AND ITS DISEASE. 25 



palliative for the yellows. The peach borer, the 

 curled leaf, and other things, in their feeble efforts, 

 were mere myths compared with this one fatal 

 scourge. In the course of my examinations, I 

 found much good common sense and a good deal 

 of nonsense on the subject, and as a specimen of 

 the latter, I here give one or two little extracts, as 

 they are from the brain of a Professor of Agricul- 

 ture, Horticulture and Botany, in 1819: "There is 

 but one stock proper whereon to bud peaches, 

 which is the muscle plum, all other stocks are at- 

 tacked by the gum, and by different species of in- 

 sects, in particular the grub, an hexipode magot, 

 which gets in between the cortex and the albumen, 

 and prevents the sap from circulating, and pro- 

 duces what is commonly called the yellows." 



"If the trees are injured with mildeio, dip the 

 branches infected in the liquid and it will imme- 

 diately destroy the insect" 



u If your orchards are troubled with mole hills, 

 strew branches of elder about the ground, and they 

 will soon disappear." " If you are troubled with 

 snakes, plant ash around your orchard." 



The most sensible articles I met with were the 

 various letters and papers of Judge Peters, and cor- 

 respondence gathering facts in relation to the dis- 

 ease, and particularly his reference to the investi- 

 gations of Sir Joseph Banks, in his inquiries into 

 the cause of blight, mildew and rust, which he 

 found to be the result of parasitic fungi, and by 



