CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF THE PEACH
The history of the peach follows step by step the history of agriculture. The beginning of agriculture, as depicted in the traditions and embellished in the poetry of ancient peoples, was the creation of useful plants by some Divinity. But, counting unwritten history and poetic fancy as naught and coming to recorded facts--those of history as we now have it--the beginning of agriculture is marked by two recorded events. The first occurred 2700 years B. C. when Emperor Chenming, Ruler of China, instituted ceremonies for the sowing of various vegetables and grains. The second event was the building of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh by some ruler who lorded it over Egypt between 2500 to 2000 years B. C. and who ornamented his handiwork with drawings of figs.
Yet these early records in China and Egypt were not made at the beginnings of agriculture in those countries. Plants were undoubtedly cultivated centuries before it occurred to Emperor Chenming that rice, wheat and other crops deserved ceremonial sowings. The pyramids of Gizeh could only have been built by an organized, civilized people with cultivated fields on which to levy toll for the dormant season and lean years--pyramids could hardly be raised by a people forced to skim a day-to-day existence from wild plants. "Art is long and time is fleeting" in agriculture, and between the obscure beginnings of this ancient art, when naked men following the chase began to vary a meat diet with fruits, grains and roots plucked from the wild, and the regular cultivation of useful plants, as implied by these old records from China and Egypt, there are many steps and thousands and thousands of years.
If, then, the history of the peach begins with the history of agriculture, and the beginnings of agriculture are lost in the obscurity of antiquity, it is useless to speculate as to how long the peach has been cultivated. The statements of the early historians as to the age of the domesticated peach are so at variance that they serve only to confuse. Indeed, were we to attempt to bring into agreement the diverse assertions of historians we should never know even the place of origin of the peach; for it is upon data from botany that we must depend most in determining the habitat of our fruit. This subject we now come to discuss in detail.
THE ORIGIN OF THE PEACH
Names frequently breed misunderstandings and in the case of the peach a fine brood of mistakes as to the origin of the fruit has come from the name. As all know, "peach" and most of its equivalents in the countries of Europe are derived from "Persia" and this has given rise to the supposition that the original habitat of the fruit is Persia. The ancient authors who mention the peach, as Theophrastus, Columella and Pliny, agree that the home of the peach was Persia and, even until our own time, to be written in any of these worthies is proof conclusive. While negative evidence counts for but little, the notion is so firmly fixed that some, at least, of the races of peaches are Persian products that it seems best to clear the way for positive evidence by first proving that the first home of the peach was not Persia.
Persia is pictured as a land of fruits before agriculture had begun in Greece and Rome. The quince and the pomegranate probably originated here and, with the olive, grape, almond, and, to the north at least, the cherry and plum, have been cultivated from three to four thousand years.
At very early times the quince, pomegranate, olive and grape were introduced from Persia, according to De Candolle, still our best authority, into Greece and Rome and even the cherry and plum, from countries to the north if not from Persia, reached southern Europe long before the peach. It seems certain, as De Candolle suggests,[1] that if the peach had been a native of Persia, had it existed there during all time, so beautiful and so delectable a fruit would have been taken earlier into Asia Minor and Greece. As gratifying to all the senses by which we judge fruits as any other product of the orchard, as easily transported and propagated as any--more so than most--it cannot be believed that the other fruits named would have been given preference over the peach by conquerors or travelers carrying Persian luxuries to westward countries.
Moreover, as De Candolle further points out, the several Hebrew and Sanskrit peoples did not speak in sacred or vulgar writings of the peach as they did many times of the olive, quince, grape and pomegranate. Yet these peoples radiated from the valleys of the Euphrates and were at all times in close communication with Persia. Since, according to the authoritative De Candolle, Xenophon, who retreated with the ten thousand 401 B. C., does not mention the peach, this fruit probably did not reach Greece until Alexander's expedition and was first mentioned by Theophrastus 332 B. C. (if the fruit mentioned by Theophrastus is the peach) and did not reach Rome until after the beginning of the Christian era.
The more one examines historical records the more evident it becomes that Greek and Roman writers assumed that the habitat of the peach, which they called the Persian apple, was Persia because it came thence to their countries. Ancient historians very commonly and very confusingly made the assumption that the region from which a plant product came to their country was its first habitat.
The best means of establishing the origin of a plant is to discover in what country it grows spontaneously. This would be a simple matter, indeed, if one could be sure that a given plant found growing wild is not an escape from cultivation. Here is the trouble in the case of the peach. According to the botanists the tree is now growing wild in Persia, as it is in nearby countries, and for that matter in other parts of the Old World and in many places in the New World. The painstaking De Candolle, who has carefully sifted the evidence of the leading botanists until his time of writing, 1882, concludes that the peach has never been truly wild in Persia. An examination of the works of botanists writing since De Candolle's study of the subject does not show that any offers proof that the peach was originally wild in Persia.
Without going into the matter further it seems safe to say that the Greek and Roman writers were at fault in naming Persia as the home of the peach. To summarize: its late distribution, as compared with that of other Persian fruits argues against such an origin; philology, which usually affords indications touching the habitat of a species, is against the Persian theory of origin since neither Hebrew nor Sanskrit names the peach; lastly, botany, the most direct means of discovering the geographic origin of a plant, offers no positive evidence that Persia is the home of the peach. The fallacy that the peach comes from Persia, written in nearly all horticultural and botanical works for 2000 years, now being disposed of, we may take up the claim of China that the peach is another of its great gifts to the world.
A survey of the subject is convincing that the peach comes from China. Necessarily, such a survey must be brief, yet it is important that no doubt be left as to the origin of the peach, thus freeing pomological literature from the train of misunderstandings following the current opinion that part of our peaches, at least, come from Persia. The terms "Persian peaches" and the "Persian race of peaches" are misleading and should be discarded. Data from botany and history furnish the chief proofs that the fruit of this discussion is of Chinese origin.
Botany and history are a hard team to drive but when the two do travel together in determining the origin of a plant the matter, as a rule, is settled. Does botany accord with history in placing the original peach in China? Botanists and explorers from first to last agree that the peach is, and long has been, wild in China but there is no agreement as to the nature of its wildness. Some say it is indigenous and others that it may be an escape from cultivation. The peach runs wild so quickly in countries to which it is adapted that it is almost impossible to say, from the evidence to be found, whether it is an original or only a naturalized inhabitant of China. But it seems more nearly to approach a truly feral condition in China than in any other country unless it be America and all know that in the New World it is an introduced plant.
Of the botanists and explorers who report finding the peach wild in China, Frank N. Meyer[2] of the United States Department of Agriculture is most explicit. Meyer, in sending seeds of wild peaches from China, accompanies them with the following remarks:
"40001. Wild peaches having larger fruits than the ordinary wild ones, said to come from near Tze Wu, to the south of Sianfu, but some also probably collected from trees in gardens which were raised from wild seeds. When seen wild this peach generally assumes a low bush form of spreading habit; when planted in gardens and attended to, it grows up into a small tree, reaching a height of 12 to 20 feet, with a smooth trunk of dark mahogany-brown color. The leaves are always much smaller and more slender than in cultivated varieties, while their color is much darker green. They seem to be somewhat less subject to various diseases than the cultivated sorts and they are most prolific bearers, although the fruit is of very little value on account of its smallness and lack of flavor. In gardens around Sianfu this wild peach is utilized as a stock for improved varieties. It is also grown as an ornamental; said to be literally covered in spring with multitudes of shell-pink flowers."
"40002. Wild peaches, occurring in the foothills of the higher mountains at Tsing Ling Kang, Shensi, at altitudes from 2000 to 5000 feet, generally found at the edges of loess cliffs and on rocky slopes. There is a great deal of variation to be observed as regards size and shape of leaves, density of foliage and general habits."
"40003. Wild peaches found on a mountain side, near Pai dja dien, Shensi, at an elevation of 4000 feet; these small trees and bushes had borne such a heavy crop that the ground beneath them was covered with a layer, a few inches thick, of the small, yellowish, hairy fruits. The local inhabitants didn't consider them worth collecting even, and they were rotting and drying up."
"40004. Wild peaches occurring as tall shrubs in loess cliffs, at the Tibetan frontier, Kagoba, Kansu, at elevations of 6000-8000 feet. Save for some children who eat these wild peaches, they are otherwise considered worthless wild fruit. Local name _Yeh t'ao_, meaning 'wild peach,' and _Mao t'ao_, meaning 'hairy peach.'"
"40005. Wild peaches found on stony mountain slopes in a wild, very sparsely populated country, near Kwa tsa, on Siku River, Kansu. No fruit trees whatsoever are cultivated by the local settlers in the mountains, and the way some of these peach bushes grow excludes them from ever having been brought there by any man or even any quadruped; only birds might have transported them."
In a letter to the author,[3] Mr. Meyer says further:
"Where did I find the peach wild? Well, I first came across it in loess cliffs in southern Shensi at an elevation of about 4000 feet above sea. Later on I found plenty of them in central Shensi, in southern Kansu and in the Tibetan borderland, up to 7000 feet elevation above sea. All the plants I found were freestone types, and according to the natives they all have shell-pink flowers. In the mountains of the Chekiang Province, however, I found a type which seems to be clingstone."
In still another letter sent me from the United States Department of Agriculture, Mr. Meyer says:
"It is about one month ago since I wrote you last, and so far as real distance is concerned, I have not advanced much, but we went over some very interesting territory and I was lucky enough to discover the _real wild peach_, growing in loess ravines some 2-3 days to the East from here, near a village called _Tchao yu_. The plants are of smaller dimensions than our cultivated strains, and the stones are somewhat different as regards shape and grooves, but still on the whole there is little difference between a very poor seedling-peach and this wild one.
These wild peaches are locally cut for firewood, for the fruits are pretty near inedible, being small and having hard, sourish flesh. They grow at the edges of deep loess ravines and on the steep, sloping bottom of such ravines. The Chinese locally do not call this peach '_yeh tao_' or '_shan tao_' but '_Mao t'ao_,' meaning 'hairy peach.' In the vicinity where they grow, no peaches are cultivated although half a day's journey lower down, one meets with some poor looking trees in gardens.
The elevation I found them was almost exactly 4000 feet above sea. I gathered some fruits, but they are not quite ripe; I am trying to ripen them off, however, so that we may obtain at least a few ripe seeds. As a stock, however, it has not the value the _Davidiana_ peach has, not being as vigorous and apparently being attacked by the same pests that infest cultivated peaches. This 'find' is of great interest, however, showing that wild peaches exist much nearer the coast than we suspected, and that the peach naturally is a native of semi-arid regions."
The explorations made by Mr. Meyer cover, of course, but a small part of the vast empire of China. Further search will, no doubt, show many other localities in Central and Eastern Asia where the peach grows naturally and has probably done so from time immemorial.
As all who consult them know, ancient authors are often at fault in matters of history in determining the origin of cultivated plants but they are usually fairly accurate in stating the date of culture of a plant in a country. In the case of the peach the date of culture can be established as so much earlier in China than elsewhere that history alone all but proves its previous existence there in the wild state. In short, the peach was a cultivated fruit in China before there were other agricultural communities from which it could come; for, be it remembered, in China, according to De Candolle, our best authority, agricultural and horticultural arts flourished long before they had even begun elsewhere, unless, possibly, Egypt be excepted, and here the peach, where it may be grown at all, is surely an introduced plant.
