Later Judge Peters writes:[213] "I am pursuing my old plan of re-instating my peach trees lost last season (1806 or 1807) by my unconquerable foe, the disease I call the yellows. I obtain them from different nurseries free from this pestiferous affection. The worm or wasp (Ægeria) I have in complete subjection. I should be perfectly disinterested in proposing that the society offer a premium for preventing the disease so fatal; for I shall never gain the reward." And again:[214] "I still think that the disease so generally fatal (more so this year than any other in my memory), called the yellows, is atmospherical. * * * Compare this account (of thrifty orchards in Delaware) with the actual state of the peach in our country, and judge whether we live in a region favorable to its growth. Mr. Heston's attempt at cultivating this tree in the Southern manner begins already to fail. His trees are evidently infected, and many are on the decline. The yellows are universally prevalent this season throughout the whole country (_i. e._, around Philadelphia)." We have given but little out of much that Judge Peters wrote on yellows, his observations and experiences covering nearly a generation. We have quoted sufficiently from his accounts, however, indubitably to establish the fact that peach-yellows was rampant about Philadelphia at least as early as 1800. Smith[215] puts the appearance of yellows in this region as probably some time prior to 1791. By this time there was a considerable body of scientific and practical agricultural literature in America, and we may assume, since no trouble that could possibly be identified as yellows had been described as existing elsewhere in America, though the peach-borer is frequently discussed, that the disease at this period, about 1800, was restricted to the neighborhood of Philadelphia. We now find the yellows gradually extending into neighboring states--Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and New York. Wm. Coxe of New Jersey who in 1807 wrote Judge Peters, "I am perfectly ignorant of the disease to which you give the name yellows," in 1817 knew it only too well as "a malady which no remedy can cure nor cultivation avert," and devotes nearly two pages in his _Fruit Trees_ to a discussion of its nature.[216] References to yellows in all of the states named by this time had become general. Our purpose to show the spread, effects, and early treatment of the disease is fully served by quoting at length from a single author--a keen observer, careful writer and the most notable horticultural and botanical authority of his time, Wm. Prince, of Flushing, Long Island.[217] To Prince, by the way, we are indebted for the first reference to what is now considered the most certain symptom of yellows--premature ripening of fruit. Prince says: