THE PEACH. 



589 



natural fertility of the soil was unexhausted, and the land occupied by- 

 orchards was seldom or never cropped. Most of the soil of these 

 States, however, though at first naturally rich, was light and sandy, and 

 in course of time became comparatively exhausted. The peach-tree, 

 always productive to an excess in this climate, in the impoverished soil 

 was no longer able to recruit its energies by annual growth, and gra- 

 dually became more and more enfeebled and short-lived. About 1800, 

 or a few years before, attention was attracted in the neighborhood of 

 Philadelphia to the sudden decay and death of the orchards without 

 apparent cause. From Philadelphia and Delaware the disease gradually 

 extended to New Jersey, where, in 1814, it was so prevalent as to 

 destroy a considerable part of all the orchards. About three or four 

 years later it appeared on the banks of the Hudson (or from 1812 to 

 1815), gradually and slowly extending northward and westward to the 

 remainder of the State. Its progress to Connecticut was taking place at 

 the same time, a few trees here and there showing the disease, until it 

 became well known (though not yet generally prevalent) throughout 

 most of the warmer parts of New England. 



It should be here remarked, that though the disease had been con- 

 siderably noticed in Maryland and the Middle States previously, yet it 

 was by no means general until about the close of the war of 1812. At this 

 time wheat and other grain crops bore very high prices, and the failing 

 fertility of the peach orchard soils of those States was suddenly still 

 more lowered by a heavy system of cropping between the trees without 

 returning anything to the soil. Still the peach was planted, produced a 

 few heavy crops, and declined from sheer feebleness and want of sus- 

 tenance. As it was the custom with many orchardists to raise their 

 own seedling trees, and as almost all nurserymen gathered the stones in- 

 discriminately for stocks, it is evident that the constitutional debility of 

 the parent trees would naturally be inherited to a greater or less degree 

 by the seedlings. Still the system of allowing the tree to exhaust itself 

 by heavy and repeated crops in a light soil was adhered to, and genera- 

 tion after generation of seedlings, each more enfeebled than the former, 

 at last produced a completely sickly and feeble stock of peach-trees in 

 those districts. 



The great abundance of this fruit caused it to find its way more or 

 less into all the markets on the sea-coast. The stones of the enfeebled 

 Southern trees were thus carried north, and, being esteemed by many 

 better than those of home growth, were everywhere more or less 

 planted. They brought with them the enfeebled and tainted constitu- 

 tion derived from the parent stock. They reproduced almost always 

 the same disease in the new soil ; and thus, little by little, the Yellows 

 spread from its original neighborhood, below Philadelphia, to the whole 

 northern and eastern sections of the Union. At this moment, 1845, it 

 is slowly but gradually moving West ; though the rich and deep soils of 

 the Western alluvial bottoms will, perhaps, for a considerable time, even 

 without care, overpower the original taint of the trees and stones re- 

 ceived from the East. 



Let us now look a little more closely into the nature of this enfeebled 

 state of the peach-tree which we call the Yellows. 



Every good gardener well knows that if he desires to raise a healthy 

 and vigorous seedling plant, he must select the seed from a parent 

 plant that is itself decidedly healthy. Lindley justly and concisely re- 