A statement of the first known dates of peach-culture in various countries is strong proof that its cultivation began in China. According to De Candolle[4] the culture of the peach was "spoken of 2000 years before its introduction into the Greco-Roman world, a thousand years before its introduction into the lands of the Sanskrit-speaking race." As we have said, the Bible and other Hebrew books do not mention the peach and there is no Sanskrit name for it. Of the Greeks, Xenophon, 401 B. C., makes no mention of the peach but Theophrastus, a little later, 322 B. C., speaks of it as a fruit of Persia. Coming to the Romans, no mention is made of the peach by Cato, 201 B. C., nor by Varro, 117-27 B. C., but Pliny, A. D. 79, expressly states that the peach was imported by the Romans from Persia not long before.
De Candolle gives no authority for his statement that the peach was spoken of 2000 years before its introduction into Europe and I cannot verify it; but a search through even such Chinese literature as is accessible to one who does not read the Chinese language shows that the peach was commonly spoken of in the literature of China several hundred years before the Christian era. Two examples must suffice, taking those that seem most authentic as to the identity of the peach. In the Shi-King, or book of poetry, a collection of ancient Chinese poems made by Confucius (551-478 B. C.) the peach, in common with the plum, pear, jujube and other fruits, is several times mentioned. According to the translator all of these poems were written before the Sixth Century B. C., the oldest dating back eighteen centuries. Thus in Book I,[5] Odes of Chow in the South, is the following bit of verse:
In Praise of a Bride
"Graceful and young the peach-tree stands; How rich its flowers, all gleaming bright! This bride to her new home repairs; Chamber and house she'll order right.
Graceful and young the peach-tree stands; Large crops of fruit it soon will show. This bride to her new home repairs; Chamber and house her sway shall know.
Graceful and young the peach-tree stands; Its foliage clustering green and full. This bride to her new home repairs; Her household will attest her rule."
Other references to the peach may be found in Book IX,[6] The Odes of Wei, and Book XIII,[7] The Odes of Kwei.
Superstitions and legends throw light on the antiquity of the objects with which they are connected. It is significant that the Chinese alone ascribe miraculous powers to the peach, their traditions of the properties of different forms of this fruit being both numerous and very ancient. M. Cibot, a French missionary among the Chinese, in a series of cyclopedic volumes on China, devotes a chapter to the peach in which, after describing the peaches of the country and giving a full discussion of methods of culture, he mentions numerous Chinese superstitions concerning this fruit. He writes:[8]
"The Chinese have for a long time preserved the history of the first ages either in their books or in their traditions. The oldest of their books have perished. They have saved only a part of their ancient national works on the great wars and general uprisings, and the original traditions, changed in a thousand ways, made into fables, finally corrupted by idolatry, are today only chaos; but this chaos is not without any ray of light. Many of these traditions, although disfigured, bear back too exactly to the marvelous tales of the lost books to be able to mistake the beliefs of the early ages. Thus, there are many traditions referring to the peach. Some call it the tree of life, others the tree of death. Peaches lengthened to a point, of large size, and colored red on one side, are regarded by the Chinese as the symbol of a long life. In consequence of these ancient national superstitions, peaches enter into all the ornaments of painting and sculpture. They are saved for the salute to the new year. Here are several ancient texts on the peach and its fruits:
From Chin-non-King: 'The peach 'Yu' signifies death and eternal life. If one has been able to eat it enough times, it saves the body from corruption till the end of the world.' From Chin-y-King: 'There is in the Orient a peach whose almond, eaten, makes eternal life.' From Chou-y-Ki: 'Whoever eats this fruit (the peach 'Yu' from the Koue-liou Mountain) obtains immortal life.'
Still other texts could be cited but I will merely remark that in all the peach is connected with immortality. Again we find that certain peaches can not be offered by the ancients in sacrifice, and that the premature blossoming of another peach signifies great calamities. To quote again: From Sin-lin: 'In the garden of Yang was the peach of death; whoever approached it must die.' From Fong-fou-teng: 'It is said in the book of Hoang-ti that two brothers found on a mountain a peach tree under which were a hundred demons to cause death to men.' From Lietchouen, on the subject of the evils which afflict the earth: 'the tree of Knowledge is the peach.'"
Very interesting and illuminating as to the age of the peach in China, is an account given by Dr. Yamei Kin[9] who was asked by a member of the staff of the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, United States Department of Agriculture, for information concerning the peach-blossoms. After describing the several kinds of blossoms borne by Chinese peaches, the writer gives some of the superstitions and legends which the Chinese connect with the peach.
"The ordinary name for pink is peach flower color, and notwithstanding the love of Chinese for color, it is used sparingly, in fact, owing to its being associated with the peach blossom, seems to have an unsavory significance, as I found when I came home one day with a pink satin brocade gown that I had just purchased. My people held up their hands in horror, and exclaimed it was a mercy that I did not intend to wear that here, it would only do for outside countries that did not know about peach flowers, which remarks led me to leave it in America when I came back, though it was a very lovely delicate color and one of my prettiest gowns.
The reason for this prejudice is owing to its symbolism. Just as the violet is considered in western lands to be the symbol of modest worth, so the plum is that of feminine virtue in China and the peach flower the opposite. Not even the beauty of its color, whether delicate pink or deep cerise, redeems it from this fatal significance. In order that there may be no possible opportunity for a 'peach flower heart' to spring up unawares in some girl of respectable family, it is not considered wise to plant a peach of any kind near the bed room windows of the court yards inhabited by the women, yet peach wands are supposed to be especially useful to beat off all evil spirits, only they must be plucked during a solar eclipse and a hole bored through one end for hanging up by, during a lunar eclipse, which perhaps accounts for their fewness, as during those times in the old days the people were generally busily occupied in beating gongs and firing off crackers to drive away the heavenly dogs which were supposed to be devouring those luminaries, and no one had time to think of making peach wands. The lucky possessor of an efficacious peach wand is supposed to be able to sleep at night with it under his pillow in full confidence that no evil spirits can harm him.
Taoism from early days has taken the peach as its particular fruit, signifying longevity, much as the apples of Hesperides were symbolic in the Grecian mythology.
Furthermore peach stones are often made into rosaries which are considered specially fine. There is a collection of tales by one Cornaby to be found in almost every library called 'A String of Peach Stones.' And a host of legends cluster around the tale of Sun, the stone monkey, eating the peaches of immortality stolen from the gardens of the genii, whereby he attains immortality. This theme is seen elaborated in many scenes, that decorate pottery, textiles, and congratulatory scrolls.
I wish that I were not tied down so much by tedious detail in the medical work, as there is a most interesting book that needs to be translated telling much of the folk lore of the peach interwoven with the plot, which is supposed to be the journey of Hsien tsang to bring back the sacred sutras of Buddha from India. It is said that this is an actual historic occurrence, but this tale is evidently semi-religious and allegorical, as well, combining in itself the characteristics of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Arabian Nights, if you can imagine such a mixture, yet giving graphic pictures of Chinese life in various phases that are as true as when the book was written.
One of the most charming legends of peach flower lore is that of the 'Peach Blossom Fountain,' an allegory written by T'ao Yuan Ming between A. D. 365-427, describing how a fisherman got lost one day and penetrating up a river finds himself in a creek bordered with many peach trees full of bloom, at the end of which he comes upon a small mountain in which is a cave which he traverses and enters on a new country where there is every sign of prosperity, every one is courteous to each other, kindliness and contentment prevail, but they wear the garb of the times of the First Emperor some five centuries previous and have been lost to the rest of the country ever since. The fisherman returns after a sojourn with them, and tells his fellow villagers of this wonderful country and stirs up so much interest that finally the governor of the province joins in the search for this wonderful country, but it is all of no avail and at last the fisherman realizes that he will never more see the peach blossom days of his youth with its rosy dreams and ideals that come but once in a lifetime."
Lastly, a significant fact suggesting the Chinese origin of the peach is found in the behavior of this fruit in America. The peach is more at home in North America than in any other part of the world unless it be China. Now, that there is a pomological alliance between eastern Asia and eastern America is well known. The remarkable relationship between the plants of the two regions was first set forth by Asa Gray and subsequent writers have added much to what he told us. The explanation lies, as all agree, in similarities in climate. Now, with this relationship of the wild and cultivated floras of eastern America and China in mind, the rapid acclimation and acclimatization of the peach in the United States are readily understood if we accept China as the habitat of this fruit. On the other hand, the natural plant-products of Persia find life anything but easy in eastern America.
There is but one further consideration before beginning the history of the peach as a cultivated fruit. Thomas Andrew Knight and Charles Darwin contended that the peach is a modified almond. This hypothesis would scarcely deserve consideration were it not for the high authority of the men who espoused it--the judgments of a Knight and a Darwin cannot be overlooked.
HAS THE PEACH COME FROM THE ALMOND?
In the light of evolution every plant has been preceded by another and since the peach and almond have many characters in common, one may have descended from the other. But as to which, if either, is the parent species it would seem idle to speculate with the shreddy and patchy knowledge we now possess of the descent of plants. Yet Thomas Andrew Knight, the greatest horticultural authority of his time and one of the leading experimenters of all time in this field of agriculture, maintained that the peach is a modified almond. His theory received the support of several of the leading English horticulturists of the last century and Darwin gave it credence to the extent of collecting data for its substantiation.
Knight believed that the almond and the peach constituted a single species and that by selection under cultivation an almond could ultimately be turned into a peach.[10] He sought proof for his theory in hybridization and on a tree raised from the seed of an almond fertilized by peach-pollen produced a fruit with soft and melting flesh and in all characteristics more like the peach than the almond. This experiment, which in the light of our present knowledge of the laws of inheritance does not in the least illuminate the hypothesis with which Knight started, carried on in the medieval days of plant-breeding, convinced not only Knight in his belief that the peach may be bred from the almond but led others, even down to our own time, to accept the theory.
Thus, a writer, presumably Lindley, in _The Gardener's Chronicle_[11] in 1856 says "we are justified in the conclusion that the Almond bears about the same relation to the Peach that the Crab bears to the Cultivated Apple." Later, in the same article, the descent is pictured as follows:
"1. Almond became more fleshy--Bad clingstone.
2. Bad clingstone became more fleshy--Good clingstone.
3. Good clingstone became more fleshy--Our soft peaches.
4. Soft peach sported, receding toward the original fleshy type and lost its wool--Nectarine."
Another high authority in his time, Thomas Rivers,[12] in 1863, held that peaches, if left to a state of nature would degenerate into thick-fleshed almonds and makes the positive statement that he has "one or two seedling peaches approaching very nearly to that state."
Darwin,[13] in 1868, considers Knight's supposition at length and while he does not positively accept it, yet lends it his support by quoting several authors who put forth proofs in favor of it. His most positive statement in discussing the theory referring to facts regarding the origin of the peach is: "The supposition, however, that the peach is a modified almond which acquired its present character at a comparatively late period, would, I presume, account for these facts."
Carrière,[14] one of the most eminent French pomologists of the last century, is the chief French champion of the theory that the peach came from the almond and devotes several pages in his estimable work, _Variétés De Pêchers_, in demonstrating that the one is a form of the other. His arguments, however, are but amplifications of those of Knight and Lindley though he cites more intermediate forms than either of the English writers--so many that they go far toward convincing one of the correctness of his views. There is the feeling, however, in the case of Carrière, in the light of present knowledge, that his botanical evidence is pushed a little too far for full credulity.
