THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 57 



Trees are all Standards, and I have had in my own Garden seven or eight 

 Hundred fifte Peaches of the Rare-ripes, growing at a Time on one Tree." 

 From another statement made by Justice Dudley ^ we learn that peaches 

 were still being grown from the stone and may assume that budding was 

 not known or so careful a horticulturist as our author would have men- 

 tioned it. He says: " Our Peach Trees are large and fruitful, and bear 

 commonly in three Years from the Stone. I have one in my Garden of 

 twelve Years Growth, that meastares two Foot and an Inch in Girt a Yard 

 from the Ground, which, two Years ago, bore me near a Bushel of fine 

 Peaches." 



SEEDLINGS GIVE WAY TO BUDDED TREES 



About the close of the Eighteenth Century the planting of pits for 

 permanent trees began to give way to budding. It does not appear who 

 began budding peaches on this side of the Atlantic but the desirability of 

 budded stock was discussed as early as 1736,. for in that year we find the 

 English botanist, Peter CoUinson, urging his American colleague, John 

 Bartram, to " graft Plums and Nectarines on Peach stocks." ^ The matter 

 had evidently been under consideration before for CoUinson tells Bartram 

 " Pray try; I have great opinion of its succeeding." ' Bartram is hard to 

 convince and ten years later CoUinson is still urging him to bud, for, in a 

 letter of April 26, 1746, he writes, rather impatiently, " Though thou canst 

 not see, yet I have told thee what inoculating a Peach stock may do." * 



Probably the Princes, pioneer nurserymen in America, in their nursery 

 at Flushing, Long Island, first began to bud the peach, for in their catalog 

 of 1 77 1 they offer 29 sorts though most of these appear to be types rather 

 than varieties. Twenty years later they list 35 varieties with the state- 

 ment that all " are inoculated." John Kenrick,^ father of William Ken- 



» Hist. Mass. Horl. Soc. 17. 1829-1878. 



^ Darlington, Wm. Memorials of Bartram 81. 1849. 



'76«i. 93. 1849. 



*Ibid. 177. 1849. 



' John Kenrick, one of the pioneer nurserymen on American soil, began his business career by raising 

 peach-seedlings. His nursery was situated in the towns of Newton and Brighton, Massachusetts, and 

 was founded in 1790. As we have stated in the text, he early acquired the art of budding and possibly 

 was the first, or at least one of the first, nurserymen to offer budded peach-trees for sale. In 1823, he 

 advertised in the New England Farmer thirty varieties of budded peaches five to eight feet high at thirty- 

 three and one-third cents each. These thirty varieties must have included practically all of the named 

 sorts then grown in America. It is interesting to note that he states in the advertisement that the trees 

 were packed with clay and mats. It was in this year that William Kenrick, son of John Kenrick, became 

 a partner of his father. Beside growing peaches, the Kenrick nurseries offered for sale other trees, vine 

 and bush-fruits and ornamentals as well. The Kenricks were also extensive growers of currants from which 



