464 THE PEACH. 



exhaustion arising from successive over-crops. Afterwards it 

 has been established and perpetuated by sowing the seeds of the 

 enfeebled tree either to obtain varieties or for stocks. 



Let us look for a moment into the history of the peach culture 

 in the United States. For almost an hundred years after this 

 tree was introduced into this country it was largely cultivated, 

 especially in Virginia, Maryland, and New-Jersey, as we have 

 already stated, in perfect freedom from such disease, and with 

 the least possible care. The great natural fertility of the soil 

 was unexhausted, and the land occupied by orchards was seldom 

 or never cropped. Most of the soil of these states, however, 

 though at first naturally rich, was light and sandy, and in 

 course of time became comparatively exhausted. The peach 

 tree, always productive to an excess in this climate, in the im- 

 poverished soil was no longer able to recruit its energies by an- 

 nual growth, and gradually became more and more enfeebled 

 and short-lived. About 1800, or a few years before, attention 

 was attracted in the neighborhood of Philadelphia to the sudden 

 decay and death of the orchards without sudden cause. From 

 Philadelphia and Delaware the disease gradually extended to 

 New-Jersey, where, in 1814, it was so prevalent as to destroy a 

 considerable part of all the orchards. About three or four years 

 later it appeared on the banks of the Hudson, (or from 1812 to 

 1815,) gradually, and slowly, extending northward and westward, 

 to the remainder of the state. Its progress to Connecticut was 

 taking place at the same time, a few trees here and there show- 

 ing the disease until it became well known, (though not yet 

 generally prevalent,) throughout most of the warmer parts of 

 New-England. 



It should be here remarked that, though the disease had been 

 considerably noticed in the Maryland and Middle States, pre- 

 viously, yet it was by no means general until about the close of 

 the last war. At this time wheat and other grain crops bore 

 very high prices, and the failing fertility of the peach orchard 

 soils of those states was suddenly still more lowered by a heavy 

 system of cropping between the trees, without returning any 

 thing to the soil. Still the peach was planted, produced a few 

 heavy crops, and declined, from sheer feebleness and want of 

 sustenance. As it was the custom with many orchardists to raise 

 their own seedling trees, and as almost all nurserymen gathered 

 the stones indiscriminately for stocks, it is evident that the con- 

 stitutional debility of the parent tree would naturally be inherit- 

 ed to a greater or less degree by the seedlings. Still the system 

 of allowing the tree to exhaust itself by heavy and repeated 

 crops in a light soil was adhered to, and generation after genera- 

 tion of seedlings, each more enfeebled than the former, at last 

 produced a completely sickly and feeble stock of peach trees in 

 those districts. 



