THE PEACH-TREE. 
43 
His herd last year consisted of one hundred and 
sixty head. He has reduced it at present to about 
fifty choice and beautiful cattle, both pure and 
grade. A pleasure it is to see them—a pleasure 
it must be to own them. 
Mr. Remsen showed a number of animals at 
the late show of the State Agricultural Society, 
as did other gentlemen, and in every instance 
save one, the cattle on the ground from his herd 
were winners of prizes ; and the animal which 
did not win, was specially commended by the 
judges of his class. Here was a breeder’s suc¬ 
cess and a breeder’s honors, and his triumph was 
as grateful to his friends as to himself. 
I give you a list of the thorough-bred cattle 
and "their pedigrees, (a) A. S. 
(a) We are reluctantly compelled to forego the 
publication of the pedigrees of Mr. Remsen’s an¬ 
imals, so obligingly furnished us by our corres¬ 
pondent, for this reason: if we did it for one, we 
must do it for all; and it would thus be occupy¬ 
ing more space in this periodical, of what prop¬ 
erly belongs to a herd-book, than the general 
readers of the Agriculturist would feel was allow- 
ble. We hope soon to see a Herd-Book ol Amer¬ 
ican Short-Horns published in this country, for it 
has become a work much wanted. 
What our correspondent says of Mr. Remsen’s 
stock, it affords us great pleasure to add, from our 
own knowledge of it, is strictly correct. Mr. R. 
is now placed in a position to serve the south and 
west, and to all in that quarter we earnestly rec¬ 
ommend his breeding. He has been long and 
well known at the south, and his address till the 
last of May, will be Mobile, Ala. 
THE PEACH-TREE. 
So much has been written on the subject of the 
diseases of the peach-tree, but in reality to so lit¬ 
tle practical advantage, that it requires some as¬ 
surance in any one to sit down to occupy the time 
of your readers on the subject,—yet we must take 
the naval motto, “ Don’t give up the ship.” If 
nothing new should be set forth in this article, the 
writer hopes to correct erroneous opinions, and to 
present certain facts in relation to this tree, which 
may assist others to discover a better remedy for 
its disease than that recommended. 
The peach is Icosandria Monogynia, and can 
be worked on the wild and domestic plum, cherry, 
and almond. It is supposed that the peach is pro¬ 
duced, by culture, from the hard-shell wild al¬ 
mond. So far as relates to the stock, the domes¬ 
tic plum appears to suit the graft or bud. The 
writer has tried the wild-plum stock—the trees in 
the instance referred to did not grow thriftily. He 
has young peach-trees worked on cherrv-stocks, 
apparently doing well, the peach part is of no un¬ 
usual appearance. 
In considering our subject, we start with this 
feet, that from the earliest tradition, we hear of 
the peach in our country; it was the most abun¬ 
dant and the most prolific of the fruit-trees in the 
states of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and the adjoining localities. This 
abundance of fruit continued in eastern New York 
until about 1812 or 1815, when the trees began to 
decline, and have continued to decline, until they 
may now be said to be extinct, as bearers, in at 
least some of the referred-to localities. In its 
former state of healthful growth, it was to be seen 
in the richest grounds; in all soils and situations; 
occasionally taking an accidental position, amid 
thorns and briers on the side of the blind walls 
of some neglected farm; and sometimes in the 
tough sod of the highway. They grew as food for 
man and for swine,—neither were stinted. 
A full-grown healthful peach-pit, planted in the 
fall, grows four feet high its first year, with a 
smooth, bright-yellow bark, and green foliage. 
The second year it grows well also, and the only 
thing to be discovered is a small worm (called in 
popular language the peach-grub) at its root, 
about an inch below the surface of the ground. 
The wound made by the grub is hardly percepti¬ 
ble, but its presence is traced by a small quantity 
of gum, colored red by the gimlet-like borings of 
the insect. The grub, if neglected, the third year 
will have girdled about one quarter of the bark of 
the tree; but the tree will not show, in its leaves, 
any disease—on the contrary, it will blossom and 
produce a dozen or more of good peaches. The 
fourth year the grubs continue their borings of the 
tree, perhaps one third of the bark near the surface 
of the earth is girdled ; but the tree is slightly af¬ 
fected ; the leaves in May and June, become red 
and blistered, and curl up, and some of them 
collapse; yet the tree will not be injured exter¬ 
nally, so as to destroy the fruit, though many of 
the leaves will show a light yellowness —in fact, 
a good crop may be taken this year from the tree. 
The fifth year, the grub, if neglected, still continues 
to girdle the tree, and in particular places, one 
half the bark is destroyed ; but this appears only to 
wound, not poison the tree, for in instances where 
the worm has been destroyed, and the dead bark 
removed, the trees soon recovered from these me¬ 
chanical injuries. This (fifth) year, the leaves of 
the tree become all yellow, and one half the fruit, 
of which there will be a great quantity, will ri^en 
prematurely and fall: some few will remain on 
the tree and become passable. But the tree dies 
of the yellows, not of the grub. It appears to the 
writer that the disease of the peach-tree is sui 
generis, and has no connexion with the injury pro¬ 
duced by the grub ; no other fruit-tree that the wri¬ 
ter knows of, dies in the same manner, or at least 
with the same appearance. With other trees, the 
injury is mostly, if not altogether, externally obvi¬ 
ous : the curled and blistered leaves appear pecu¬ 
liar to the yellows, at least among the garden-fruit. 
Mr. Cox, in his most valuable treatise, though an 
old one, describes the yellows as the malady which 
destroys much the largest portion of the peach- 
trees, and that it has hitherto baffled every effort 
to prevent it. 
As far as the writer knows, no tree in the Uni¬ 
ted States, or elsewhere, has become so univer- 