Knight, Lindley, Rivers, Darwin and Carrière, the men holding the theory whose opinions are most worthy consideration, fell into error, as we think, through attaching too much importance to likenesses in the fruits of the peach and almond and because they became confused in following the behavior of the two fruits under hybridization. As we shall show later in discussing the characters of the peach, this fruit differs from the almond in other characters than those of the fruit--characters not at all likely to be changed by cultivation and selection as would all those of the fruits. Knight's proof from hybridization was purely speculative. The fact that the peach and almond may be crossed, giving intermediate forms, nowadays would not be looked upon as proof that the two necessarily belong to one species. However, in the light of the knowledge in existence at the beginning of the last century regarding the crossing of plants, we need not apologize for the inference that Knight drew from his simple experiment.
Students of heredity would find almost conclusive proof that the peach is not a modified almond--a descendant, say, in this geologic period at least--in the fact that there is no recorded case of a peach fertilized by a peach producing an almond, or _vice versa_. If the relationship were at all close, if the two species had had a common origin even though in rather remote times, if they were nearly enough related readily to hybridize or be hybridized, it would be expected that now and then, as in the case of a nectarine, the peach would produce an almond or the almond a peach.
Geographical botany also opposes Knight's hypothesis, as De Candolle[15] points out, for, as he plainly shows, the almond had its origin in western Asia, it being found truly wild in many parts of south-western Asia and having been cultivated many centuries before the peach was known in these regions. On the other hand, the almond was not known in China before the Christian era whereas the peach had been cultivated there at least 2000 years anterior to the introduction of the almond. With such widely separated habitats, the two fruits can hardly be considered as parent and offspring.
We cannot close our eyes to the patent relationships of the peach and the almond. That the two constitute but one species, as we now consider species, or that they bear the close relationship of the peach and the nectarine, probably no one now in high authority will concede. But for the weight of the names we have used, and the fact that the theory still finds supporters, Knight's hypothesis, the outcropping of a speculative mind in a speculative age, might have been overlooked or dismissed with a word.
THE PEACH IN ASIA
We must have more knowledge of the peach in Asia than the bare fact that it originated somewhere in the vast empire of China. We want, first, to know what the characters of the prototypal peach were. If we can get some idea of the original wild peach of China we shall know something of how this fruit has been improved by man and, perhaps, something of its future potentialities. Second, though not essential to this study, it will be profitable to peach-growers to inquire whether there are types of peaches still remaining in China that might be improved under western cultivation. If so, we want them, since our cultivated peaches are not free from faults, some of which we might get rid of by the interjection of new blood. It is now about seventy years since Robert Fortune, the adventurous English plant-collector, began dipping into the horticultural treasures of China; and recent explorations make plain that there are still riches in plants in that country--the fact that they can now be brought through the "open door," instead of as spoils to be smuggled out, makes it easier to obtain any new types of peaches that may now be found.
What were the characters of the prototypal peach in China? The few records that have come down through the ages do not enable us to form much of a picture of the primitive peach. But plants do not change quickly in China, for their orchard-cultivation is not as intensive nor selection as assiduously practiced as in western countries, so that we are warranted in assuming that cultivation for forty centuries has not greatly changed this fruit. Besides, it is probable that the wild forms, whether truly wild or reverted escapes from cultivation, now represent closely the original indigenous stocks of the peach. Luckily, we have trustworthy sources of information in regard to both the wild and the cultivated peaches as they now grow in China. We are at this time concerned, it should be said, only with the common peach, _Prunus persica_.
Fortune began botanical explorations in China in 1844, since which time one enthusiast after another, thirsting for botanical spoils and honors, has brought from eastern Asia and Europe to America, varieties and species of ornamental and agricultural plants. In the accounts of these exploring and collecting expeditions, there are many records of peaches, wild and cultivated, that are now growing in China and from these we may piece out a fair description of the original races of this fruit. The United States Department of Agriculture, through its agricultural explorers, collaborators and correspondents in the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, has given special attention to agricultural plants and from the accounts of the workers in this department alone, we can get a good picture of the peach of the Twentieth Century in China which, as we think, will represent very well the original stock from which all peaches have come.
It is now almost the unanimous judgment of scientists that the characters of plants are independent entities which are thrown into various relationships with each other in individuals and groups of individuals as varieties and species. This conception of unit-characters lies at the foundation of botanical and horticultural descriptions and of plant-breeding. It is more important, then, to know what the characters of Chinese peaches were and are than to attempt to describe in full the wild and cultivated peaches of China. In this, a horticultural study, it answers our purpose to consider chiefly the characters of the fruits.
The fruit-characters that differentiate races and varieties of cultivated peaches in America are ten, as follows: Downy skin; smooth skin; white flesh; yellow flesh; red flesh; flesh clinging to the stone; flesh free from the stone; shape more or less round; shape roundish but decidedly beaked; shape distinctly flat. Let us see by direct quotations from the workers in the United States Department of Agriculture how many of these ten fruit-characters are named in the wild and cultivated Chinese peaches of today.
_Downy skin._--A downy skin is the normal condition of the peach. This character is found in all of the peaches to be mentioned in this discussion except those under the next heading.
_Smooth skin._--"28963--From Samarkand, Turkestan."[16]
"A small nectarine of very firm flesh and of subacid flavor; red throughout; from a distance resembles a crab apple more than anything else. Said to come from Chartchui."
"29227[17]--From Samarkand, Russian Turkestan. A yellow clingstone nectarine of medium size; meat very firm and of medium sweet taste, not melting."
"30325[18]--From Khotan, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Dagatch_. Fruits red, of medium size, clingstone."
"30332[19]--From Karghalik, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Anar-shabdalah_. Fruits rather small, whitish pink in color, and of sweet, aromatic flavor. This is a medium-late ripen er and a rare local variety."
"30334[20]--From Shagra-bazar, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Kizil-dagatch_. Fruits small, red; medium early."
"30335[21]--From Upal, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Ak-tagatch_. Fruits large, white; a late ripener; of good keeping and shipping qualities."
"30336[22]--From Yarkand, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Ak-dagatch_. Fruits medium-sized, of white color; clingstone; late in ripening; of good keeping and shipping qualities."
"30341[23]--From Upal, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Kizil tagatch_. Fruits large, red throughout; meat firm; of good keeping and shipping qualities."
"30359[24]--From Kashgar, Chinese Turkestan. A very large, red, clingstone nectarine; late ripener; can be kept for several weeks after being fully ripe."
"30647[25]--From Khotan, Chinese Turkestan. A nectarine called _Togatch Moneck_."
"30648[26]--From Guma, Chinese Turkestan. A small late variety of nectarine, white in color, of fresh, sweet taste and good keeping qualities."
_White flesh._--"27111[27]--Chinese name _Ta po tao_. A large white peach, native in Shantung Province, China (Chefoo district)."
"30324[28]--From Khotan, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Ak-shabdalah_. Fruits large, white, juicy, and aromatic; an early ripener."
"30337[29]--From Shagra-bazar, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Kok-shabdalah_. Fruits medium large, of greenish-white color; taste sweet; medium late; not a keeper."
"30338[30]--From Yarkand, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Taka-shabdalah_. Fruits very large, of whitish color with a slight blush; late in ripening; can be kept for several weeks."
"30339[31]--From Karawag, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Ak-shabdalah_. Fruits large, white in color; flavor very sweet and pleasing; early in ripening."
"17167[32]--From Tung-chow. A large, white peach, considered a fine fruit by the Chinese. Non-melting flesh."
"20239[33]--From Kirin. A pale colored, medium-sized peach. Kirin is the most northern locality where I have as yet found peaches."
"27111[34]--Chinese name _Tah-buy-tower_. A large white peach native in Shantung Province, China."
_Yellow flesh._--"30333[35]--From Shagra-bazar, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Serech-shabdalah_. Fruits very large, of yellow color throughout; meat very firm; clingstone. Stands shipping well, but does not keep long; late in ripening (October)."
"35201[36]--From Mengtsz, Yunnan, China. Seeds of Mengtsz white peach and yellow free peach. This fruit is grown all over this province and occasionally attains an enormous size, and in that respect could easily compete with the best French peaches.'"
_Red flesh._--"6543[37]--From Sai Tseo. Long, rather pointed, red-fleshed, freestone."
"34275[38]--From Soochow, China. This is a mixed lot of peach seeds containing some from red clingstones and some from white freestones."
"17728[39]--From Matou. A peach described to me by the natives as very large, red meated, and juicy."
"21991[40]--From Hangchow, Chehkiang, China. A flat, red-meated peach, not very sweet in taste. Chinese name _Hung pien tao_."
_Clingstone._--"30340[41]--From Karawag, Chinese Turkestan. A peach called _Ais-shabdalah_. Fruits large, pinkish-white; meat firm, sweet; clingstone. It is said here that it can be kept for several months."
"21989[42]--From Feitcheng, Shantung, China. The most famous peach of northern China, called the _Fei tao_. The fruits grow as heavy as one pound apiece and are pale yellowish colored, with a slight blush; meat white, except near the stone, where it is slightly red; taste excellent, sweet, aromatic, and juicy. Is a clingstone. Has extraordinary keeping and shipping qualities. The branches need propping up on account of the weight of the fruits."
"29991[43]--Seeds of a peach from Tsinanfu, Shantung, China. It is a cling and though rather inconvenient for eating, is very large and luscious, coming into market about the middle of September and lasting for a month or more."
_Freestone._--"6635[44]--From mountains near Ichang. Flowers late, fruit ripens in September. Freestone. Fruit small and quite hairy."
"30357[45]--From Kashgar, Chinese Turkestan. A large, red, freestone peach, fine flavored; a medium-late ripener, and a most prolific bearer."
"30358[46]--From Kashgar, Chinese Turkestan. A large, pale reddish, freestone peach of very fine flavor; medium-late ripener; not a keeper."
"39428[47]--Amygdalus sp.--Seeds of a wild peach from Sianfu, Shensi, China. Stones of the real wild peach, growing in the mountains, one day's journey south of Sianfu. The fruits are small, hard and sourish, but there is considerable variation in them as regards size and taste. They are apparently all freestones and while some have red flesh near the stone, others are white throughout."
_Round peaches._--Roundness is one of the characteristics of the peach and it but labors the argument to give space to show that this character is found in Chinese varieties. All peaches mentioned in this discussion are round or roundish except those coming under the heading "flat."
_Round and beaked._--"8331 to 8334[48]--Eagle Beak peach from Canton, China. From orchard trees growing near the Great North Gate of Canton, at Ngau lan Kong, of the _Ying tsui t'o_ or Eagle Beak peach. This variety resembles the Honey closely, except that the pointed tip of the fruit is more curved, according to Dr. J. M. Swan, of the Canton Hospital."
"9805[49]--From Canton, China. _Hung Wat tim._ A variety of the 'Honey' type, reported to be good for preserves and not so sweet as the _Ying tsui_ or Eagle Beak variety. It is medium early."
"22650[50]--Shanghai. These peaches are called the _Honey_ peach, and I think are very fine."
_Flat._--"6541[51]--From Sai Tseo, above Hankow. Flat, freestone, ripens in May."
"6542[52]--From near Sai Tseo, above Hankow. White, fine fleshed, flat, freestone, ripening the middle of May."
"6544[53]--From Sai Tseo. Medium size, flat, freestone, ripening in May."
"6545[54]--From Sai Tseo. Flat, freestone, quality very good. Ripens in June."
"29991[55]--Chinese Flat Peach. From Tsinan, Shantung, China. Called _Feicheng_. It is a cling and, though rather inconvenient for eating, is very large and luscious, coming into market about the middle of September and lasting for a month or more."
