubtedly some reason for believing that the disease is 

 propagated by diseased pits. I can not state positively that trees grown 

 from premature peaches will develop yellows, but I think it likely. There 

 can be no doubt that such seeds have an enfeebled vitality, and it is not 

 likely that they will give rise to robust trees. How great the danger may 

 be from this source I am unable to say. Some experim.ents of my own 

 lead me to think it is overestimated. Exact experiments to determine this 

 point have not been very numerous. 



"When I began my field-work, in July, 1887," Smith confessed, 

 " I had no favorite theory to advance, but gave very careful 

 attention to [Goessmann-Penhailov^'s theory}, among others, hop- 

 ing, for the sake of the fruit-growers, to be able to confirm it." ^^ 

 Peach yellows, with plenty of justification, was exciting alarm 

 throughout eastern United States. The public press and magazines 

 of nation-wide circulation, aware that whole areas of the peach- 

 growing industry already had been destroyed and more were 

 threatened, gave space to accredited treatments and supposed cures. 

 Smith personally visited the orchards where treatments or control 

 methods were believed to have been effectual. September 3, 1887, 

 he wrote to Scribner: 



To settle more definitely pro or con the effect of mineral manures on 

 peach yellows, I would like to have carried on, at suitable places in Mary- 

 land, and Delaware or New Jersey, as may seem most advisable, a series 

 of four feeding experiments of one acre each (100 trees), reserving in 

 each case another acre in alternate strips for control experiments, making 

 in all 800 trees (8 acres) in localities, 400 being under treatment and 400, 

 equally sick over, being reserved untreated for comparison, the feeding to 

 continue long enough (two years at least) to reach well-defined results. 

 The remedy I wish to try is Penhallow's peach mixture, as recommended in 

 the Houghton Farm Bulletin. . . . The greatest uncertainty exists in the 

 minds of peach growers and such a series of experiments would be watched 

 with very great interest by peach-men from Connecticut to Georgia and 

 from Michigan to Texas. Peach growing on [the Chesapeake peninsula] 

 is in a bad way and unless something can be done to arrest "' Yellows " the 

 orchards will be swept out, as they have been largely already in Cecil 

 County, Maryland, and New Castle County, Delaware, and are now being 

 destroyed in [the Dover section] and north Kent County, Maryland. The 

 peach is the great money crop here, and the loss of the orchards not only 

 produces " hard times " but leads to a very general depreciation of real 

 estate. A farm on which peaches can no longer be grown is not worth 

 nearly as much as it was before. 



" Peach yellows: a preliminary report, Bulletin 9, Sect. Veg. Path., U. S. Dep't 

 of Agric, 126, 143. 



