In the March issue of the Monthly is a suggestion from Mr. C. Hiller that it might be profitable to utilize the non-producing Blackman Plum as a stock upon which to bud peaches. Mr. H. thinks this would be a protection against the yellows. And the Editor gives a quasi endorsement.

Accepting your theory as to the cause of this disease, at least until we get more light upon the subject, let me give you a few facts, from which you and your readers may draw the best conclusions they can.

Thirty-five years ago the writer's father tried the experiment of budding peach on plum stocks with the hope of securing more healthy and hardy trees. Alas, the result was the same as on peach stocks. Two or three crops of fine fruit and then an orchard of dying trees. About ten years ago a gentleman in Frederick County, Virginia, concluded that plum stocks would be yellows-proof and planted an orchard of two hundred trees. Last fall he was engaged in cutting them down and grubbing up the debris, and wanted to know if burning the wood and roots and burying the ashes would do anything toward destroying the fungi or whatever might be the cause of the yellows.

Now if fungus mycelium does attack the plum roots, as the above facts indicate, would it not be more likely to attack the Blackman, than any other plum? It is claimed that the Blackman is half peach and you think the fungus mycelium more partial to the peach than the plum - ergo the Blackman would be sooner attacked than the purer stock.

Oh ! for a book to tell us all we want to know about these things. In the meantime we are very grateful to the Gardeners' Monthly for the careful aid and genuine light it gives.

Richmond, Va.

[This is the first evidence that seems positive that peaches on plum stocks will get the yellows. It is so important a matter that we should like still further experience.

We saw ourselves in Southern Pennsylvania, a large block of nursery trees, one year from the bud, peaches grafted on Myrobolan plum stocks. These were yellow and sickly, - but the yellowness was not from the disease known as the yellows.

Is it not often the case that peaches with yellow leaves from some interference with proper nutrition, are often mistaken for trees sick with the yellows?

Scientific men who have not had the practical experience which nurserymen and large peach growers have, when undertaking to tell us the cause of yellows, often leave us in doubt whether they have had the genuine disease under their hands in their experiments; and hence we do not place the same value on the results as if we had more certainty about this fact. Those who tell us that the yellows come from starvation, and the want of some particular element in the soil, - and that they have cured the disease - made a sickly plant healthy, by good manure and cultivation, - have certainly not had the real disease to deal with. In the true " yellows " we do not see the results till the plant is past recovery. - Ed. G. M].

" In the March issue of the Monthly is a suggestion from Mr. C. Hiller that it might be profitable to utilize the non-producing Blackman plum as a stock upon which to bud peaches. Mr. H. thinks this would be a protection against the Yellows. And the Editor gives a quasi endorsement." The above is the language of Mr. "Max" in the May issue of the Monthly. Mr. "Max" does not hold to this theory, for he says thirty-five years ago his father tried the experiment of budding peaches on plum stocks and found that they had the Yellows as bad as those that were budded on peach stocks. I believe I have been the cause of this controversy, by asking in the Monthly several months since if any one had ever fruited the Blackman plum and if so what of the fruit? And I believe also that it is now an acknowledged fact that the Blackman plum bears no fruit; consequently I am constrained to ask if Mr. Hiller, "Max" and the wide-a-wake Editor, have not been "sleeping on guard?" Or can they explain to the thousands of readers of the Monthly how it is possible to produce stocks from the " non-producing Blackman plum " to bud peaches upon at all? If the Blackman plum bears no fruit (which you acknowledge to be true) it has no seeds, and no seeds means no seedlings or stocks to bud on.

Surely you will not answer by saying the Blackman plum may be grown from cuttings and thereby produce stocks. Would not this be a very uncertain, slow and expensive process to obtain stocks to bud peaches upon? Paris, Tex.

[All the plum stocks in use in the nurseries of Europe up to very recent times, were raised by layers - and some very popular kinds of stocks, the Muscle for instance, are still so raised. All the quince stocks in that part of the world and this are raised from layers and cuttings, and pear trees on quince stocks are all raised on stocks from these layers and cuttings.

Our correspondent probably means that it would not be possible to raise peach trees as cheaply on such stocks as on stocks raised from seeds; he is probably right.

Still if it should be found that peaches raised on some peculiar stock, would infallibly be proof against Yellows, we imagine there are people who would be willing to pay a much greater price for the trees than now prevails. - Ed. G. M].