Peaches in Western New York. 375 



a few scattered orchards. Here, then, may be found the secret of 

 this strange falling off of the peach trees in all parts of the coun- 

 try in these recent years. 



Slanting towards the lake and pouring into it their drainage of 

 water and cold air, laterally drained by deep ravines and pro- 

 tected from sweeping winds by lines of wood, these Cayuga lands 

 seem to be admirably adapted to the peach. But I found that the 

 region had never been a peach belt, in the sense in which that 

 term will apply to the best part of the Niagara district or to the 

 L,ake Michigan belt. In other words, peaches had never been a 

 leading industry there, but the orchards had been planted here 

 and there near the lake as a very minor appendage to the general 

 farming. For a generation or two of trees the insect pests were 

 not common. There were no good markets and the fruit sold as 

 low as twenty-five cents a bushel from the wagon box. In fact, 

 it was grown more for the home supply than with an idea of ship- 

 ping it to market. Under such conditions, it did not matter if 

 half the crop was wormy or if many trees failed and died each 

 year. Such facts often passed almost unnoticed. The trees bore 

 well, to be sure ; but the crop was not measured up in baskets 

 and accounted for in dollars and cents, and under such conditions 

 only the most productive trees left their impress upon the mem- 

 ory. The soils had not undergone such a long system of robbery 

 then as now. When the old orchards wore out, there was no par- 

 ticular incentive to plant more, for there was little money in them. 

 Often the young and energetic men had gone west, there to repeat 

 the history perhaps, and the old people did not care to set or- 

 chards. And upon this contracting area, all the borers and other 

 pests which had been bred in the many old orchards now concen- 

 trated their energies until they have left scarcely enough trees in 

 some localities upon which to perpetuate their kind. A new 

 country or a new industry is generally free of serious attacks of 

 those insects which follow the crop in older communities. But 

 the foes come in unnoticed and for a time spread unmolestedly, 

 when finally, perhaps almost suddenly, their number becomes so 

 great that they threaten destruction, and the farmer looks on in 

 amazement. 



The cause of the failure of these early orchards, therefore, is the 



