174 



having good thick meats, were nothing but a thin film, and as a conse- 

 quence when the trees came out of the ground they were inclined to take 

 on all forms of disease; and so I suggested to him that if they would send 

 down to southern Illinois or to North Carolina and get fresh peach pits, 

 that is pits from seedling trees, and then commence again, that I believed 

 they would get good fruit; and that winter several nurserymen and parties 

 that were interested in growing trees — for every man that was in the 

 orchard business raised his own peach trees — sent down and procured pits, 

 and they had good peaches there until recently, and this is the first time 

 I recollect that they were troubled with the yellows. I recollect when I 

 first began to satisfy my curiosity in raising trees, not expecting to sell 

 them, that all the trees I produced in the nursery came up good and strong, 

 and that every tree when it was budded brought forth a good strong tree; 

 but I found before I discontinued the business that a quarter and some- 

 times half of the trees would be totally unfit for budding, so one time I 

 met Mr. Hixon, a commission merchant in San Francisco, and got him, 

 when traveling in Tulare County, to get some pits, and he sent me up sev- 

 eral sacks, and from those pits I raised perfect stocks, and every one of 

 them brought a fine and vigorous tree. I apprehend that it is this in-breed- 

 ing — budding into the stock that is produced from the pit of the same 

 variety of tree — that produces this inclination to take on all these different 

 forms of disease. 



Mr. White: I have seen Crawfords taken from the nurseries about San 

 Francisco to the Sandwich Islands, and there cultivated just as we culti- 

 vate them here, and they would make a large growth, and I have eaten 

 the fruit from the trees and found that the nature of the Crawford peach 

 was changed so that you wouldn't know it, and the form was also changed to 

 a pear shape, but I saw none of the curled leaf or any other disease, which 

 surprised me very much. The changes of the climate there are as great 

 as it is in San Francisco during the spring and summer, except when you 

 get up on the mountain side — but I mean in the region of Honolulu in the 

 lower altitudes, where they would naturally cultivate a fruit orchard — the 

 peach was changed so much that I didn't know it, and the pulp and limbs 

 are altogether different; it was a series of knots one upon the other. Now, 

 this leads me to the conclusion that while climatic influences make great 

 changes, I could not assign the curled leaf as the result of a change of cli- 

 mate, as several have done. 



|Mr. Klee: Most all of us know that the Chinese contend that the curled 

 leaf is due to a distinct species of fungus. Now, these varieties of fungus 

 diseases must have certain conditions to deal with, a certain temperature 

 to start and a certain atmospheric condition to flourish in. It seems to me 

 easy to show why certain portions of this State are not troubled with a 

 curled leaf and others are. The germ is brought on the tree if they are 

 taken from the place where the curled leaf is, but the conditions favorable 

 to the development of that fungus does not exist, consequently it does not 

 develop; that maybe is the reason why it did not develop in the Sandwich 

 Islands. 



Mr. Hatch: I would like to give one little bit of evidence that points 

 toward it being caused by excessive sap: The fact that some of the young 

 twigs come out so rapidly that they are flattened, and that there, just at 

 the extremity of the branch, the leaves On those twigs will curl badly even 

 when they don't on the balance of the tree. Those little laterals are 

 numerous, especially on some varieties, where it is the only part of the tree 

 that curls. This rapid growth seems to be an abnormal growth, where not . 

 only the leaves curl, but the gum exudes. 