"30482[56]--From about 50 miles southwest of Tsinan, Shantung, China. _Feicheng._ Chinese flat peach. This is a large, luscious cling, very much esteemed by the Chinese."
"21990[57]--From Kianchau, Shantung, China. A flat, juicy, white peach of fine taste. Chinese name _Pai pien tao_."
"21992[58]--From near Chiningchou, Shantung, China. A flat, pale-fleshed peach, juicy but somewhat insipid."
"22352[59]--From Shifengtse Temple, west of Peking, Chihli, China. Said to be medium sized, very flat, and of reddish color. Chinese name _Pien tau_."
_White stone._--"8340[60]--From Canton, China. _Pak Wat tim t'o._ A slightly sweet, white stone variety of rather small size, preferred by some to the _Ying tsui t'o_, which, it is said, has too sweet a flavor. It has no beak like the latter, but is a typical south Chinese shape, according to Dr. J. M. Swan, of the Canton Hospital, who very kindly described this variety."
"24915[61]--_Hung wat to_ (red-stone peach)."
"24916[62]--_Paak wat to_(white-stone peach)."
"The _Hung wat to_ is a new variety and so recognized by the Chinese. From what I can gather they believe the _Paak wat to_ to be the best, but have some trees of the _Hung wat to_. The _Hung wat to_ seems to blossom much quicker than the _Paak wat to_."
_Winter peaches._[63]--"The so-called winter peaches they have here are all clingstones, somewhat watery and not very fine in general."
"30340[64]--From Chinese Turkestan is said locally to keep for several months."
"Cuttings of nectarines from Chinese Turkestan. Among these are some from an altitude of 5000 feet, large, late ripeners, and keeping and shipping well, and one, number 30359,[65] recommended by the British consul, Mr. Macartney, is said to keep for several weeks after being fully ripe."
"30482[66]--Cuttings of the Feitcheng peach from about fifty miles southwest of Tsinan, Shantung, China. It is a late variety, coming into market about the middle of September or October. It is reported to have such unusual keeping qualities, that it can be kept, when wrapped in tissue paper, until February. Though a cling stone it is luscious, sweet and aromatic, and of unusual size, reaching a pound in weight and is so prized by the Chinese that as much as 15 cents apiece is paid for it in the region where it is grown; every year the Feitcheng peaches are sent as a present to the Imperial court in Pekin."
The evidence given encourages the belief that in the native peaches of China may be found all of the characters that distinguish cultivated peaches wheresoever grown. The smooth-skinned peach, or nectarine, from the evidence at my command, is not common in eastern China but in Chinese and Russian Turkestan it is evidently one of the commonest fruits. Neither does yellow flesh appear to be a common character of peaches of eastern China but is now and again mentioned so that it may be put down as existing in the peaches of the region. Bear in mind that the accounts given are but random ones taken by persons not more interested in peaches than in other agricultural products and covering, of course, but a very small part of the vast region under the dominion of China. There is, no doubt, much to be learned about the peaches of Asia in future explorations.[67]
In America, at least, certain characters of peaches, as flatness, smooth skin, red flesh and prolonged beak are looked upon as comparatively new in this fruit. At any rate, varieties having these relatively rare characters are spoken of as sports and pomologists, as we shall see, not infrequently announce the date of birth of one or another of these characters. Now, a careful examination of the evidence, scant though it is, will carry conviction to all that none of the prominent characters of peaches have originated within the period covered by history--all exist in China and probably have so existed since time beyond record.
The size and color of the blossoms are distinguishing characters of races and varieties of cultivated peaches, less valuable in classification than the fruit-characters we have been discussing only because they are less numerous. Peach-blossoms fall into four very distinct kinds: Petals large and pink; petals intermediate in size and pink or red; petals small and red or reddish; and petals large and white. Through the United States Department of Agriculture, I am in possession of copies of nine letters from Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction correspondents of the United States Department in China who had been asked to report on the size and color of peach-blossoms in the parts of China in which they lived. The information thus obtained is most interesting but space forbids considering it further at present than to say that it indubitably establishes the fact that peaches with the four kinds of blossoms are found in China. This further encourages the belief, just set forth, that the essential characters of peaches are old, of great fixity and originated in China at a time in the past on which it would be idle to conjecture.
It is interesting to note that there are peaches in China with at least two characters not found in any American varieties. Two varieties are mentioned as having "white stones." There is no peach in America with stones that could be described as white though several early white-fleshed peaches have light-colored stones. This character is unimportant and seems, from the brief descriptions of the varieties having such stones, not to be correlated with other especially desirable characters, yet such a peach would, at least, add an interesting novelty to the flora of this fruit. The other character, that of late keeping, appears to have more value. A peach that would "keep for several months" or one ripening in September "that can be kept, when wrapped in tissue paper, until February," is highly desirable. No doubt through the efforts of the workers in the United States Department of Agriculture we shall sooner or later be growing these peaches in America.
As the probable home of the peach, we have given China so much space in this discussion of the peach in Asia that we can now but briefly summarize what is known of this fruit in other Asiatic countries.
_The peach in Japan._--From _Fruit Culture in Japan_[68] it is patent that the peach is one of the leading fruits of the country. In number of varieties of the several fruits grown in Japan the peach is exceeded only by the persimmon--ninety-five peaches and two nectarines being listed, all having Japanese names. The following account gives some idea of the peach-industry as carried on in Japan:
"There are a number of varieties of our native peaches and nectarines. From the extreme south of Formosa to Hokkaido, local forms are cultivated side by side with Western and Chinese varieties, which are all much superior to ours in all respects. During the past twenty years, the growing of introduced peaches has replaced the native one with striking rapidity. Their growing seems to be naturally limited in Hokkaido to the south part up to about 43 degrees N. L. The mid-season and late varieties do not properly ripen there and peach growing consequently does not develop to be a profitable industry in Hokkaido. Peaches are rather easy to cultivate and seem to be less susceptible to the effects of climate, than apples, provided suitable sites and soil be given. Consequently peach orchards are found scattered here and there all over the country. For the peaches there is no difference between the two longitudinal halves of Japan. At present, large orchards of peaches, regularly planted and trained, are found on the alluvial lowlands and hillsides. The heavy rainfall during June and July causes an overluxuriance of growth and considerable portion of the fruits drop down without reaching maturity. To prevent the damage from the parasites our people have learned through experience the important operation of bagging. On the loamy soils, good qualities of fruits may be attained, but the growers are accustomed to prefer light sandy soils to insure success. Sometimes rather dry hillsides give good results."
_The peach in Turkestan and Persia._--We shall become too deeply involved if we attempt to trace the cultivation of peaches in all of the countries of Asia. A sentence each suffices for other regions than China and Japan, excepting Turkestan, where the peach seems preeminently at home, and must therefore have more than a word.
The peach is commonly grown in Mongolia and Cochin China.[69] Several kinds of peaches are cultivated in the north of India.[70] The peach requires the greatest care to ensure success in the north-east of India.[71] A correspondent of the United States Department of Agriculture at Kashgar, British India, describes a nectarine grown there wanting "a hot but only a short summer."[72] Meyer, Agricultural Explorer for the United States Department of Agriculture, found a variety of peach growing at Kirin, Mongolia, not far from Vladivostock, which he says "is the most northern locality where I have yet found peaches."[73] These references might be multiplied but enough are given to show that the peach grows wild or cultivated wherever the climate permits in central and eastern Asia.
The peach seems to be quite as much at home, as highly prized and as commonly grown in Russian Turkestan, northern Persia, Trans-Caucasia and Asia Minor--the countries of western Asia--as in the eastern part of the continent. The Chinese early discovered trade routes over the mountains from the center of Asia to Kashmir, Bokhara and northern Persia. What more probable than that in remote times the seeds of peaches should have been carried westward from China and the peach thus have been introduced into western Asia where it at once found a congenial soil and climate. The peach-tree is so easily raised from the pit that its diffusion along routes of travel must have been very rapid.
Of many accounts of the peaches of this region, long and short, perhaps the following from Mr. Albert Regel gives, in the space to be spared, the best idea of the extent of the peach-region in western Asia and the races represented--races rather than varieties, for of the latter there must be legions since we are told the trees are grown from seed. Regel,[74] a physician by vocation, lived in Turkestan for nine years and collected fruits and flowers as an avocation. He seems to have penetrated every nook and corner of Turkestan and adjacent regions. Of peaches and nectarines he says:
"Next to the pomegranate, the Asiatics prize the peach, and the Oriental poetry compares its lusciousness to the fruits of Paradise. The culture of the peach reaches its northern limit in the district of the Ili. The young plants, which, as throughout Asia, are grown from the seed, without grafting, suffer greatly there from frost and require careful covering; nevertheless the large, smooth, red and the rough, hairy, yellow fruit of the Chinese varieties develop excellent characteristics. According to the observations of the naturalist Wilkins, there are 40 varieties in the Kokan district, among them some Chinese ones. In the South the peach extends to Afghanistan and Tshotral; its proper home, however, is Northern Persia to the Caucasus. In Darvas the peach forms trees 30 feet high with broad tops. The rough-skinned giant peaches of the garden of Kalaichumb are of unsurpassed lusciousness and aroma, and most inviting bloom (tinting of the cheeks). They attain the size of an average apple. The fruitfulness of this variety is so great that the leaves seem to be concealed by the peaches. The Bokhariots prize the smaller rough skinned, and red cheeked variety at Tchaspak, which is distinguished by strong aroma and firm, almost astringent flesh. The yellow peaches are especially sweet. The number of rough-skinned kinds at Kalaichumb is considerable.
The smooth-skinned nectarines of this region, among which there are smaller, pale yellow varieties and very large red cheeked ones, are of unusually fine flavor and melting flesh; but they are equalled by the nectarines of Samarkand. There are also small sweet yellow kinds, which stand half way between the rough coated and smooth coated peaches. Such an one grows in the exposed region of Paendish. In Jasqulam, a small rough-skinned, red peach with astringent flesh and musky aroma flourishes. Roshan, the district of Barpaendsha, and Surshan on the lower Hund, produce later ripening and less valuable varieties, than the territory of the lower Paendish."
Another quotation shows the intensity of the orcharding in some parts of this favored land of fruits. In his chapter on the Zarafshan Valley, Schuyler says:[75]
"The gardens constitute the beauty of all this land. The long rows of poplar and elm trees, the vineyards, the dark foliage of the pomegranate over the walls, transport one at once to the plains of Lombardy or of Southern France. In the early spring the outskirts of the city, and indeed the whole valley, are one mass of white and pink, with the bloom of almond and peach, of cherry and apple, of apricot and plum, which perfume the air for miles around. These gardens are the favourite dwelling-places in the summer, and well may they be. Nowhere are fruits more abundant, and of some varieties it can be said that nowhere are they better. The apricots and nectarines I think it would be impossible to surpass anywhere. These ripen in June, and from that time until winter fruit and melons are never lacking. Peaches, though smaller in size, are better in flavour than the best of England, but they are far surpassed by those of Delaware. The big blue plums of Bukhara are celebrated through the whole of Asia. The cherries are mostly small and sour. The best apples come either from Khiva, or from Suzak, to the north of Turkestan, but the small white pears of Tashkent are excellent in their way. The quince, as with us, is cultivated only for jams or marmalades, or for flavouring soup."
