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 
