Observations on the California vine disease 
Овмоко BUTLER 
(WITH PLATES 1-5) 
I 
Introduction 
In the height of the summer of 1886, the grape-vines in Los 
Angeles and bordering counties, in California, began to show very 
marked and alarming symptoms of disease. The vineyards in 
the environs of Anaheim, then a flourishing viticultural center, 
were the most seriously affected. In fact, Anaheim is generally 
considered the birthplace of the scourge that had thus suddenly 
appeared and was, within the next few years, to devastate Los 
Angeles and Orange counties. The Anaheim disease, as the new 
malady was called before it received the name of California vine 
disease, gradually decreased in violence in each succeeding year 
after 1886, and, today, one may say that it is little feared by the 
growers. To be sure, Anaheim is no longer a viticultural center, 
but the vine is nevertheless extensively grown in places where the 
malady existed in 1886, and there are vineyards in Los Angeles 
County that have passed through the years of the epidemic with- 
out serious loss. 
But if the California vine disease is a malady of little economic 
importance іп 1010, it was a very grave problem to face in 1886. 
In August of that year F. W. Morse began an investigation of 
the malady, under the direction of the director of the Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station, University of California, and pub- 
lished, a few months later, the first description that we have of 
the California vine disease. 
From this author we gather: that the disease first became ap- 
parent by a failure of the vines to bud, or, as occurred more gen- 
erally, in a noticeable backwardness in starting, which often ex- 
tended to six weeks, the foliage of the vines thus late in leafing 
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