West-central Asia, "the cradle of races," is, as well, the cradle of fruits and vegetables and he who would know more of its orchards, gardens and vineyards should read Schuyler's _Turkestan_ and Lansdell's _Russian Central Asia_. We have quoted from the first-named book and now close the discussion of peaches in Asia by a few brief quotations from Lansdell, taking a few from many to bring out points worth noting. We usually think of flat peaches as belonging to southeastern Asia, yet Lansdell found them in west-central Asia:[76] "Here we bought our first ripe grapes and nectarines. Apricots ripen at Kuldja at the beginning of July, and we were, therefore, too late for them, but of late peaches, that ripen early in August, we came in for the last, flat in form, about an inch and a half in diameter and half an inch in thickness. They tasted fairly well, but there was little flesh on the stone."
Nectarines, as we have mentioned before, seem to be especially plentiful in this region:[77] "In the market (Vierny) we also bought grapes, and, still better, small but luscious nectarines, the latter for a halfpenny each, of which, as I sat over my writing at night, I ate so many as to alarm Mr. Sevier, whose medical instincts led him to fear for the consequences. All went well, however, and I never stinted myself from that time onward from Central Asian fruit, and I am thankful to say was not once inconvenienced thereby."
As throwing light on the wild fruits of this region, we have Lansdell's statement that there are whole forests of almond trees and many species of cherries, plums, apples, pears and apricots, but wild peaches are not mentioned.[78]
On another page we are told that peaches in Bokhara are of three varieties, red, white and green, and in a foot-note that they are grown as follows:[79] "When sown, the stone is put in the earth two fingers deep, before the frosts set in; water is then let in and allowed to freeze; after that, earth is put over it and left till the following spring, when the young shoots are transplanted at intervals of four paces. The best peaches are said to come from Samarkand."
One is tempted to enlarge upon fruit-possibilities in these west-Asiatic valleys. Without much strain upon the imagination it is easy to conjure up visions of great fruit-industries in west Asia rivaling those of our own Pacific Coast when communications with European markets are opened and if the people now there or those who may migrate there begin to make use of their opportunities and to take advantage of the best that art and science now offer horticulture. In the event of such a development, peaches, fresh and dried, will not be the least of the products of the region.
THE PEACH IN EUROPE
One finds treasures of experience and inspiration for narrative in the history of the peach in Europe. But to present a systematic record of the peach as it traveled from country to country after its introduction into ancient Greece would require a volume and a long one, which, interesting and profitable as it might be, could hardly be justified in this work. Present purposes are best served by attempting only to point out the landmarks in the history and development of the peach from the time it left Asia until it reached America. The first landmark is in the introduction of the peach into Greece.
_The peach in Greece._--As to the approximate date and the manner in which the peach reached Greece, there is now common accord among those who may be considered authorities on the history of fruits. Theophrastus (332 B. C.) was the first Greek to mention the peach, speaking of it as a "Persian fruit." It may be, of course, that the peach came to Greece from Asia Minor or Persia at an earlier date. One might well suspect that if peaches were growing in Persia at the time of the retreat of the Ten Thousand (401 B. C.), since the army must have traversed the country in which, according to some, the peach is native and at least had probably then been introduced, the taste of so pleasant a fruit would have inspired some soldier of the retreating Greeks to carry seeds to his western home. But Xenophon, historian of the retreat and a writer on agriculture as well as of war, does not mention the peach as he almost certainly would have done had it occupied a prominent place among the agricultural products of his time.
There is another story of the introduction of the peach into Greece that may be mentioned to separate fact from fable. Some of the old writers assert that the peach came to Greece from Persia by the way of Egypt. Such statements are founded on a traditionary tale first printed by Pliny to the effect that this fruit was sent into Egypt by the kings of Persia to poison the Egyptians. Pliny[80] denies that the kings of Persia had the peach transplanted into Egypt from motives of revenge but evidently is under the belief that the peach came from Egypt for he says:
"As to the peach-tree, it has been only introduced of late years, and with considerable difficulty; so much so, that it is perfectly barren in the Isle of Rhodes, the first resting-place that it found after leaving Egypt."
We would like to amplify the bare statement that Alexander brought the peach to Greece 332 B. C., but this single fact, if it be a fact, seems to constitute the recorded history of the peach in Greece before the Christian era. Dioscorides, about 64 A. D., was the next Greek to mention the peach but he discusses it with reference to its medicinal properties and does not enlighten us greatly as to its horticultural standing. The fact that the several Greek writers whose books have come down to us from the period under consideration do not mention the peach does not argue that this fruit was not then growing in Greece; for classicists, then as now, seldom got down to earth and the things growing in it.
_The peach in Italy._--Naturally one goes to the oldest book in Latin literature on agriculture to look for the beginnings of peach-culture in Italy. This, as every student knows, is _De Re Rustica_, a work on farming, gardening and fruit-growing by Cato (235-150 B. C.) on whom posterity has bestowed the appellation "Sturdiest Roman of Them All." Cato mentions most of our common orchard-fruits, as well as our field crops and garden-plants, but the peach is not in his list of fruits; neither does Varro (117-27 B. C.), the next great Roman writer on agriculture, seem to have known the peach though he mentions choice varieties of cultivated cherries, which at his time had but newly been introduced into Rome.
To Vergil (71-19 B. C.), we are indebted for the first reference to the peach in Roman literature. The "Prince of Latin Poets," writing on agriculture, orcharding and gardening, in the Georgics, mentions the peach in these graceful lines:
"Myself will search our planted grounds at home, For downy peaches and the glossy plum."
Columella, writing in the next generation after Vergil, about 40 A. D., adopts or starts the story of the peach being a poisonous gift sent from Persia to Egypt:
"And apples, which most barbarous Persia sent, With native poison arm'd (as fame relates): But now they've lost their pow'r to kill, and yield Ambrosial juice, and have forgot to hurt; And of their country still retain the name."
Some hold, however, that Columella refers not to the peach, "persica" but to "persa" a quite different fruit. But unquestionably, according to commentators, Columella has the peach in mind in these lines:
"Those of small size to ripen make great haste; Such as great Gaul bestows observe due time And season, not too early, nor too late."
By these tokens do we know that the peach was cultivated in Italy some years before the Christian era.
In Pliny's remarkable compend of the natural history lore that existed at the beginning of the Christian era, we have the first information worthy of note on the peach in Italy. His statements, though they throw more light on what the peach then was than the writings of any one until his time, taking a more utilitarian turn than those of the Greeks, are confusing and do not enlighten us greatly either as to the history of the peach, or as to its pomological standing. Still, Pliny's observations constitute an important landmark in the history of this fruit and we must give them full consideration. First, let us give attention to Pliny's account of the introduction of the peach into Italy. He devotes Chapter 13, Book XV, to "The Peach" confining his observations to historical references but in it so confounds peaches, plums and other trees that we learn but little as to when, whence or how the peach came to the Romans. Since this reference is much quoted, however, despite its indefiniteness, we give it in full.[81]
"The name of 'Persica,' or 'Persian apple,' given to this fruit, fully proves that it is an exotic in both Greece as well as Asia, and that it was first introduced from Persis. As to the wild plum, it is a well-known fact that it will grow anywhere; and I am, therefore, the more surprised that no mention has been made of it by Cato, more particularly as he has pointed out the method of preserving several of the wild fruits as well. As to the peach-tree, it has been only introduced of late years, and with considerable difficulty; so much so, that it is perfectly barren in the Isle of Rhodes, the first resting-place that it found after leaving Egypt.
It is quite untrue that the peach which grows in Persia is poisonous, and produces dreadful tortures, or that the kings of that country, from motives of revenge, had it transplanted in Egypt, where, through the nature of the soil, it lost all its evil properties--for we find that it is of the 'persea' that the more careful writers have stated all this, a totally different tree, the fruit of which resembles the red myxa, and, indeed, cannot be successfully cultivated anywhere but in the East. The learned have also maintained that it was not introduced from Persis into Egypt with the view of inflicting punishment, but say that it was planted at Memphis by Perseus; for which reason it was that Alexander gave orders that the victors should be crowned with it in the games which he instituted there in honour of his ancestor; indeed, this tree has always leaves and fruit upon it, growing immediately upon the others. It must be quite evident to every one that all our plums have been introduced since the time of Cato."
Our author's discussion of the kinds of peaches and of their market value is somewhat more satisfactory. In Chapter 11, Book XV, entitled "Six Varieties of the Peach," Pliny again discusses several fruits but in the last paragraph confines himself to the peach and puts on record the first account of varieties of this fruit. The chapter follows in full:[82]
"Under the head of apples, we include a variety of fruits, although of an entirely different nature, such as the Persian apple, for instance, and the pomegranate, of which, when speaking of the tree, we have already enumerated nine varieties. The pomegranate has a seed within, enclosed in a skin; the peach has a stone inside. Some among the pears, also, known as 'libralia,' show, by their name, what a remarkable weight they attain.
Among the peaches the palm must be awarded to the duracinus: the Gallic and the Asiatic peach are distinguished respectively by the names of the countries of their origin. They ripen at the end of autumn, though some of the early kinds are ripe in the summer. It is only within the last thirty years that these last have been introduced; originally they were sold at the price of a denarius apiece. Those known as the 'supernatia' come from the country of the Sabines, but the 'popularia' grow everywhere. This is a very harmless fruit, and a particular favourite with invalids: some, in fact, have sold before this as high as thirty sesterces apiece, a price that has never been exceeded by any other fruit. This, too, is the more to be wondered at, as there is none that is a worse keeper: for, when it is once plucked, the longest time that it will keep is a couple of days; and so sold it must be, fetch what it may."
The first of Pliny's six varieties is the "Persian Apple"--"_malum persicum_" in the original text. It is well to note the author's statement that "Under the head of apples, we include a variety of fruits." A literal translation of the Latin word _malum_ in Pliny has brought about many misunderstandings. Beside the peach, pear and pomegranate grouped here as "apples," the apricot, orange, citron and no doubt other fruits come "under the head of apples." The "Persian apple," then, must be counted as one of Pliny's "six varieties of peaches." From the name we know whence the Romans had the peach.
The second variety is the duracinus, to which, among peaches, "the palm must be awarded." The name translated literally is "hard-berry" and must refer to the firmness of the flesh. Despite the fact that De Candolle[83] and others hold that Pliny does not mention the nectarine, "duracinus" can hardly be other than the nectarine--at least the name fits the nectarine better than it does any peach.
The third and fourth of Pliny's peaches are the "Gallic" and "Asiatic," "distinguished respectively by the names of the countries of their origin." Can it be possible that there is a peach native to France? We should say at once that this is but one of Pliny's inaccuracies were it not for the fact that several of the highest French pomological authorities state that certain races of the peach are natives of southern France. Duhamel Du Monceau[84] and Leroy[85] are chief champions of this belief and the latter says that Mayer, Calvel and Carrière, other French authorities, are of the same opinion. These French writers offer no substantial proofs and botanists do not agree with them; it seems, weighing the evidence at this distance, as if they had copied Columella and Pliny too closely. The fact that the peach is a perfectly naturalized denizen of parts of France, of course, gives color to the belief that it is a native and not an exotic in that country. Quite similarly, our early botanists, including so careful an observer as Bartram, were of the opinion that the peach belonged to America for the reason that they found it growing wild in our southern woods--an escape from early Spanish settlers. Pliny's Gallic peach, probably, was a descendant of an early introduction from some outside source. How the "Asiatic peach" of our quotation differs from the "Persian apple" does not appear except in its origin, it probably having come more or less directly from Asia Minor which in Pliny's time seems to have been Asia.
