THE PEACH. 89 



in the course of a few years * abundance of fruit was 

 obtained, the supply continuing for a long future. This 

 is still the case in the far West, and indeed in all parts 

 the peach is more easily propagated than any other fruit- 

 tree ; the stones, buried in heaps in the autumn, being 

 taken up in spring, cracked, and the kernels set in rows in 

 prepared soil, wherever they are intended to grow. In 

 the course of the same spring they vegetate, soon grow 3 

 or 4 ft. high, and may be budded the following Septem- 

 ber. In two years from that time, if left undisturbed, 

 they will usually bear a small crop, and by the next season 

 an abundant one. In the older States, however, within 

 the last 50 years two great evils have appeared to obstruct 

 the former smooth course of the fruit-grower, in the shape 

 of two diseases of different degrees of injuriousness, but 

 the combined influence of which has vastly diminished 

 the natural term of the peach-tree's life and the value of 

 peach orchards. One of these is caused by a grub, which 

 devours the bark and thus kills the tree. 



Ear more fatal because less understood is the " yellows," 

 a malady which affects the peach-tree exclusively, and 

 seems also to be peculiar to America ; which propagates 

 itself both by the seed and by grafting, and is also con- 

 tagious, spreading gradually but certainly through whole 

 districts. The contagious characteristic is much doubted 

 in theory, since there is nothing analogous to it in the 

 whole range of the vegetable kingdom, but, being proved 

 practically true, has to be taken for granted so far as 

 acting upon it is concerned, for only where every vestige 

 of the infected trees has been utterly destroyed has the 

 plague been stayed and the health of the remainder been 

 preserved. Perfectly unknown for at least a century after 

 the introduction of the fruit, it was about the year 1800 

 that it first appeared,in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, 

 and slowly extending its ravages, did not become general 

 until after the close of the war. The grand cause of this 

 peach disease is supposed to be the exhaustion of the land 



* Seyd, in his California and its Resources, mentions that in that country 

 peach-trees, in. 28 months from the time when the seed was planted, bore fruit 

 over 9 in. in circumference, and weighing from 7 to 8i oz. 



