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to do with it.  I apply ashes and a little manure
to the soil where the old tree grew for the
sustenance of the new; and for years, and last fall,
the tree occupying the ground where I lost my
first tree with yellows was heavily laden with healthy
peaches - and that is only one among many
like it.

6th Question [what reason have you for thinking that
the trees dug out were diseased with yellows?]

I am hardly able to write  - This from letter this
evening - in justice to myself; and need only
sat that from observation and experience
I know the yellows at sight as readily as I
do the most  familiar varieties of fruit or the
difference in different species of trees. The
best written description of the yellows is
as nothing (in converying an idea or
knowledge of it to a person who has never
seen it) in comparison with the certainty
of knowledge and ability to detect
it (when there are visible signs) that comes
to some who have a practiced eye by
long & interested familiarity with it.

Yours truly
A. C. Merritt

copy 8

Douglas, Michigan.
April 18, 1888.

Erwin F. Smith.
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Dear Sir: - Your letter of the 9th last
and one of the 16th are before me and I
now hasten to reply to your questions as to
my experience in growing healthy peaches
from trees set in the place of trees
taken out on account of unmistakable
yellows.

My own experience and that of some
of my neighbors has I think fully established
the fact, with us at least, that
        