THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 93 



He put varieties of peaches into five groups which he called races and 

 to which he gave the names: Persian, Northern Chinese, Spanish, Southern 

 Chinese and Peento. He bounded peach-culture in America on the 

 north by the Great Lakes and on the south by the Gulf and divided this 

 great region into five zones to each of which he assigned one of his races. 

 Onderdonk studied peaches in Texas and found there remarkable dis- 

 tinguishing characters; as, in adaptations to southern climates, in length 

 of the rest-period, in differences in leafing, blooming and fruiting-time, 

 and in the organs of the plants. Professor R. H. Price, working with a 

 large number of varieties at the Texas Agricultural College, verified and 

 greatly extended Onderdonk's observations.^ Eventually, Price became 

 the pontifical authority in this country on the classification of peaches 

 and in numerous articles and addresses set forth the Onderdonk grouping 

 ■of varieties so convincingly that it was adopted by practically all American 

 pomologists and at present is in use, to some degree at least, in nearly all 

 of our horticultural literatiire> It becomes necessary, therefore, to scrutinize 

 closely this natural classification of Onderdonk and Price. 



The end to be attained in a classification of peaches, as in classify- 

 ing natural objects of any kind, is to provide an epitome of the knowledge 

 of the fruits classified. Incidentally, a classification helps in the identi- 

 fication of varieties of peaches. Does the Onderdonk classification serve 

 these purposes? We have not found that it does. In most arduous 

 -attempts to arrange the sorts of peaches growing on the Station groionds 

 according to the Onderdonk plan, we have wholly failed. Even the varie- 

 ties named as types do not fit, as they grow in the north, in the places pro- 

 vided for them by these southern ^ classifiers. Indeed, we have wasted so 

 much time and patience in attempting to group varieties according to 

 Onderdonk and Price, and with so little success, that the Onderdonk 

 classification seems to us to be cursed with the confusion of Babel. Since 

 pomologists so generally accept this classification, these words demand 

 that it be shown wherein this attempt at a natural arrangement of varieties 

 fails. 



In the first place the basis of Onderdonk's classification, as the names 

 suggest, is regional variation. Each race stands for a region, the Peento 

 included — for the name is very obviously Chinese. Incompleteness, then, 

 is the first faiilt of this system for there are other regions in which races of 



» Tex. Sta. Bui. 39:826-832. 1896. 



