PEACH YELLOWS. 225 



have them by bushels for very little ; they make a pleasant drink and I think not 

 inferior to any peach you have in England, except the true Newington. 



According to Kobert Beverly peaches grew abundantly in Virginia at the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century. He eays: 



Peaches, nectarines, and apricots, as well as plums and cherries, grow there upon 

 standard trees. They commonly bear in three years from the stone, and thrive so ex- 

 ceedingly that they seem to have no need of grafting or inoculating, if anybody would 

 be so good a husband ; and truly I never heard of any that did graft either plum, nec- 

 tarine, peach, or apricot in that country, before the first edition of this book [London, 

 1705]. 



Peaches and nectarines I believe to be spontaneous somewhere or other on the con- 

 tinent, for the Indians have, and ever had, greater variety and finer sorts of them than 

 the English. The best sort of these cling to the stone and will not come off clear, 

 which they call plum nectarines and plum peaches, or clingstones. Some of these 

 are 12 or 13 inches in the girth. These sorts of fruits are raised so easily there tliat 

 some good husbands plant great orchards of them, purposely for their hogs; and others 

 make a drink of them, which they can mobby, and drink it as cider, or distil it off for 

 brandy. This makes the best spirit next to grapes. 



In 1733 peaches grew plentifully in Georgia, as indicated by the following 

 quotation : 



Mulberries, both black and white, are natives of this soil, and are found in the woods,^ 

 as are many other sorts of fruit trees of excellent kinds, and the growth of them is sur- 

 prisingly swift; for a peach, apricot, or nectarine tree will, from the stone, grow to be 

 a bearing tree in four or five years' time [p. 50]. 



They have oranges, lemons, apples, and pears, besides the peach and apricot men- 

 tioned before. Some of these are so delicious that whoever tastes them will despise the 

 insipid, watery taste of those we have in England; and yet such is the plenty of them 

 that they are given to the hogs in great quantities (p. 51). 



On September 18, 1740, Mr. Thomas Jones writes from Savannah to Mr. 

 John Lyde as follows : 



As to our fruit, the most common are peaches and nectarines (I believe that I had a 

 hundred bushels of the former this year in my little garden in town); we have also 

 apples of divers sorts, chinchopin nuts, walnut, chestnut, hickory, and ground nuts. 



In 1741 Sir John Oldmixon writes of Virginia: 



Here is such plenty of. peaches that they give them to their hogs; some of them, 

 called malachotoons, are as big as a lemon and resemble it a little. 



Of Carolina he writes, quoting Mr. Archdale : 



Everything generally grows there that will grow in any part of Europe, there being 

 already many sorts of fruits, as apples, pears, apricots, nectarine^', etc. They that once 

 taste of them will despise the watery, washy taste of those in England. There's such 

 plenty of them that they are given to the hogs. In four or five years they come fi'om 

 a stone to be bearing trees. 



In 1748 the naturalist, Peter Kalm, traveled extensively in Pennsylvania, 

 New Jersey, and other parts of eastern North America. Kalm was a shrewd 

 aod observant man. From his interesting records, which bear the stamp of 

 truth, I quote as follows : 



[September 17, 1748, at Mr. Bartram's country seat, 4 miles south of Philadelphia]: 

 Every countryman, even a common peasant, has an orchard near his house, in which 

 all sorts of fruits, such as peaches, apples, pears, cherries, and others are in plenty. 

 The peaches are now almost ripe. They are rare in Europe, particularly in Sweden, 

 for in that country hardly any people besides the rich taste them. But hei-e every 

 countryman had an orchard full of peach trees, which were covered with such quan- 

 ities of fruit that we could scarcely walk in the orchards without treading on those 

 which were fallen off, many of wliich were always left on the ground, and only part 

 of tliem was sold in town and the rest was consumed by the family and strangers, for 

 every one that passed by was at liberty to go into the orchard and to gather as many 

 of them as they wanted. Nay, this fine fruit was frequently given to the swine (pp. 

 71-72). 



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