The last two of Pliny's six varieties are those known as "supernatia" which "come from the country of the Sabines" and the "popularia" which "grow everywhere." Whether supernatia, meaning "from above," refers to the fact that this peach grows in the high and mountainous country of the Sabines or to its being a choice variety, cannot be said. Probably, however, it designates choice peaches while the "popularia" which grow everywhere refers to the common run of this fruit.
Peaches were profitable in Rome in Pliny's time, for they sold "as high as thirty sesterces apiece." A sesterce is four and one-half cents so that the possible price of a peach in Rome 1900 years ago was $1.35. The Roman peach-grower was at the mercy of the seasons as are those of nowadays for we read that when once plucked the peach could be kept but a couple of days, "so sold it must be, fetch what it may."
The statement that the peach is a "particular favorite with invalids," reminds us that the ancients ascribe various medicinal properties to nearly all plants and Pliny sets forth those of the peach as follows:[86]
"Peaches, again, are more wholesome than plums; and the same is the case with the juice of the fruit, extracted, and taken in either wine or vinegar. Indeed, what known fruit is there that is more wholesome as an aliment than this? There is none, in fact, that has a less powerful smell, or a greater abundance of juice, though it has a tendency to create thirst. The leaves of it, beaten up and applied topically, arrest haemorrhage: the kernels, mixed with oil and vinegar, are used as a liniment for head-ache."
One other consideration, and we are done with Pliny. In Chapter 13, quoted on page 28, we are told that the peach "has been only introduced of late years." This can hardly mean during the day of the author. The peach had probably been cultivated in ancient Rome for a considerable length of time before Pliny wrote. Vergil and Columella had mentioned it as a planted plant; Pliny, himself, speaks of the "popularia" as being grown "everywhere;" and the facts that it was a common article of food and used in medicine argue an earlier date of introduction than we might be lead to suppose from Pliny's statement "introduced of late years." Indeed, knowing the great length of time it takes in our days of rapid transportation and quick diffusion of knowledge to accustom ourselves to new food-plants and to persuade agriculturists to grow them, we should say that the peach must have been grown in Rome at least two or three centuries to have become so well known as it seems to have been in Pliny's time. The chief point established by these quotations is that the peach was well established in Italy at the beginning of the Christian era.
After leaving Pliny there is a boundless, uncharted waste before we find another landmark in the history of the peach. In all matters relating to agriculture and natural history Roman writers for several centuries but copied the men from whom we have quoted and it was not until the Sixteenth Century that we have any substantial account of the further progress of this fruit. During this century, curiously enough, about the only books on botany and horticulture were commentaries on Dioscorides, the Greek botanist, who lived and made his reputation in Christ's time and who for 1600 years thereafter was the sole authority on botany. Of the ten or twelve commentaries, that of Matthiolus is most replete with information on the fruits of the times and especially in the matter of varieties, which he describes in greater detail than any other man since Pliny. It must be remembered that at this time, the closing years of the Middle Ages, there was a great awakening in agriculture and horticulture in southern and western Europe. As the second descriptive list of peaches we might well quote what Matthiolus wrote, but, as in Pliny, few of his varieties can be made out, and Gerarde, writing later in English, amplifies the Latin author so well that we shall wait for his account.
_The peach in France._--Peach-culture in France probably began about as early as in Italy, for both Columella and Pliny, as we have seen, mention the peaches of Gaul with those of Rome. Introduced thus early, finding suitable soil and climate and easily propagated, so delicious a fruit as the peach must at once have become a prime favorite in the orchards of the monasteries, where, tended by monks who were the most skilled horticulturists of the times, the peach was disseminated throughout France with the spread of Christianity. France was the foster-mother of the peach in Europe--from her nurseries the Belgians, Dutch, Germans and English had their first peach-trees. The history of the peach in France, then, is an important chapter in the history of this fruit.
André Leroy, author of the great French work, _Dictionnaire de Pomologie_, gives in considerable detail the history of the peach in France and from him we briefly summarize the material he has brought together in regard to this fruit up to 1600 after which our purposes are best met by quoting directly from the originals.
According to Leroy[87] only peaches with a downy skin and soft flesh which adhered to the stone came from Asia--all others, in his belief, originated in southern France. That any peach came originally from France we do not agree, for reasons given on a foregoing page. Leaving the statements of origin in dispute, the first records of peaches in France are to be found in the quotations from Columella and Pliny which we have already discussed. Leroy mentions as the second record a reference to the peach by Bishop Fortunat of Portiers in 530; a third from the fourteenth Abbot of the monastery of Saint-Denis near Paris in the year 784; while the great Charlemagne, who in 800 mentions "peaches of different kinds," furnishes the fourth of Leroy's early records; the fifth account is taken from the letters of Lupus, Abbot of Ferrieres, near Amiens, who sent several varieties of peaches to a brother with instructions as to how to plant the pits, the approximate date being 860.
After these Leroy gives several references to show that the peach was commonly cultivated from the Ninth Century on but none of the writers whom he quotes gives a recognizable picture of the kinds of peaches in their day until we come to the epoch-making agricultural book of Olivier de Serres, who, in his _Théatre de Agriculture_, published in 1604, names and describes twelve kinds of peaches. While these descriptions are so incomplete as to be most tantalizing to one trying to recognize varieties, yet Olivier de Serres is one of the outstanding historians of agriculture and his few paragraphs on the peach constitute a prominent landmark in the history of this fruit because he names a considerable number of sorts and makes it plain that the peach is no longer grown as a species but that varieties are receiving recognition, though, sorry to say, we cannot be sure from the fragmentary description whether or not any of his kinds have come down to our time.
From the beginning of the Seventeenth Century the history of the peach in France is common property to students of pomology. Botanists and agriculturists by this time had begun to break away from Dioscorides, Pliny and the other ancients of Greece and Rome; and in France, Germany and England one herbal after another was beginning to appear in nearly all of which the peach received attention. Perhaps, since France plays so important a part in the development of the peach, a brief recapitulation from French pomological authorities following Olivier de Serres, showing the increase in varieties of this fruit and bringing to mind the men who have written in pomology, may be of interest and profit.
Lectier, agent of the King at Orleans, in a catalog of an orchard in his charge, published a list of 27 varieties of peaches in 1628. Thirty-nine years later, 1667, Merlet in his _Abrégé des bons fruits_ names 38 sorts of this fruit. For the next hundred years the increase in number seems to have been small, for in 1768 Duhamel du Monceau in _Traité des arbres fruitiers_, the first great pomological work to be published, describes but 43 peaches. This century, however, was one in which peach-culture increased enormously throughout France. At the beginning of the period peaches began to be grown in the shelter of walls--a method the results of which greatly increased the culture of this fruit. Calvel, in 1805, names 60 varieties; Louis Noisette, 1839, lists 60 sorts; André Leroy, 1852, names but 41 varieties, but in an edition of the same work in 1865, describes 148 peaches; lastly, O. Thomas in _Guide pratique_ (1876) publishes a list of 355 peaches.
_The peach in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Spain._--In the search for prominent events in the development of the peach, we are absolved from the task of tracing in detail the history of this fruit in the countries named in the heading of this paragraph. These nations have furnished no landmarks in the history of the peach. France has provided all with their varieties of this fruit. Indeed, in none, unless perhaps it be Spain, does the peach find a congenial climate and certainly in none is the crop of any considerable commercial value. Amateurs, too, in all but Spain at least, give their attention to its orchard-associates rather than to the peach. It is true, as we shall see, that the peach first came to America from Spain and a considerable number of our varieties are now grouped in what is called the "Spanish race." But horticulture in Spain, from the few accounts to be had, is primitive in the extreme--there are no Spanish pomologies and one cannot conceive that this country has aided appreciably in the development of the peach.
It is possible--would that we could know the facts--that Spain may have played an important part in introducing peaches into Europe. For the earliest Spanish gardens were the work of the Moors and since Moorish gardens, wonderful in beauty of design, show a strong resemblance to the gardens of Persia, what more probable than that the Moor, half-Asiatic, early brought the peach from Persia to Spain.
_The peach in England._--The peach and the gooseberry do not thrive side by side. England grows the gooseberry to highest perfection, fogs, rains and cloudy weather seemingly ministering to its wants. But the peach loves sun, heat and clear skies and if these come not naturally the peach-tree must be artificially grown. The peach is not, after centuries of cultivation, acclimatized in England. But in all times, and of all people, the English have been most fond of gardens and orchards and so beautiful and delectable a fruit as the peach could not escape their attention. And so, though under the necessity of growing this fruit on walls or under glass, England, since the Middle Ages, has done much toward the development of the peach, the difficulties of culture seeming to stimulate interest. Her pomological literature is particularly rich in references to this fruit. We in America, too, are greatly indebted to England for many varieties of peaches. The history of the peach in England, then, should afford much interesting and profitable material in this discussion.
There seems to be no record of the Romans having brought the peach to England, yet there can be little doubt that they did so. The remains in England of Roman houses, baths, roads, pavements and bridges, very similar if not quite so well built as those of Italy, suggest that there were Roman gardens about these early houses and villas in England just as there were about those in the great Empire on the Mediterranean. Moreover, there was an early Saxon name for the peach. The Latin is "Persica;" the early Anglo-Saxon is "Persoc treou;" the English, "peach."[88] But gardening in England for most part went as it came, with the Romans, and, during nearly a thousand years of struggling with barbarians after the fall of the Roman Empire, the peach, in common with all other garden-plants needing culture, seems to have disappeared and was not reintroduced until in the Thirteenth Century.
That the peach came to England, as a permanent asset, from France, is so certain from the general history of English horticulture, though there be no authentic record to substantiate the statement, that we need consider no alternative. One looks in vain for a satisfactory date for the beginning of peach-culture in England. In France the monastic orders, as we have seen, were the conservators of horticulture, as they were of all arts excepting war, and we feel sure that, as the Church reached England, some good bishop, father or brother planted peaches in a monastery garden. Yet our quest of a date is rewarded with nothing earlier than 1216, in which year, according to the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover,[89] "King John, at Newark, in the midst of his despair and disappointment, hastened his end by a surfeit of peaches and ale." From this we may certainly say that peach-culture was established in England at least as early as the beginning of the Thirteenth Century.
Two hundred years elapse before we find another reference to the peach in England. Lydgate, English monk and poet (1375-1440?), as quoted by the Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil,[90] mentioned peaches among "the fruits which more common be." Possibly an earlier reference is found in Chaucer's _Romaunt of the Rose_:
"And many hoomely trees there were That peches, coynes, and apples bere."
English fruit-books commonly accredit the introduction of the peach in England to a certain Wolf, gardener to Henry VIII, and fix the date at about 1524, but the quotations given show that this fruit was probably well established long before the Sixteenth Century. Perhaps it suffices to say that the peach began to be cultivated in England at the close of the Middle Ages--a time sufficiently vague to be convenient in the state of inexactness of our knowledge.
