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it actually to form new fruit buds while the branches are 

 still loaded with fruit, and thus, if not restrained by pruning, 

 is soon enfeebled. 



These are some of the facts open to every day observation 

 which point towards this theory. The varieties most 

 subject to yellows are those which produce the heaviest 

 crops. Slow growing sorts and those which produce 

 but sparingly, like the nutmeg peaches, are almost entirely 

 exempt. We know an orchard where every tree has 

 gradually died from yellows except one whicli stood in the 

 centre. It is the Red Nutmeg, and is still in full vigour. 

 It is certainly true that these sorts often decay and suddenly 

 die, but it is always from the neglect which allows them 

 to fall a prey to the peach-borer curculio. The frequency 

 with which the peach-borer's work has been confounded 

 with yellows by ignorant observers renders it difficult to 

 arrive at correct conclusions respecting the supposed con- 

 tagious nature of the latter disorder. It may be said in 

 objection that a disease which is only enfeeblement of con- 

 stitution would not result in speedy death. The answer is 

 that the degree of debility produced in a single generation 

 of trees would not have led to such effects, or to any 

 settled form of constitutional disease. But the same bad 

 management has been going on for nearly a century up to 

 this day, the whole country over. Every year, in August, 

 the season of early peaches, thousands of bushels of fruit 

 showing the infallible symptoms of yellows are sold in the 

 markets. Every year the collected stones of these peaches 

 are planted, to produce in their turn a generation of diseased 

 trees, and every successive generation is more feeble and 

 sickly than the last. So feeble has the stock become that 

 an excessive crop is too frequently followed by the yellows. 

 In this total absence of proper care in selection of seed and 

 trees, followed by equal negligence as to cultivation, is it 

 surprising that the peach has become a tree comparatively 

 difficult to preserve and proverbially short-lived ? In 

 Europe, the peach is always subjected to a regular system 

 of pruning, and is never allowed to produce an over-crop. 

 Its lavishness is kept under control. Now yellows are un- 

 known in Europe, and notwithstanding the great number 

 of American varieties of this fruit sent over and now 

 growing there, the disease has never extended itself or 



