374 Bulletin 74. 



11. ENEMIES AND DISEASES. 



Neglect is the most widespread enemy to peach growing in this 

 state. Not only are neglected orchards more liable than others 

 to the attacks of borers and other pests, but they become weak 

 and stunted through starvation. Sod-bound peach orchards are 

 always poor and unprofitable. They have what Professor Roberts 

 calls " timothy yellows," a condition which is far more serious in 

 this state than the true and much-dreaded yellows. The frontis- 

 piece shows an orchard which "somehow hain't done well." 

 The trouble is that the owner has tried to raise timothy, sumac, 

 briers and peaches all at the same time. The trees, in the vigor 

 of their youth, bore one crop, " but then they seemed to get the 

 yellows." But it is timoth}- yellows only. An examination ot 

 the orchard, covering many acres, did not reveal a single speci- 

 men of the yellows, although nearly' all the fruit ripened prema- 

 turely and never attained more than half the normal size. But it 

 was as well as trees on one-fourth rations and boarding an army 

 of borers at the same time could be expected to do. 



This picture calls to mind the history of the perishing peach 

 industrj' of the eastern slope of Cayuga Eake ; and this history 

 may be taken as a type of the failure of the peach in many parts 

 of the north. " A generation and more ago, peaches were plenty 

 here, but now we cannot grow them. ' ' This I hear everywhere, — 

 in Michigan, Ohio, New York and New England. There are 

 many theories to account for this failure. Oftenest, perhaps, it is 

 attributed to change of climate, but we have no proof that any 

 considerable climatic change has occurred, while it seems to be 

 true that the northern peach frontier is holding its own or is even 

 advancing. In New York, the failure is often attributed to yel- 

 lows, that disease which seems to exist as a vague and indefinable 

 alarm in the minds of the general agricultural population. Yel- 

 lows is said to have wiped out the peach growing of the Cayuga 

 belt, and it was with much curiosity that I undertook an explora- 

 tion of this region the present summer. Twenty years ago 

 a milHon peach trees, it is said, could be seen upon the eastern 

 shore from one point upon the west side, but now there are only 