In the Sixteenth Century references to the peach become so numerous that one cannot reckon with all of them. Selecting only a few notable names of writers on plants, we have Turner, one of the first and perhaps the greatest of British herbalists, who mentions the peach in his _Herball_ of 1551, though rather disparagingly, for he says: "The peche is no great tre in England that I could se--the apples are soft flesshy when they are rype, something hory without." Tusser, author of _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie_, 1573, the best-known work on farming of the times, gives a list of fruits to be transplanted in January among which are "Peaches, white and red." Lastly, the century ends with John Gerarde's _The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes_, 1597, in which the peach is treated at greater length and to better advantage than by any previous English author. An improved edition of Gerarde's herbal was brought out in 1633 by Thomas Johnson who adds very materially to the discussion of the peach in the first edition and from this we quote in full all that pertains to varieties:[91]
"There are divers sorts of Peaches besides the foure here set forth by our Author, but the trees do not much differ in shape, but the difference chiefly consists in the fruit, whereof I will give you the names of the choice ones, and such as are to be had from my friend Mr. Miller in Old-street, which are these; two sorts of Nutmeg Peaches; The Queenes Peach; the Newington Peach; The grand Carnation Peach; The Carnation Peach; The blacke Peach; The Melocotone; The White; The Romane; The Alberza; The Island Peach; Peach du Troy. These are all good ones. He hath also of that kinde of Peach which some call _Nucipersica_ or Nectorins, these following kindes; the Roman red, the best of fruits; the bastard Red; the little dainty greene; the Yellow, the White; the Russet, which is not so good as the rest. Those that would see any fuller discourse of these may have recourse to the late work of Mr. John Parkinson, where they may find more varieties, and more largely handled, and therefore not necessary for me in this place to insist upon them.
1. The Peach tree is a tree of no great bignesse: it sendeth forth divers boughes, which be so brittle, as oftentimes they are broken with the weight of the fruit or with the winde. The leaves be long, nicked in the edges, like almost to those of the Walnut tree, and in taste bitter: the floures be of a light purple colour. The fruit of Peaches be round, and have as it were a chinke or cleft on the one side; they are covered with a soft and thin downe or hairy cotton, being white without, and of a pleasant taste; in the middle whereof is a rough or rugged stone, wherein is contained a kernell like unto the Almond; the meate about the stone is of a white color. The root is tough and yellowish.
2. The red Peach tree is likewise a tree of no great bignesse; it also sendeth forth divers boughes or branches which be very brittle. The leaves be long, and nicked in the edges like to the precedent. The floures be also like unto the former; the fruit or Peaches be round, and of a red colour on the outside; the meate likewise about the stone is of a gallant red colour. These kindes of Peaches are very like to wine in taste, and therefore marvellous pleasant.
3. _Persica praecocia_, or the d'avant Peach tree is like unto the former, but his leaves are greater and larger. The fruit or Peaches be of a russet colour on the one side, and on the other side next unto the Sun of a red colour, but much greater than the red Peach: the stones whereof are like unto the former: the pulpe or meate within is of a golden yellow colour, and of a pleasant taste.
4. _Persica lutea_, or the yellow Peach tree is like unto the former in leaves and flours, his fruit is of a yellow color on the out side, and likewise on the in side, harder than the rest: in the middle of the Peach is a wooddy hard and rough stone full of crests and gutters, in which doth ly a kernel much like to that of the almond, and with such a like skin: the substance within is white, and of taste somewhat bitter. The fruit hereof is of greatest pleasure, and of best taste of all the other of his kinde; although there be found at this day divers other sorts that are of very good taste, not remembered of the ancient, or set down by the later Writers, whereof to speake particularly would not bee great to our pretended purpose, considering wee hasten to an end.
5. There is also kept in some of our choice gardens a kind of Peach which hath a very double and beautifull floure, but it is seldom succeeded by any fruit: they call this _Persica flore pleno_, The double blossomed Peach."
In the first edition Gerarde describes but four peaches, but Johnson, 36 years later, says "there are divers sorts besides the foure here set forth by our Author" and then names thirteen "choice ones, such as are to be had from my friend Miller in Old-street," who "hath also" six varieties "of that kinde of Peach which some call _Nucipersia_ or _Nectorins_." Either Gerarde neglects the peach or varieties increased greatly in 36 years--probably the former. We have not found the nectarine mentioned before Johnson's revision of Gerarde in 1633 and probably this fruit was not well known in England long before, for Parkinson, discussing them in 1629, says "they have been with us not many years." This brings us to Parkinson's list of peaches, which contains, as Johnson says, a "fuller discourse," than Gerarde. John Parkinson (1567-1650), another British herbalist, who also cultivated a famous garden in London, devotes a chapter to the peach and another to the nectarine. These being short, and every word pertinent, we publish them in full:[92]
"The great white Peach is white on the outside as the meate is also, and is a good well rellished fruit.
The small white Peach is all one with the greater, but differeth in size.
The Carnation Peach is of three sorts, two are round, and the third long; they are all of a whitish colour, shadowed over with red, and more red on the side is next the sunne: the lesser round is the more common, and the later ripe.
The grand Carnation Peach is like the former round Peach, but greater, and is as late ripe, that is, in the beginning of September.
The red Peach is an exceeding well rellished fruit.
The russet Peach is one of the most ordinary Peaches in the Kingdome, being of a russet colour on the outside, and but of a reasonable rellish, farre meaner then many other.
The Island Peach is a faire Peach, and of a very good rellish.
The Newington Peach is a very good Peach, and of an excellent good rellish, being of a whitish greene colour on the outside, yet halfe reddish, and is ripe about Bartholmew tide.
The yellow Peach is of a deepe yellow colour; there be hereof divers sorts, some good and some bad.
The St. James Peach is the same with the Queenes Peach, here belowe set downe, although some would make them differing.
The Melocotone Peach is a yellow faire Peach, but differing from the former yellow both in forme and taste, in that this hath a small crooked end or point for the most part, it is ripe before them, and better rellished then any of them.
The Peach _du Troas_ is a long and great whitish yellow Peach, red on the outside, early ripe, and is another kinde of Nutmeg Peach.
The Queenes Peach is a faire great yellowish browne Peach, shadowed as it were over with deepe red, and is ripe at Bartholmew tide, of a very pleasant good taste.
The Romane Peach is a very good Peach, and well rellished.
The Durasme or Spanish Peach is of a darke yellowish red colour on the outside, and white within.
The blacke Peach is a great large Peach, of a very darke browne colour on the outside, it is of a waterish taste, and late ripe.
The Alberza Peach is late ripe, and of a reasonable good taste.
The Almond Peach, so called, because the kernell of the stone is sweete, like the Almond, and the fruit also somewhat pointed like the Almond in the huske; it is early ripe, and like the Newington Peach, but lesser.
The Man Peach is of two sorts, the one longer then the other, both of them are good Peaches, but the shorter is the better rellished.
The Cherry Peach is a small Peach, but well tasted.
The Nutmeg Peach is of two sorts, one that will be hard when it is ripe, and eateth not so pleasantly as the other, which will bee soft and mellow; they are both small Peaches, having very little or no resemblance at all to a Nutmeg, except in being a little longer than round, and are early ripe."
"Many other sorts of Peaches there are, whereunto wee can give no especial name; and therefore I passe them over in silence."
Agriculture seems to have received a great impetus in England about the middle of the Seventeenth Century, possibly with the beginning of Cromwell's Protectorate in 1653. Toward the end of the century the momentum began to carry pomology with it, the most apparent results of the movement at this distance, as it affects the peach, being a great output of new varieties and of fruit-books in which the new offerings were described. From this time the progress of peach-culture in England assumed so great proportions that space does not permit following it further in this brief account--a task unnecessary, too, for the pomological works of Lawrence, Switzer, Langley, Brookshaw, Miller, Rea, Hitt, Abercrombie and Forsyth, to select the most prominent names, cover the century well and are still accessible in large libraries. Moreover, by this time the peach was well established in America and we must take up its history there.
THE PEACH IN AMERICA
One of the first fruits of the heroic age of Spanish discovery in America was the naturalization in the New World of animals and plants which the discoverers brought with them. Most notable of these are the wild horses of the western plains and the Indian peaches of southern forests. Long before the English, Dutch, French or Swedes planted colonies in America, peaches, introduced by Spaniards, were common property of the Indians in southeastern and southwestern America. The Spaniards came to the New World to conquer and brought swords more often than fruits, but a cheery note in the long dirge of human woes suffered by the Aztecs is found in the rapid dissemination of the peach, among other domesticated plants, at an early period in Mexico. Which of the Spanish conquerors brought the peach or when it came does not appear but we have record that less than fifty years after Cortez conquered the country the peach was, apparently, commonly grown in Mexico. The beginnings of peach-culture on this continent are, then, to be sought in the region south of the Rio Grande.
_The peach in Mexico._--Authority for the statement that the peach was cultivated in Mexico less than fifty years after the Spanish conquest is found in a Spanish book published by Molina in 1571, in which three peaches are described in Hispano-Aztec compound words as follows: "_xuchipal durazno_, 'red-colored peach,' _cuztic durazno_, 'yellow peach,' and _xocotlmelocoton_, 'peach fruit.'"[93] That the peach is to be found everywhere in Mexico, cultivated and as an escape from cultivation, where climate permits is common knowledge to pomologists, explorers having from time to time brought to light sorts worthy of introduction in our southern states, and frequent mention is made of this fruit by visitors to that country.
These Mexican peaches become of special interest to American fruit-growers because they constitute, with the offspring of early introductions in Florida, what pomologists call the "Spanish Race" of this fruit. "American Race" is a more fitting name, for these peaches are an American product. Four centuries of reproduction from seed, in a climate and soil different from any previously imposed upon them, and abnormally short generations have given to this continent a group of peaches with many characters in common.
Tracing further the history of the peaches that early came to Mexico, we find evidence that in a comparatively short time they had been taken northward into New Mexico, Arizona and the Californias. It is barely possible that from the same source the peach was eventually carried as far eastward as the Mississippi, for early explorers found naturalized peaches in the valley of this great river. No doubt the Jesuit and Franciscan fathers, chief representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in the early settlement of Mexico and southwestern America, early carried the peach from place to place, for, as advance guards of civilization, these men usually planted fruits, grains, vegetables and flowers at the missions they founded. Therefore, it is hardly too much to say that the history of the peach in the southwest follows the establishment, one after another, of the old missions, beginning in America with the settlement of Sante Fe in 1605 and continuing until Spanish rule passed into that of the United States.
That the padres of the early religious orders planted gardens and orchards as they planted the cross of Christianity among the Indian tribes in the southwest may be seen from such accounts of the mission as the following, written by a Spanish officer traveling in what is now New Mexico in 1799:[94] "The Moquinos are the most industrious of the many Indian nations that inhabit and have been discovered in that portion of America. They till the earth with great care, and apply to all their fields the manures proper for each crop. The same cereals and pulse are raised by them, that are everywhere produced by the civilized population in our provinces. They are attentive to their kitchen gardens, and have all the varieties of fruit-bearing trees it has been in their power to procure. The peach tree yields abundantly."
The antiquity of peach-culture among southern Indians, from Mexico to Florida, is shown by the fact that, among the prominent tribes of this region, there is a distinct name for the peach but the names of other introduced fruits, and of some native ones, are derived from that of the peach. Thus, according to W. R. Gerard,[95] who gave careful study to Indian names of plants in at least four Indian languages, the name of the peach is the radical while that of several plums is the equivalent of "little peach," "deer's peach" and "barren peach" while the cultivated apples and pears were by some Indians called "big peach."
As these Indian peaches have cut a prominent figure in furnishing stocks for American peach-orchards, are the source from which came a number of varieties, and, more than all else, gave inspiration for planting permanent orchards of this fruit on American soil, we may well consider them at greater length.
