The Peach Yellows

This important report deserves something more than a passing notice, Laving been prepared by a Michigan man, a gradúate of the State University, and well known as a pcientific investigator of unusual fitness for such work. The author deals at length, andin a manner that may fairly be considered exhaustive, with the history and distribution of the disease, its characteristic symptoms, the loases due to yellows, the conditions known nr supposed to favor the disease, and the whole subject of restrictive legislation, and presenta in closing his conclusions as to the probable cause. The history of the disease, as treated by the author, illustrates the extraordinary difliculties attending such an effort to gather scientiflc data from the massofconflictiug reports, theories and unfounded statements that have accumulated within the century that the disease has been known. These have been earefully sifted, and the ground will not have to be gone over again. Among the most important conclusions under this head are that the disease spreads from centers, annually appearing first in localities thickly set with orchards, that the area of its action has extended mainly north-east, north and north-west, and that is now more or less prevalent from Massaehusetts to Georgia and westward to Lake Michigan and the MissiBsippi, and further that the first caseBofyellows in any district are usually, i f not alwayp, in young trees impoited from infected localities. The symptoms are minutely described.and the recognition of the disease facilitated by thirty-seven photo-engraving8 and colored platee. The losses due to yellows and the marked lepreciation of real estáte iu conseijuence plainly justify the efforts that have been put forth to restrict its ravages, and Rome Btnking statiBtiras of the valueof the peach erop in Delaware and Michigan, and the financial embarraBsment and even ruia freijuently entailed by its deBtrnction are glven. The part of the report that ie of the most scientific interest gives the resulta of a series of experimenta undertaken in order to determine whether the disease is produced by lnoculation, and especial ly whether the disease can be transmitted from inse.rted budB to healthy stocks. Nearly one thousand trees, in Maryland and Delaware, were inoculated in 1887, while five hundred similar trees were reserved, without inoculation, for comparison. The results of the experimenta showed that in about forty per cent. of theinoculations the infeotion was transmitted frorp the bud to the Rtock. Various other experimental observations were rarried out, of which there is not time to speak in detail. As the title indicates, the Teport is to be considered as etrictly preliminary, and the author refrains from discussing at length the nature of the organisni which he believes to be the cause of tho disease. He is still engaged in the investigation, and is bonding every energy to the strictly scientific part [of the ■work. The investigation, as a whole, is Ione that will bring credit to the State, and to the University where it waf ried on during a porlion of Ibe mixteen months thus far devoted to it.