70- THE PEACH 



satisfactory in raising fruit on a large scale for 

 twelve or fifteen years consecutively in the same 

 orchards in Chester and Delaware counties, sur- 

 rounded at the same time by thousands of trees, 

 dead and dying from the disease for the want of 

 the application of proper measures, and quite as 

 much, perhaps, from the want of care and^proper 

 treatment. My large and successful orchards were 

 intersected by public roads much traveled, and were 

 the cause of great attraction, exciting an interest 

 that led to the planting of thousands of trees, but 

 as our apple orchards are now cultivated and cared 

 for, these new plantings of the peach were gener- 

 ally left to take the rotation of farm crops, of corn, 

 oats, wheat and clover, and they soon yielded and 

 finally fell victims to the borer and the yellows. 



The disease is communicated by contact of roots, 

 inoculation or trimming. A knife used on a dis- 

 eased tree will communicate the disease if used on 

 a healthy one. If the disease arises from Parasitic 

 Fungi, it is. most likely communicated by what is 

 called sporadic contagion. A great deal of the 

 cause of its rapid spread, no doubt, may be attrib- 

 uted to the practice so prevalent with peach grow- 

 ers in the annual trimming of their orchards. It 

 has no doubt been ruinous to those growers who 

 have not been able to recognize the disease in its 

 early stages. Only the trimming of a few diseased 

 trees in an orchard may be the means of spreading 

 the disease over the entire orchard in the course of 



