127 
Mr. France estimates the loss in his county (Kent, Md.) at 400,000 
baskets. Mr. Eliason (same county) also places the loss at 400,000 has. 
kets. Mr. Harris (same county) thinks the loss was from one-fifth to 
one-sixth of the entire crop. 
Norris Barnard estimates the loss on the Peninsula at one fourth of 
the whole crop. W*. H. Burnite places the loss on the Peninsula at 
“one-sixth of the entire crop.” Dr. Ridgely states that, at the time, the 
estimated money loss was $300,000. 
Assuming the loss to have been only one-sixth of the total crop, and 
the value only 50 cents per basket, we have an approximate total loss 
of 800,000 baskets, worth $400,000. On first thought this seems like a 
rash or inflated statement. A personal acquaintance, however, with 
the orchards of this entire region, and a knowledge of the great extent 
to which Smock and other late peaches are planted, leads me to believe 
it is entirely warranted. In fact, it is probably under the actual loss, 
for in the upper part of the district in question these varieties are 
found in almost every orchard, while in many they include thousands 
of trees.* 
This estimate is also established by the fact that in spite of the rot, 
and not counting the enormous number of peaches canned, dried, con¬ 
sumed, and sent away by water, the shipments from the Chesapeake 
and Delaware peninsula, by railroad alone, were upwards of 3,000,000 
baskets (five eighths of a bushel), worth probably over $2,000,000—a 
crop only distanced by that of the famous year 1875, when the railroad 
shipments exceeded 4,500,000 baskets. But for the rot. the peach ship¬ 
ment of 1888 would undoubtedly have been nearly or quite equal to that 
of 1875, since in a productive year like 1888 the varieties which ripen 
after Crawford’s Late are generally equal to about one-third of the 
whole crop. 
This enormous loss of more than 800,000 baskets is to be attributed 
almost wholly to the destructive activity of the rot fungus. Could this 
fungus have been destroyed completely on the 1st day of September, 
or earlier in the season, the rot would not have appeared. Could it 
have been partially exterminated, the rot would have been proportion¬ 
ately less. 
In this fungus the common mode of propagation from peach to peach, 
and the only known one, is by means of ash-gray couidia, which are pro¬ 
duced in great numbers on the brown surface of the affected parts. 
These spores generally occur in little hemispherical tufts or confluent 
masses on bundles of hyplial threads which have burst through the skin 
of the peach. The mycelium ramifies abundantly in the decaying tis- 
* Since this was written I have talked with Superintendent I. N. Mills, who in¬ 
forms me th it the estimate of the railroad company’s agent, after traveling over the 
territory in question, was 1,000,000 baskets, while the sum total of estimates sent in by 
the local freight agents was one-half greater. Mr. Mills himself places the loss at 
about 1,200,000 baskets. 
