THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 1 23 



lence of the yellows the peach orchards have been gradually moving north- 

 ward, until at the present time the counties of Morris and Hunterdon have 

 the largest interest involved, and the prospect is that a few more years 

 will see even these localities deprived of the industry." 



" The peach growers of New Jersey consider an orchard worth nothing 

 after the age of nine years. At that time they root out all the trees as 

 they would so many corn stiomps, and use the land for general crops, plant- 

 ing a young orchard of seedlings each year to make good the loss." 



Still passing northward from the first center of infection, we come to 

 New York, where, according to Wm. Prince, in a foregoing quotation, the 

 disease appeared as early as 1801. The son of this writer, W. R. Prince, 

 in the continuation of the article quoted on page 121, written in 1846, says: 

 " In this island the malady became exhausted some years since by the 

 utter destruction of the old orchards, and the determination not to plant 

 new ones until it became extinct. This proved most fortunate as the 

 disease has been for years banished from Long Island, and now new orchards 

 are springing up everywhere, and every garden is becoming readomed 

 with the finest varieties of the Peach ' redolent with health.'" A. J. 

 Downing,^ writing in 1849, reports: " Fifteen years ago there was scarcely 

 a tree in the vicinity of Newbtirgh that was not more or less diseased with 

 the yellows. By pursuing the course we have indicated (destruction by 

 burning), the disease has almost disappeared." Thirty years later, Charles 

 Downing, writing from Newburgh, states: " We have had the yellows 

 here at intervals for over sixty years, some times continuing for five or 

 six years and then several years free from it." 



At present, 1916, peaches are freely planted along the Hudson in 

 the region of which the Downings wrote, and, whether from following the 

 method of A. J. Downing in burning the trees, or whether we are in one of 

 the intervals of immunity noted by Charles Downing, peach-yellows, 

 while present, causes but small losses. One might enlarge at length on 

 the vagaries of yellows but we can concern ourselves only with the main 

 facts of its history. We now follow the disease from eastern to western 

 New York. 



Looking through the records of the hundred years of peach-growing 

 in western New York, we find little to indicate that yellows has ever been 

 the scourge in this region that it is pictured to have been eastward and 

 southward or even westward in Michigan. The explanation? Growers, 



'^ Horticulturist ^OT,. 1849. 



