Fungous Dislasi^s of Plants, Pr.Ac;n Yhllows l6l 



Thus were bei;un Smith's " Experiments with fertilizers for the 

 prevention and cure of peach yellows, 18S9-1892," the results of 

 which formed the materials of Bulletin 4 of the Division of 

 Vegetable Pathology of the same title, published by the Depart- 

 ment m 1893. In 1888, when he published his preliminary report 

 on peach yellows. Bulletin 9 of the Section of Vegetable Pathology 

 of the Botanical Division, Smith admitted he had not been able to 

 confirm the results of Goessmann's and Penhallow's experiments 

 and analyses. Formal authority to conduct the experiments was 

 not obtained until the autumn of 1887. February 17, 1888, T. T. 

 Lyon, president/ of the Michigan State Horticultural Society, 

 advised Smith that he felt " very sure that [he would] reach the 

 conclusion, at least so far as Western Michigan [was] concerned, 

 that soil starvation has little to do with the development of 

 Yellows. ..." Confidence in legislation which required the 

 removal and eradication of infected trees as soon as discovered 

 was being built up, since more and more this appeared to be the 

 inevitable and only solution of the peach yellows problem. Not 

 even the fact that the law would be enforced under official 

 government supervision minimized its importance to orchard 

 owners. January 13, 1888, Lyon described the history of the 

 Michigan law to Smith: 



I drew the original " Yellows " Bill, which was enacted as drawn 

 although subsequently twice amended, and each time made less effective 

 by interference with its capacity for prompt execution. The scope however 

 is not changed. I (without consultation with others on this point,) in- 

 cluded the nectarine because it is in fact a peach; the only difference being 

 its smooth skin ; and for the reason that it is always budded upon peach 

 stocks. The almond was included not because I had known it to become 

 affected ; but mainly because it also is grown on peach stocks, which would 

 be liable to become diseased. The Almond also is in fact a peach, with the 

 seed developed instead of the pulp. I had some years since procured the 

 crop of an Almond growing at South Haven — yielding nearly a bushel of 

 seed, and planted this seed intending to bud the young trees with peaches, 

 as an experiment. During the spring these seedlings gave decided indica- 

 tions of disease, a great many failing to grow; while during that summer, 

 the parent tree developed the yellows. ... I have no knowledge respect- 

 ing the existence of yellows in California nor yet in the peach growing 

 regions of the eastern Continent. The occasion or cause must be more or 

 less climatic, even if the primary cause is in fact bacterial. . . . 



Wesley Webb, editor of the Delaware Farm and Home, 



