66 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



limit." ^ Both the peach and nectarine are grown in the horticultural 

 regions of the island. Wherever the fruits of temperate climates are culti- 

 vated in Australia, there may the peach be found. If one may judge from 

 the attention given this fruit in the agrictiltural literature of New Zealand 

 and Australia, it holds the same high place in the horticulture of these 

 islands in the Pacific that it has in Europe and America. 



The types of peaches are almost as diverse as the regions in which the 

 fruit is an inhabitant. The 2181 varieties described in The Peaches of 

 New York attest. the variability of the species in America and Europe, 

 many of our sorts having come from the Old World. This great number 

 of kinds can be distinguished by reason of differences in skin, flesh, flavor, 

 aroma, stone and season, the attributes of which have been mentioned 

 several times in foregoing paragraphs. The structure of leaf and tree 

 offers as many more taxonomic characters. It is interesting to note the 

 extreme forms in fruit and tree the peach has taken on in its centuries of 

 world-wide wanderings. 



Round, fiat, beaked, free or clingstone peaches with smooth or downy 

 skins and red, yellow or white flesh, sweet, sour or bitter, in all combina- 

 tions, and each often modified by soil and climate, are known to American 

 growers of this fruit. But there are many peaches with less well-known 

 characters. Thus, a peach in China bears fruits as heavy as one pound 

 apiece with extraordinary keeping and shipping qualities ; ^ another Chinese 

 peach of the Honey type has a tree with a maximum height of only seven or 

 eight feet ; ^ growing in the same locality, Poliping, China, is a variety with 

 extraordinarily long leaves; * the Paak wat to peach from China is a white- 

 stoned sort ; ^ a variety in the French West Indies has fruits that peel easily 

 and withstand a continuous temperature in ripening season of 76 to 90 

 degrees; ^ from Kashgar comes a peach that will keep for several months; ' 

 in Chinese Turkestan there is a nectarine " said to keep for several weeks 

 after fully ripe;" ^ even more remarkable is the Feitchen peach which 

 ripens in 'ate September and can be kept, if wrapped in paper, until Feb- 



' Boucher, W. A. Con. New Zeal. Fruit Growers 89. 1901. 



^U. S. D. A. Bur. of PI. Ind. Bui. 137:31. 1909. 



^ Ibid. 137:48. 1909. 



< lUd. 



^U. S .D. A. Bur. of PL Ind. Bui. 162:50. 1909. 



' U. S. D. A. Invent, of Seeds and Plants No. 32:14. 1914. 



' U. 5. D. A. Bui. of For. Plant Int. No. 60:411. 191 1. 



' Ibid. No. 60:412. 1911. 



