1882. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



347 



then personally consult him or any other intelli- 

 gent florist about the supply of plants, &c. ; and 

 he, or they, will gladly furnish their patrons — 

 who delight in causing two flowers to grow where 

 but one grew before— with proper instructions. 



HISTORY OF THE PEACH IN AMERICA. 



BY HON. LORIN BLODGETT, PHILADELPHIA. 



I have for many years believed the American 

 peach to be indigenous, having seen it growing 

 in the woodlands of Virginia and Maryland, and 

 showing its blossoms in the spring among the 

 ordinary trees at the height of thirty or forty 

 feet. And I have now come upon a striking 

 statement of William Penn, in confirmation of 

 this view, found in his letter to his Friends of 

 16th August, 1683, which I transcribe. 



In paragraph V. of this letter, he says : " The 

 fruits that I find in the woods are white and 

 black mulberry, chestnut, walnut, plumbs, straw- 

 berries, cranberries, hurtleberries and grapes of 

 divers sorts. * * * Here are also peaches, and 

 very good and in great quantities, not an Indian 

 plantation without them ; but whether naturally 

 here at first I know not. However, one may 

 have them by bushels for very little ; they make 

 a pleasant drink, and, I think, not inferior to 

 any peach in England, except the true Newing- 

 ton." 



As Penn saj's, in the same letter, "the first 

 planters here were the Dutch, and after them 

 the Swedes and Finns," it does not appear 

 probable that the cold north of Europe could 

 easily have distributed here this fruit, of Persian 

 origin, in such abundance as to be " on every 

 Indian plantation " in 1682. I am not aware 

 that any one has written up the matter, and 

 have not at this moment time to examine the 

 old narratives. I don't know why the peach 

 should not as reasonably be native here as the 

 mulberry or strawberry, the walnut or the 

 chestnut. 



I have trees in my garden that show^ every 

 evidence of the qualities ascribed to indigenous 

 growths. One peach tree, sixteen years of age, 

 is thirty-eight inches in circumference at two to 

 four feet from the surface, with branches five feet 

 from the ground twenty-four inches in circum- 

 ference, and it is as hardy and robust as a honey 

 locust standing twenty feet away. I have still 

 twenty-five trees of various ages, all seedlings, 

 from twelve to sixteen years from the seed, pro- 

 ducing large crops of valuable fruit every year. 



I have tried to follow the example of the good 

 Indians whom Penn in this letter describes with 

 much enthusiasm, and I have been rewarded, as 

 they were, by bushels of fine peaches every 

 year for the last fourteen. They come up as 

 seedlings with freedom at all times, and more 

 than half of all I have grown have produced 

 valuable fruit, many of them of superior char- 

 acter, as you have seen. 



[This very interesting note from Mr. Blodgett 

 suggests to us to express regret that nothing has 

 been done to any extent to trace from authentic 

 records the history of our fruits on this continent. 

 The authors of all our works on fruits content 

 themselves with mere practical details. One 

 who would go into this matter with the intelli- 

 gent zeal of the genuine hi-torian, would render 

 a great service to his country. 



As regards the particular question raised by 

 Mr. B., namely, the indigenous character of the 

 peach, there are botanical reasons, which need 

 not be given here, which would leave scarcely a 

 bare probability that such could be the case. 

 There is not a botanist, careful as they usually 

 are with opinions, who would hesitate to say 

 from certain known facts that it was not possi- 

 ble for the peach to be indigenous to the Ameri- 

 can continent. But we need not dwell on this 

 point, because there is more reason for the con- 

 jecture that the Indians obtained the peach 

 from the white man. It must not be forgotten 

 that for a hundred years before this letter of 

 Penn's was written, various colonies had started 

 from the Old World and settled in different places 

 along the coast from what is now North Caro- 

 lina to Massachusetts. The seeds of the fruits, 

 grains and vegetables of the Old World were 

 brought with them ; and though we have before 

 us no specific statement that they brought peach 

 stones, why should they not? The Dutch and 

 the Swedes had numerous settlements on both 

 sides of the Delaware for a quarter of a century 

 before Penn started his colony — one of them, 

 Warner, having a large garden and farm no leas 

 than four miles from the Delaware, over in 

 what is now known as West Philadelphia. Re- 

 liable records place a population of at least 3,000 

 when William Penn arrived. As the peach will 

 reproduce itself in two or three years from the 

 seed, there was plenty of time for the plant to 

 have spread among the Indians even from these 

 settlers, to say nothing of the sources which ex- 

 isted elsewhere. Champlain's party, which 

 arrived in 1608, is known to have given the In- 



