
          102

"The blight or the yellows in peaches is the most troublesome;
excepting this the above named fruits are but little liable to disease
[in neighborhood of Delaware city, 1836]. - Jno. C. Clark, quoted
by L. P. Bush- chair. St. Fr. Com. for Del. of An. Pom. Soc. p 99,
Proceedings, 1856, Boston, 1857.

G. Emerson, M.D., of Phila. [formerly of Dover, Del.] in a paper: "Agencies operating in
the Atlantic States upon fruit culture, and more especially upon
that of the peach" in Proc. Am. Pom. Soc., at Phila, 1869. Boston
1869; attributes yellows to a "loss of vitality in the tree, owing
to exposure to lower degrees of temperature than its original organization
enabled it to stand"  He finds this theory of climatic
agency is "strongly supported- if not demonstrated- by the fact
that in the oldest parts of the U.S. the peach is now still found
to thrive and bear luxuriant crops for 20, 30 and more years, in
a section where the extreme cold of our winters is moderated through
the influence of large bodies of water, as, for example in the peninsula
lying between the Del. and Chesapeake Bays" [i.e. in the very
region now worst infected!].

See p. 152, Proc. Am. Pom. Soc., 1873, for account of loss of
peach orchard of  160 acres, about 1850-3, and of two others about 1871-73, - in Baton Rouge Parish,
La.  The disease was probably yellows [Mrs. Stevens says she has
seen the premature spotted peaches in La.]  These trees are said
to have looked well and grown finely "till about their 3d[3rd] or 4th
year,"  when they sickened and d ied.  Report by R. H. Day, M.D., who
owned one of the orchards.
        