PEACH AND THE PEAR. 3 1 



fertilizer the trees received in a life-time. The trees 

 were ploughed and cultivated and pruned as required. 

 Mr. Reeves planted land the second time in trees with 

 the aformentioned treatment, but they died of yellows 

 after having yielded one crop of fruit. After that he 

 and others abandoned the cultivation of the peach. 

 After the Peach failed in the Delaware City region, 

 Messrs. Polk and Clark went to Kent County, Md., and 

 planted orchards successfully, and to-day that county 

 produces elegant fruit. So, by comparison, the Dela- 

 ware soil gave out long before the Maryland soil. The 

 soil about Delaware City is richer, or was then, and 

 heavier than the Maryland soil. In those days the out- 

 let for peaches was very limited and the growers of the 

 then comparatively small quantity of fruit were often 

 dismayed ; whole steam-boat loads being frequently 

 thrown into the water, both at Philadelphia and at New 

 York, to relieve the overstocked market. 



The world moves, and probably to-day, with the 

 facilities at our hand, we can market successfully, more 

 millions of baskets than our predecessors could market 

 tens of thousands. Peach culture entered the peninsula 

 cotemporaneously with the telegraph, and both have 

 progressed with almost equal step to a point of which, 

 probably, their originators never dreamed. The business 

 was not active from 1850 to 1854, about which time that 

 great developer of the peninsula, the Delaware Rail 



