Mr. Lorin Blodget, Philadelphia, says: "My peaches are likely to fail in a year or two. They are ripening in August, when not due until late in September. The delicious 'Miss Percival' is very fine, but ripens too soon. I fear Mr. Rutter's work is true, and that I cannot cure the yellows by fertilization."

[This brief item is an interesting contribution to an idea fast gaining ground with intelligent peach growers, that the many contradictory testimonies in regard to the earliness of peaches, may be explained by the condition of the trees. It is beyond dispute, that when any tree is injured, the fruit matures earlier than it would do otherwise. This is the foundation for horticultural practice of ringing a branch. Now, anything that impairs the vital powers of a tree, must have an influence on the precocity of the fruit. We do not always see the influence of insidious disease, and a tree apparently healthy may have within the germs of unhealthfulness sufficient to affect the period of maturity in the fruit. In the case of the yellows in the peach, this is certainly true. The disease is there a year before there is any appearance thereof to the general observer. Once in awhile we are made aware of the presence of the disease by an arrested and frowzy-looking branch, pushing out late in the growing season from the lower part of the tree trunk.

A tree in this stage, healthy enough to the eye, would no doubt produce earlier fruit than heretofore; and so it would from any other depressing influence on the growth force.

In short, it is coming to be an accepted doctrine, that when any unusual earliness is claimed for an early peach, we must be sure there is no lurking disease at work, before we are sure that the earliness will be permanent. - Ed. G. M.]