60 * 
THE PEACH. 
There are some facts, in our every-day obse wation, which 
may be adduced in proof of this theory. In the first place, the 
varieties of this tree always most subject to this disease are the 
yellow peaches ; and they, it is well known, also produce the 
heaviest crops. More than nine-tenths of the victims, when 
the disease first appeared, were the yellow-fleshed peaches. On 
the other hand, the white-fleshed kinds (those white and red 
externally) are much more rarely attacked ; in some parts of 
the country never. They are generally less vigorous, and bear 
more moderate crops. And it is well worth remarking that 
certain fine old sorts, the ends of the branches of which have a 
peculiar, mildewed appearance, (such as the old Red Rareripe, 
the Early Anne, &c.,) which seems to check the growth with- 
out impairing the health, are rarely, if ever, attacked by the 
Yellows. Slow-growing and moderately productive sorts, like 
the Nutmeg peaches, are almost entirely exempt. We know 
an orchard in the adjoining county, where every tree has 
gradually died with the Yellows, except one tree which stood in 
the centre. It is the Red Nutmeg, and is still in full vigour. It 
is certainly true that these sorts often decay and suddenly die, 
but we believe chiefly from the neglect which allows them to 
fall a prey to the Peach Borer. Indeed the frequency with 
which the Borer has been confounded with the Yellows by 
ignorant observers, renders it much more difficult to arrive at 
any correct conclusions respecting the contagious nature of the 
latter disease. 
It may be said, in objection to these views, that a disease which 
is only an enfeeblement of the constitution of a tree, would not 
be sufficient to alter so much its whole nature and duration as 
the Yellows has done that of the peach. The answer to this is, 
that the debility produced in a single generation of trees, pro- 
bably would not have led to such effects, or to any settled form 
of constitutional disease. But it must be borne in mind that 
the same bad management is to a great extent going on to this 
day, tbe whole country over. Every year, in the month of 
August, the season of early peaches, thousands of bushels of 
fruit, showing the infallible symptoms of the Yellows — a spotted 
skin, &c. — are exposed and sold in the markets of New-York, 
Philadelphia and Boston. Every year more or less of the 
stones of these peaches are planted, to produce, in their turn, a 
generation of diseased trees, and every successive generation is 
even more feeble and sickly than the last ! Even in the north, 
so feeble has the stock become in many places, that an excessive 
crop of fine fruit is but too frequently followed by the Yellows. 
In this total absence of proper care in the selection both of the 
seed and the trees, followed by equal negligence of good culti- 
vation, is it surprising that the peach has become a tree com- 
paratively difficult to preserve, and proverbially short-lived ! 
