Pi;ACH YELLOWS. 227 



In Virginia and Maryland peaches and apples afford peach and apple brandy ; the 

 latter is an indifferent spirit; the former, when well made, carefully rectified and kept 

 in a cask for some years, is as fine liquor as I have ever tasted (p. 121). 



At, Paxton, near Ilarrisburg, Mr. M'Allister had several peach trees but 



only recently planted. This man also had a few apricot and nectarine 



trees. 



He gives Qd. a piece for apple and peach trees, about three or four years old, that is 

 iit to plant out (page 129). Peach trees (same place) grow about the thickness of one's 

 thumb and 4 or 5 feet high, in one year, from the stone, and bear fruit in four years, 

 from the stone (p. 130). 



In 1795 Winterbotham writes: 



The apples of this state (Maryland) are large but mealy; the peaches plenty and good. 

 From these the inhabitants distil cider and peach brandy (p. 36). 



In some counties [of Virginia] they have plenty of cider, and exquisite brandy dis- 

 tilled from peaches, which grow in great abundance upon the numerous rivers of the 

 Chesapeake (p. 84). 



Little attention appears to have been given to the systematic cultivation of 

 the peach even during the eighteenth ceatury. The trees were transplanted, 

 or grown in place from pits, and then left to themselves. Even as late as 

 1804 such treatment was not infrequent. Nevertheless the peach flourished. 



FIRST APPEARANCE OF YELLOWS. 



However, in the vicinity of Philadelphia and along the Delaware, where 

 from past experience the climate was known to be very favorable, more 

 attention was given to peach orchards after the Revolution ; and here, prior 

 to 1800, there began to be great complaint of the increasing degeneracy of 

 the peach. In marked contrast with its former habit it was now declared to 

 be very short-lived and disappointing. So general was this decay that in 

 May, 1796, the American Philosophical society offered the following pre- 

 mium, one of five: 



For the best method, verified by experiment, of preventing the premature decay of 

 -peach trees, a premium of $60. Papers on this subject will be received till the 1st day 

 of January, 1798. 



This premium was finally divided between John Ellis, of New Jersey, and 

 Thomas Coulter, formerly of Delaware but then of Bedford county, Pa. 

 Both men associated the trouble directly or indirectly with insects, and Mr. 

 Ellis gives a rough but fairly correct account of the depredations of the 

 borer, ^geria exiliosa, Say. There is no mention in either paper of any 

 symptoms at all like yellows. 



It does not appear that the peach borer was responsible for the entire 

 trouble, though unquestionably the habits of this insect have not changed 

 during the last hundred years. 



Ten years later, February 11, 1806, Judge Richard Peters read before the 

 Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture a paper '* on peach trees,'' 

 in which he says: 



About fifty years ago [between 1750 and 1760 1, on the farm on which I now reside 

 [Belmont, now included in Fairmount Park in the west part of Philadelphia], my 

 father had a large peach orchard, which yielded, abundantly. Until a general catas- 

 trophe befell it, plentiful crops liad been for many years produced with very little 

 attention. The tiees began nearly at once to sicken, and finally perished. Whether 

 by the wasp [^geria], then undiscovered, or by some change in our climate, I know 

 not. For forty years past I have observed the peach trees in my neighborhood to be 

 short-lived. Farther south, in the western country, and, it seems, in some parts of 



