Decline of Peach -growing. 45 



a region which may be considered to be typical of 

 the complaint that peaches are now particularly diffi- 

 cult to raise. "There are many theories to account 

 for this failure. Oftenest, perhaps, it is attributed to 

 change of climate, but we have no proof that any 

 considerable climatic change has occurred, while it 

 seems to be true that the northern peach frontier is 

 holding its own, or is even advancing. In New York 

 the failure is often attributed to yellows, that disease 

 which seems to exist as a vague and indefinable 

 alarm in the minds of the general agricultural popu- 

 lation. Yellows and increasingly rigorous climate are 

 said to have wiped out the peach growing of the 

 Cayuga belt. Twenty years ago a million peach 

 trees, it is said, could be seen upon the eastern shore 

 from one point upon the west side, but now there 

 are only a few scattered orchards. Here, then, may 

 be found the secret of this strange falling off of the 

 peach trees in all parts of the country in these recent 

 years. 



"Slanting towards the lake and pouring into it 

 their drainage of water and cold air, laterally drained 

 by deep ravines and protected from sweeping winds 

 by lines of wood, these Cayuga lands seem to be ad- 

 mirably adapted to the peach. But the region had 

 never been a peach belt, in the sense in which that 

 term will apply to the best part of the Niagara dis- 

 trict, or to the Lake Michigan belt, or the areas in 

 more southern states. In other words, peaches had 

 never been a leading industry there, but the orchards 

 had been planted here and there near the lake as a 



