CAUSE OF THE PEACH FAILURE. 303 



and instructive, not only to the fruit-growing, but to the 

 grain-raising farmer also. 



For a hundred years, the peach flourished without care, 

 and full of health, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to 

 the Connecticut Kiver, and produced an apparently ex- 

 haustless abundance of fruit. But about 1800, attention 

 was drawn around Philadelphia to the sudden decay and 

 death of the orchards without known cause. The fatality 

 spread through Delaware into New Jersey, where, in 

 1814, many of the orchards were entirely destroyed. 

 Some years later, it appeared on the banks of the Hud 

 son, thence spread north into Connecticut, and is now 

 slowly but surely extending along the rich soils of west 

 ern New York, towards the great centre of the peach 

 cultivation of the States, on the Ohio and Mississippi 

 rivers. * 



In the peach-orchards, as on the new wheat-lands, a 

 thoughtless exhausting culture was carried on. As if 

 the soil would never tire of yielding, the unpruned trees 

 were encouraged to yield their annual loads of most 

 abundant fruit ; and wherever it was possible, a constant 

 cropping of the space between the trees hastened the 

 wearing out of the overtasked land, The trees them 

 selves, as the land became less rich, diminished in vigour, 

 and an enfeebled progeny arose, which disease, in some 

 form, was sure to attack. 



There is a great similarity between the progress of 

 the wheat failure, caused by the attacks of the midge, 

 and that of the peach-orchards above described. The 

 injury in both cases is first done to the soil ; and a sure 

 return to a better state of things can only be made by 

 renovating the soil itself, and by a more prudent and 

 skilful subsequent cultivation. 



In the city of Philadelphia, there are many things 



* DOWNING S Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America, p. 464. 



