BY D. Mo ALPINE. 
443 
First Appearance in the Colonies. 
It is interesting and useful to trace the first appearance of any 
disease in our midst, to serve as a lesson for the future. Since 
1891, when my first report was made upon it, this disease of the 
peach and allied trees has been constantly under notice. In 
certain fruit-growing districts it was only observed during season 
1890-91 for the first time, but Mr. Neilson, of the Royal Horti- 
cultural Gardens, Burnley, informs me that the disease was 
observed there about 1887, and he had heard of it in the Fern- 
tree Gully district about 1885 or 1886. In the season of 1887-88 
it was also reported for New South Wales,, and in season 1889-90 
it affected a large number of peach trees there, as stated in Dr. 
Cobb's article upon it in Ag. Gaz. KS.W. Vol. i. Pt. 1, 1890, 
and the disease has been spreading ever since. 
I am informed by Mr. Molineux, F.L.S., Secretary to the 
Agricultural Bureau of South Australia, that the first public 
reference to this disease was made by the late Frazer 'Crawford 
during May, 1890, in the " Garden and Field," as having been 
observed for the first time on peach trees, and he had little doubt 
that it occurred some time before, but on plum trees. The 
reference in Garden and Field, Yol. xv. p. 134, 1890, is worthy 
of quotation : — " This season for the first time I observed it (i.e., 
Puccinia pruni) on a peach tree — or at least what I take to be 
the same fungus. The lower two-thirds of a large Peach tree has 
every leaf spotted by it, and as they are very numerous and 
bright yellow they give a variegated appearance to the foliage. 
Strange to say, in a neighbour's garden, which has a 
number of plum trees all more or less attacked, there are a couple 
of peach trees untouched." 
It is also present in Tasmania, although Mr. Thompson, the 
Govt. Entomologist,* does not refer to its first appearance there, 
and Mr. Tryon's discovery of it in Queensland in February, 1886, 
is undoubtedly the first definite record of its appearance in the 
Colonies. 
* A Handbook to the Insect Pests of Farm and Orchard. Depart, of 
Agriculture, Tasmania, Bull. i. p. 29, 1892. 
