14 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



PEACH EXPERIENCES. 

 By p. M. Augur. 



"While different climes have their delicious fruits which are 

 eagerly sought for and abundantly used, none surpass and few 

 equal in beauty, fragrance, and luscious iflavor the choice peach. 



In its original type; as in the case of the wild pear of Europe, it 

 had little to attract a refined taste, biit like the pear, the peach and 

 its fruit were coraparatively hardy and free from disease. 



Through the modifying effect of ages of cultivation and selec- 

 tion the present century opened with many choice varieties. It 

 also opened with a dire disease which, from the peculiar effect upon 

 the leaf, was called the yellows; not a scientific name but a de- 

 scriptive one; and yet not a very definite one. 



Probably not one in a thousand of our octogenarians know the 

 time when this disease has not affected the peach in some parts of 

 the country. And yet we find many even now that say there is no 

 such disease; happy for our country were their assertions true. 



However, if the disease exists and works ruin to the amount of 

 millions annually it is folly to ignore it, or to fail to investigate it. 



My earliest memories include the peach, so abundant as to be 

 fed to hogs, the idea so often dwelt upon by. elderly people. 1 also 

 recall the ideal peach of childhood — and the fact that distance 

 lends enchantment furnishes a key to the fanciful exaggeration of 

 peaches of the olden time. 



An old friend, years ago, called on me in peach time. He told 

 of his boyhood peaches, but said he, "we can't raise peaches now." 

 After a little we sauntered through our back yard where a tree of 

 Plale's Early was loaded with a specially fine crop; the old gentle- 

 man walked around the tree twice, looking at it from all sides and 

 said, " Phineas, I am astonished; I never expected to see such a 

 sight again." " Did you ever see it surpassed? " said I. " Never," 

 said he honestly. And never after that did I hear him boast of 

 old time poaches. And yet we have this year had an orchard of 

 some two hundred trees on an eastern hill slope that had hardly a 

 tree less fully and beautifully loaded than that. 



But to take up experience. In boyhood I delighted to get very 

 choice buds and bud young seedling peaches, and when they gave 

 their first fruit what delight and satisfaction. For a boy or girl 



