32 THE PEACH 



at any time in a series of years, over three percent, 

 by diseased trees, and this, we can readily count 

 upon, as diseased trees from the nursery, not only 

 from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but from all 

 nurseries in badly diseased districts. Assuming 

 that fungi is the cause of "yellows," of which I 

 think there is no doubt, and what we call diseased 

 infections, spread by contact, budding, trimming, 

 or in any other way, and as it affects the roots, 

 body and limbs, any remedial agent, or any cura- 

 tive agent cannot at once, or in a year, surrounded 

 as we may be by careless cultivators at times, 

 whose only use is to cultivate parasitic fungi, and 

 not peaches, prove effectual. In addition to this, 

 we have to contend with that which I have just re- 

 ferred to, say one or two per cent., and for a time, 

 perhaps more, of diseased trees from the nursery, 

 and this we have to fight. In this aspect of the 

 case, in addition to lime, potash, guano, poudrett, 

 or other caustic alkalies, it will require the vigil- 

 ant eye of the peach grower to detect the " except- 

 ionals," that may so provokingly find their way 

 into the orchard, and to nip them in the bud. The 

 parasitic fungi that works the injury is microscopic, 

 and not visible to the ordinary sight, and its seed 

 or spore is its infection, and its touch is its conta- 

 gion. A knife inserted through the bark of a dis- 

 eased tree to the ever-moving current of sap may 

 carry with it, in its incision into a healthy tree, a 

 thousand spores, marking, in this way, their new 



