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greater part of entire varieties, representing thousands of dollars, may 
be lost in three or four days. At such times, fruit picked in an appar¬ 
ently sound condition is also very likely to rot on its way to market or 
in the hands of middlemen or consumers. Of late years peaches grown 
in Georgia and the far South have been especially troubled by rot dur¬ 
ing shipment. These peaches ripen in the hot weather of mid-summer 
and are sent long distances to Northern markets. The loss to Georgia 
growers is sometimes as much as two-thirds the whole crop. Could this 
rot be stopped the profit of peach growing the country over would be 
much increased—probably doubled. This general statement is based 
on observation and on inquiries among peach growers in a half dozen 
States. The peach is well known to be a delicate and perishable fruit, 
but it is not so generally known through just what agencies this decay 
occurs. An examination, however, of the fruit stalls in any city market, 
especially during hot and moist weather, will satisfy the most skeptical 
that this omnipresent fungus is the chief cause of the rapid decay, in 
fact, almost the sole cause. 
Peaches uninjured by Monilia and missed in gathering sometimes 
hang on the trees several weeks, the skin remaining bright but the fiesh 
becoiniug very soft and of a subvinous flavor. Fruit growers, as a rule, 
are entirely ignorant of the presence of any fungus. They do not know 
the cause of the rot but are painfully conscious of the result, since the 
latter can be expressed in pecuniary terms. The rot is frequently 
known as u scald” and is usually ascribed to hot and wet weather, 
but in this instance, as in many others, the weather is only a favoring 
condition, the real cause, the sine qua non , being the fungus, whose ash- 
gray spore-tufts are so often seen on the shrunken and discolored sur- 
face of the peach. 
If the consensus of opinion among peach growers is of any value this 
rot is most uniformly destructive to early peaches, a very considerable 
portion of which rot every year. Whether this tendency in early varie¬ 
ties is due to a thinner skin, or to hotter weather during the time of 
their maturing, I am unable to say positively. It has been ascribed to 
the former and may in part be due to this, but I am not aware of any 
extensive series of observations made to determine the relative thick¬ 
ness or resisting power of peach skins. That this or some other un¬ 
known varietal peculiarity somewhat affects the spread of the disease is 
not improbable. I did think that certain of the early sorts, e. //., Hale’s 
Early, were specially subject to rot, but have given up this view as un¬ 
tenable. All the very early varieties rot badly, though in the same 
orchard not always to the same extent. 
The well-known influence of moisture and especially of high temper¬ 
ature upon the rapid development of the fungus, facts which I have 
observed repeatedly in the orchard and have verified in the laboratory, 
lead me to think that the frequent rains and usual hot weather of July 
and the first part of August must be the principal reason why early 
