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They leave no doubt as to where and how this parasite passes the win¬ 
ter season. 
This wide-spread and destructive fungus has naturally received con¬ 
siderable attention from mycologists, although the published accounts, 
especially the European, are somewhat meager. It is apparently more 
common and destructive in this country than in Europe, for it is not 
even mentioned in Winter’s Die (lurch Pilze verursachten Kranlcheiten der 
Kultur Gewdchse , or Yon Thiimen’s Die Beldimpfung der Pilzkrankheiten. 
The summer form has been seen and described repeatedly, but no one 
has been able to connect these perishable organs with any other fungus, 
or to find resting spores. The cycle of development has remained hid¬ 
den, and all attempts at prevention have therefore been simply grop- 
ings in the dark. Woronin has recently suggested that this fungus 
may be the conidial state of some Peziza. The fungus, for aught we 
know, may have an ascosporous form belonging to this or some kindred 
group, but such a form has never been seen and is unnecessary to the 
completion of its annual cycle. Moreover, if the fungus once produced 
asci, it may have lost this power during the lapse of ages. However 
this may be, it is certain that the mycelium which winters over in the 
dried tissues is amply sufficient to reproduce the plant each spring. 
This would still be true if it retained its vitality in only now and then 
a rotted fruit, for under favorable circumstances the mycelium in a 
single peach may produce a thousand or even two thousand conidial 
tufts, and each one is certainly capable of producing from five hundred 
to a thousand spores. 
That the fungus may sometimes winter over in the twigs of the peach 
is also possible, for not only is the fruit destroyed in the manner just 
described, but sometimes growing shoots are also attacked and killed. 
When the rot appears in the twigs it is commonly called “ blight.” I 
first discovered this blight in the summer of 1887, in Delaware, where 
it was unusually prevalent. Trees thus attacked present a very pecu¬ 
liar appearance, quite suggestive of blight in the apple and pear, only 
in the peach the destruction appears to be confined principally to twigs, 
the injury seldom extending to branches which have formed more than 
two annual rings. The reason for this is apparent, or at least not 
far to seek. Peaches are borne on very short pedicels on branches of 
last season’s growth, and beyond their point of attachment there is usu¬ 
ally from 3 to 18 inches of leafy elongating shoot axis, which will ma¬ 
ture buds for the fruit and branches of the following season. In sum¬ 
mer and autumn the blight of peach stems is always, or almost always, 
traceable to infection derived from mycelium. The spores do not fig¬ 
ure here. This mycelium originates in the rotting peach; bores through 
the pedicel into the stem; ramifies in the latter, especially near the 
place of its entrance ; and quickly destroys all the distal portion of the 
branch. Frequently the twig dies back a few inches further than the 
point of attachment of the peach, and sometimes a much greater dis- 
