128 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



the war of 1812." ' The yellows-sweep really began in the northern part 

 of Delaware in New Castle County, in the early forties, when, according 

 to John Delano, Isaac Reeves' peach-trees were dying of yellows by the 

 score " maugre all his care, cultivation and circumspection."'- In 1846, 

 James W. Thompson, in a splendid account of the peach-industr^' in 

 Delaware, names the borer and yellows as the two devastating enemies 

 of this fruit and speaks of the latter as a " constitutional, consumptive or 

 marasmatic disease for which no other remedy is known or to be practiced, 

 but extirpation and destruction." ^ "By 1855 the yellows had taken 

 possession of nearly all the orchards, and peach culture in this section was 

 at an end." ^ Yet in the same coimty, about Middletown, but a few 

 miles to the south, the disease though present was not epidemic nor did it 

 become so until twenty years later. 



With the passing of the orchards in northern New Castle, the southern 

 part of the county became the center of the industry in Delaware. Here, 

 in the early seventies, there were from 1,000,000 to 1,750,000 trees covering 

 from 10,000 to 17,500 acres. ^ Yellows, according to numerous accounts, 

 became virulent about 1870, was at its height in 1875, after which the 

 progress and outcome of the epidemic is essentially the same as in the 

 northern part of the county — the yellows-sweep was driving slowly but 

 surely southward. Thus, in 1880, the center of the industry was in Kent 

 County, second south of the three covmties in Delaware, there being in 

 1879, according to the census of 1880, nearly 2,000,000 trees covering nearly 

 20,000 acres in this county. Yellows, present and widespread at an early 

 date in Kent, was not alarmingly destructive until the summers of 1886 

 and 1887, when in the northern two-thirds of the county the disease " spread 

 Hke wild fire." At this time and as late as 1890, there was little yellows in 

 southern Kent and northern Sussex, but before the end of the century the 

 whole State had been swept by yellows. There are no census figures for 

 peaches until 1890 when the number of bearing trees in Delaware was 

 4,521,623. The toll taken by yellows, augmented by San Jose scale, is 

 indicated by the falling off in number of trees in the next decade, at the 

 end of which there were 2,441,650 trees and after another decade, 1909, 

 but 1,177,402 trees. 



Black, John J. Cult. Peach &■ Pear, 81. 1886. 



* Cultivator 167. 1843. 



' Horticulturist 37. 1846. 



' Dimlap, Dr. F. S. U. S. D. A. Div. of Bot. Bui. No. 9:57. 



• Smith, Erwin F. U. S. D. A. Div. of Bot. Bui. No. 9:61. 1 



