602 THE PEACH. 



There are some facts, in our every-day obse -vation, which 

 may be adduced in proof of this theory. In the first place, the 

 varieties of this tree always most subject to this disease are the 

 yellow peaches ; and they, it is well known, also produce the 

 heaviest crops. More than nine-tenths of the victims, when 

 the disease first appeared, were the yellow-fleshed peaches. On 

 the other hand, the white-fleshed kinds (those Avhite and red 

 externally) are much more rarely attacked ; in some parts of 

 the country never. They are generally less vigorous, and bear 

 more moderate crops. And it is well worth remarking that 

 certain fine old sorts, the ends of the 'branches of which have a 

 peculiar, mildewed appearance, (such as the old Red Rareripe, 

 the Early Anne, &c.,) which seems to check the growth with- 

 out impairing the health, are rarely, if ever, attacked by the 

 Yellows. Slow-growing and moderately productive sorts, like 

 the Nutmeg peaches, are almost entirely exempt. We know 

 an orchard in the adjoining county, where every tree has 

 gradually died with the Yellows, except one tree which stood in 

 the centre. It is the Red Nutmeg, and is still in full vigour. It 

 is certainly true that these sorts often decay and suddenly die, 

 but we believe chiefly from the neglect which allows them to 

 fall a prey to the Peach Borer. Indeed the frequency with 

 which the Borer has been confounded with the Yellows by 

 ignorant observers, renders it much more difficult to arrive at 

 any correct conclusions respecting the contagious nature of the 

 latter disease. 



It may be said, in objection to these views, that a disease which 

 is only an enfeeblement of the constitution of a tree, would not 

 be sufficient to alter so much its whole nature and duration as 

 the Yellows has done that of the peach. The answer to this is, 

 that the debility produced in a single generation of trees, pro- 

 bably would not have led to such effects, or to any settled form 

 of constitutional disease. But it must be borne in mind that 

 the same bad management is to a great extent going on to this 

 day, the whole country over. Every year, in the month of 

 August, the season of early peaches, thousands of bushels of 

 fruit, showing the infallible symptoms of the Yellows a spotted 

 skin, &c. are exposed and sold in the markets of New-York, 

 Philadelphia and Boston. Every year more or less of the 

 stones of these peaches are planted, to produce, in their turn, a 

 generation of diseased trees, and every successive generation is 

 even more feeble and sickly than the last ! Even in the north, 

 so feeble has the stock become in many places, that an excessive 

 crop of fine fruit is but too frequently followed by the Yellows. 

 In this total absence of proper care in the selection both of the 

 seed and the trees, followed by equal negligence of good culti- 

 vation, is it surprising that the peach has become a tree com- 

 paratively difficult to preserve, and proverbially short-lived ! 



