MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES 395 



the bulk of his crop was Snyder. But it is the old story : What will do 

 well in one place is worthless in another. L. C. 



Muncie, Nov. 24. 



— We cannot account for the failure of your Taylors in ripening- un- 

 less on the theory that they set too much fruit to ripen well. They 

 tend to overbear, and unless the soil is very rich cannot perfect all the 

 fruit that is set. Try thinning out about half the bearing canes.-^tf*. 



PEACHES FAILING IN DELAWARE. 



Time was when the peach seemed a fruit that would grow almost 

 anywhere in this country. Its limits get more and more diminished as 

 time goes on. A representative of the Philadelphia Record, a few 

 weeks ago, had this to say of the famed Delaware region : 



In ten years a Delaware peach will be as rare a thing in this market as it was 

 thirty or more years ago, when old Major Reynold shipped the first cargo of the 

 fruit to Philadelphia from his farm near Delaware City. There are now no peaches 

 grown about Delaware City ; the peach beltbas moved south on the Peninsula. In 

 ten years peaches have become a precarious crop, and it looks now as if the greatest 

 peach country of the world will in a decade be as bare of peach trees as it was when 

 Reybold planted his first orchard. "The Yellows," the deadly enemy of the peach, 

 has driven the orchards out of existence, and the average crop, which was a few 

 years ago more than 3,000,000 baskets, is now less than 1,000,000. 



Peaches have been for thirty years more plentiful and more luscious in the 

 eastern cities of the United States than anywhere else in the world, and the pros- 

 pective complete collapse of the growing of the fruit in the great peach belt so near 

 this city, is a most interesting fact. 



The peach crop of the Delaware and Maryland peninsula has for the past twen- 

 ty-two years been worth more than $2,000,000 a year to the little stretch known as 

 "the peach country,"' extending thirty-five miles north and south of Dover, the 

 capital of Delaware, and thirty miles east and west between the two bays. In the 

 past twenty-two years, including 1888, the Delaware railway, which drains this 

 peach country, has shipped 37,356.417 baskets of the fruit, and fully 15,000,000 bas- 

 kets have found their way to market by water. 



Thirty-five years ago peaches grew well, even around Chicago, and 

 any point across the lake was good for a heavy crop half a dozen years 

 after planting. Now the location in which it pays to grow them gets 

 more and more circumscribed year by year. — Prairie Farmer. 



PACKING PLUMS FOR MARKET. 



The plum is perishable, and more care in handling is required than 

 often is given, especially on sorts designated to be sold on the retail 

 stands of distant cities. These certainly should be picked with stems 



