130 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



against the facts. We are as profoundly ignorant of yellows as at the 

 start. And, while New York at the moment is nearly free from yellows, 

 everywhere the sinister reminders of ancient epidemics, like skeletons 

 at a feast that are never out of sight, bid us be on our guard for new 

 outbreaks. 



PEACH-BREEDING 



But little effort has been made, as the histories of its varieties show, 

 to breed peaches. All but a very few varieties have come from chance 

 seedlings. Peaches were grown from seed for centuries and many types 

 now come true when seeds are planted. After budded trees became the 

 vogue, until Mendel's great discovery, breeding the peach consisted in 

 selecting an occasional meritorious tree, multiplying it by budding and, if 

 it had pronounced merit, turning it over to a ntirseryman for the trade. 

 The art progressed no further because selection was thought to be the 

 ftmdamental process in improving plants and breeders preferred to work 

 in fields where the harvests were more immediate than in tree-fruits. Now 

 that plant-breeding centers around controlled hybridization, plants propa- 

 gated vegetatively should receive quite as much attention as those grown 

 from seed. , Mendel has opened the door to intimate familiarity with some 

 of the fundamental phenomena of hybridization, and, despite the difficult 

 and complex literature the professionals are imposing on the art, chiefly 

 discussions of methods and disputations about principles, the layman 

 finds Mendelian laws easy to put in practice ; and peach-breeding is certain 

 to go forward in leaps and bounds as the irresistible fascination of the 

 subject seizes peach-growers. 



Meanwhile, as a foundation for future work, it becomes highly 

 important to know how the varieties we have came into existence. The 

 known histories of the many diverse kinds of peaches show that this fruit 

 has been improved almost wholly through new varieties by chance hybridi- 

 zation — self -fertilized seed, selection and mutations are almost negligible 

 factors. The following are the data: No case is recorded in The Peaches 

 of New York of a variety known to have coine from a self-fertilized seed. 

 The seed parent is given for 214 varieties; the seed and pollen parents 

 of 37 varieties. But 4 varieties are reported to have come from bud- 

 mutations. Of chance seedlings, sorts from seed with neither parent 

 known, there are 161. The origins of 1765 of the varieties described 

 in The Peaches of New York are unknown. The total number of peaches 

 described is 2 181. 



