Prematureness in ripening varies from a few days to several weeks; the earlier it occurs, the smaller the fruit. When diseased fruit ripens near the normal season the peaches may be full size, showy to voluptuousness and marked outwardly only by the hectic red of the disease. The taste indicates the disease--in insipid, mawkish or bitter specimens which show the red color and undersize of prematured peaches. During the first season prematured fruit may show only on particular branches or even on a single shoot which may not differ in appearance from other parts of the tree. Prematureness, unaccompanied by other symptoms of yellows, may be due to borers, drought, neglect, girdling or similar causes. The second symptom is the opening of winter-buds out of season. This usually occurs a year later than the appearance of prematured, red-colored fruits. The buds may push forth shortly after they have formed in mid-summer while the tree-top is still bearing its fruit and foliage or they may delay until the next spring, to appear a few days in advance of normal leafing-time. Very often these buds begin growth in the autumn after healthy leaves have fallen. Such diseased buds may develop on tips of branches, especially water-sprouts, but feeble, sickly shoots due to the disease usually appear in considerable numbers on main limbs and on the trunk, no doubt under the influence of the yellows on old resting buds buried deep in the bark of the wood. Sometimes these yellow shoots are unbranched but oftener they are much branched and frequently but bunchy tufts of foliage, stems slender, leaves pale green, small, narrow and standing out stiffly at nearly right angles to the stems. In the final stage of the disease the trees assume the yellowish leaves which give name to the trouble, though sometimes the yellow is tinged with red. Yellows is an unfortunate name since so many other troubles of the peach cause the foliage to take on the jaundiced appearance of this disease. The third stage marks the beginning of the end--sometimes three years, sometimes five or six, but always death sooner or later, there being no instance on record of a diseased tree having been cured. This, in brief, is the usual course of yellows, but it follows no invariable rule in its development. Yellows is known to be spread as a contagion by affected buds in nursery stock, by nursery-trees, by orchard-trees, and may even be communicated by pits from affected trees. That it must be caused or transmitted in still other ways is apparent to all who have had experience with the disease. It seems not, however, to linger in the soil, for trees may be set in the very spots from whence diseased plants have been removed without danger to the newcomer. "War to the knife and the knife to the hilt"--absolute extermination, root and branch, by ax and fire, is the only known method of subduing yellows.