_Indian peaches._--In many parts of the South, from the Ohio to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Great Plains, the peach is naturalized and has run into many varieties of a peculiar and well-recognized type. This is the "Indian Peach" of this vast region, the chief distinguishing characters of which are: Trees with long, spreading limbs; young growth with purplish bark; small, flat, comparatively persistent leaves; blossoms large; season sometimes covering several weeks; fruit small, streaked with red beneath the skin, giving it a striped appearance, heavily pubescent; flesh usually yellow; ripening very late, season long, and of poor or indifferent quality. The trees of these Indian peaches have a smack of wildness which the best of pruning does not wholly subdue. The aborigines undoubtedly obtained peaches from Spaniards settling in both Mexico and Florida. The first source we have discussed. We come now to the second.
No doubt the Spaniards planted peaches in their first settlement of Florida at Saint Augustine in 1565. We have no record of the fact but early Indian traders found the natives of northern Florida and the neighboring states growing peaches in and about their villages in such quantity and with such familiarity as to suggest that the several tribes had long known this fruit. Hilton, an Englishman, who visited Florida a hundred years after the Spaniards established themselves at Saint Augustine, records that: "the country abounds with grapes, large figs and peaches."[96] The besetting sins of our early explorers were hasty generalization and exaggeration, and since the Indian peach, in what is now Florida at any rate, does not "abound" we must believe that Hilton was either farther north or was dissembling. Of the abundance of Indian peaches in the other Gulf States, there can be no doubt, for John Bartram, America's first great botanist, a man of note among all American naturalists, in the account of his travels through this region in 1765-1766 frequently mentions the peach as wild or as having been cultivated by the Indians.
Thus, Bartram says, speaking of the Cherokee town of Sticoe, on or near the Savannah River:[97] "On these towering hills appeared the ruins of the ancient famous town of Sticoe. Here was a vast Indian mount or tumulus and great terrace, on which stood the council-house, with banks encompassing their circus; here were also old Peach and Plumb orchards; some of the trees appeared yet thriving and fruitful." And again, discussing the ruins of a French town near Mobile, Alabama, he says:[98] "I ascended the bank of the river, and penetrating the groves, came presently to old fields, where I observed ruins of ancient habitations, there being abundance of Peach and Fig trees, loaded with fruit, which affording a very acceptable dessert after the heats and toil of the day, and evening drawing on apace, I concluded to take up my quarters here for the night." And still again, he found on Pearl Island:[99] "Besides the native forest trees and shrubs already noted, manured fruit trees arrive in this island to the utmost degree of perfection, as Pears, Peaches, Figs, Grape Vines, Plumbs, &c."
Bartram in his travels found the peach so widely and abundantly naturalized that he was inclined to believe America to be its habitat. At least Kalm,[100] the Swedish naturalist, who visited Bartram in 1748-1749 reports that Bartram "looked upon peaches as an original American fruit, and as growing wild in the greater part of America."
In 1758 Le Page Du Pratz, who lived on a plantation in Louisiana for several years and wrote a history of the French colony, says that the natives had peaches and figs when the French settled in Louisiana in 1698. He probably errs, however, in stating that the natives got their trees from the English colony of Carolina since the English did not settle in Carolina until 1670. No doubt the Indians had long before had peaches and figs from the Spaniards of Florida or Mexico. The account which this historian gives of early peach-culture in Louisiana is worth printing in full:[101] "The natives had doubtless got the peach trees and fig trees from the English colony of Carolina, before the French established themselves in Louisiana. The peaches are of the kind which we call alberges; are of the size of the fist, adhere to the stone, and contain so much water that they make a kind of wine of it. The figs are either blue or white; are large and well enough tasted. Our colonists plant the peach stones about the end of February, and suffer the trees to grow exposed to all weathers. In the third year they will gather from one tree at least two hundred peaches, and double that number for six or seven years more, when the tree dies irrecoverably. As new trees are so easily produced, the loss of the old ones is not in the least regretted."
There are many indirect references to peaches in the Mississippi Valley most of which can be traced to Father Hennepin's account of peaches in Louisiana. He says:[102] "The peaches there are like those of Europe and bear very good fruit in such abundance that the savages are often obliged to prop up the trees with forked sticks." It turns out, however, that Father Hennepin was the Baron Munchausen of the early French explorers, it being doubtful whether he was ever farther down the Mississippi than the mouth of the Illinois. Probably, therefore, we must put much of what early writers say of the great abundance of peaches in this region to the soaring imagination of this early religious explorer. Yet these reports are credited by so careful a man as Kalm, who writes:[103] "I have been told by all those who have made journies to the southern parts of Canada, and to the river Mississippi, that the woods there abound with peach-trees, which bear excellent fruit, and that the Indians of those parts say that those trees have been there since times immemorial."
A little later we have reliable information that the peach was naturalized in parts of the Mississippi Valley at least, for Thomas Nuttall, leading botanist of his time and a thoroughly reliable reporter, traveling in Arkansas in 1819, writes:[104] "The thermometer towards noon rises to seventy degrees and the peach and plum trees, almost equally naturalized, have nearly finished blooming." And, again,[105] "The peach of Persia is already naturalized throughout the forests of Arkansa." From this we may picture wild peaches as having grown for generations in parts of Arkansas and, no doubt, of the now famous Ozark region, where, we are told, peach-trees in abundance now decorate, with flower and fruit, primeval forests.
Reserving the best description of Indian peaches to the last we now turn from Arkansas to the Carolinas. Here, in 1700, John Lawson, a surveyor, who in his work had ample opportunity to know the country, wrote about the wild and cultivated plants of the region. Lawson, although not a trained naturalist, was a keen observer, a lover of nature and much interested in the agricultural development of the Carolinas. Moreover, he writes so simply, directly, and in a tone so temperate, in contrast to the declamatory style of the times, that one accepts without question what he says. We feel we are justified in quoting at some length Lawson's description of Indian peaches:[106]
"All peaches with us are standing; neither have we any wall fruit in Carolina, for we have heat enough, and therefore do not require it. We have a great many sorts of this fruit, which all thrive to admiration, peach trees coming to perfection, with us, as easily as the weeds. A peach falling to the ground brings a peach tree that shall bear in three years, or sometimes sooner. Eating peaches in our orchards makes them come up so thick from the kernel, that we are forced to take a great deal of care to weed them out, otherwise they make our land a wilderness of peach trees. They generally bear so full that they break great part of their limbs down. We have likewise very fair nectarines, especially the red, that clings to the stone; the other yellow fruit, that leaves the stone. Of the last I have a tree that most years brings me fifteen or twenty bushels. I see no foreign fruit like this, for thriving in all sorts of land, and bearing its fruit to admiration. I want to be satisfied about one sort of this fruit, which the Indians claim as their own, and affirm they had it growing amongst them before any Europeans came to America.
The fruit I will describe as exactly as I can. The tree grows very large, most commonly as big as a handsome apple tree; the flowers are of a reddish, murrey color, the fruit is rather more downy than the yellow peach, and commonly very large and soft, being very full of juice. They part freely from the stone, and the stone is much thicker than all the other peach stones we have, which seems to me that it is a spontaneous fruit of America; yet in those parts of America that we inhabit, I never could hear that any peach trees were ever found growing in the woods; neither have the foreign Indians, that live remote from the English, any other sort. And those living amongst us have a hundred of this sort for one other. They are a hardy fruit, and are seldom damaged by the north-east blast, as others are. Of this sort we make vinegar; wherefore we call them vinegar peaches, and sometimes Indian peaches.
This tree grows to a vast bigness, exceeding most apple trees. They bear well, though sometimes an early spring comes on in February, and perhaps when the tree is fully blown, the cloudy, north-east winds, which attend the end of that month, or the beginning of March, destroy most of the fruit. The biggest apricot tree I ever saw, as they told me, was grafted on a peach stock in the ground. I know of no other sort with us, than the common. We generally raise this fruit from the stone, which never fails to bring the same fruit. Likewise our peach stones effect the same, without so much as once missing to produce the same sort that the stone came from."
_Peaches in the colonies._--The first peaches in the American colonies must have been planted at Jamestown for, in 1629, Captain John Smith writes of "peaches in abundance."[107] The trees, however, seem to have been neglected for, continuing, Smith says: "Apples, Peares, Apricocks, Vines, figges, and other fruits some have planted, that prospered exceedingly; but their diligence about Tobacco left them to be spoiled by the cattell; yet now they beginne to revive." The settlement in Virginia at that time, so soon after the Indian massacres, was small and there could have been but few trees so that Smith's "abundance" was but as a grain of sand on the seashore with the many thousands of bushels required to make an abundance at the present time.
Despite the neglect of fruit to attend to tobacco which Smith laments, the planting of orchards must have gone on apace, for in 1633 a Dutch sea-captain named De Vries visiting Virginia describes the Menife plantation, famous in the colony at that time, as having a garden containing rosemary, sage, marjoram and thyme, the apple, pear and cherry while the house itself was surrounded by peach-trees.[108] Three years later, 1642, Berkeley became governor of the colony and we are told that about his house at Green Spring there were fifteen hundred apple, peach, apricot, quince and other fruit-trees.[109] Robert Evelyn, writing forty years after the settlement of Jamestown says: "Peaches better than Apricocks by some doe feed hogs, one man hath ten thousand trees."[110]
Fruit-growing in colonial Virginia was not without promoters and one, a Colonel Norwood, had the persuasive eloquence of the barkers for get-rich-quick orchard-planting concerns of our own times. Colonel Norwood, an Englishman, visited Virginia in 1649 and on his return wrote:[111] "Oranges, Lemons, Pine-aples, Plantanes, Peaches, Apricocks, Peares, Apels, in a word all sort of excellent Fruits will grow there in full perfection: you may sleepe whilst they are growing, after their setting or engrafting, there needes no more labour but your prayers, that they may prosper, and now and then an eye to prevent their casualties, wounds or diseases." No doubt Norwood is over enthusiastic in his praises and yet it is true that there were few pests of the peach at this time, most of these coming, one by one, with the development of the fruit-industry. About all that any fruit needed at this time was, to use a modern political phase, "watchful waiting."
Considering the agricultural efforts that must have been required to produce tobacco, then the medium of exchange at home and abroad, and of corn, which in Virginia was the staff of life, one wonders that fruit received the attention indicated by the following account written in 1656 of a still earlier period:[112] "The Country is full of gallant Orchards, and the fruit generally more luscious and delightful than here, witnesse the Peach and Quince, the latter may be eaten raw savourily, the former differs as much exceeds ours as the best relished apple we have doth the crabb, and of both most excellent and comfortable drinks are made." Perhaps the explanation of the popularity of fruits in Virginia is to be found in the statement that from fruits are made "most excellent and comfortable drinks." On the word of Captain John Smith we have it that "few of the upper-class planters drink any water."[113] Wine was not made in quantity in the colonies and liquors distilled from grains were not known so that thirst, in this case the mother of invention, caused the colonists to turn to peaches and apples for strong drink.
Prohibition was not preached in the colonies nor in the states until long after the Revolution and King Alcohol dominated every part of the New World. Distilling spirituous liquors from rye and corn seems not to have been practiced, if the art were known, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. The upper classes drank wine, but cider, perry, peach-vinegar and similar fermented fruit-juices were in common use by the middle and lower classes while the carousing population of the whole country, and there seems to have been many liberal tipplers, slaked their thirst with rum, apple-jack and peach-brandy. So much on drinking, not to point a moral or adorn a tale, but to bring out the fact that fruit-growing in America had its beginning and for two hundred years had almost its whole sustenance in the demand for strong drink. This is shown in almost every page of the horticultural literature of the times and in the laws of the colonies restricting prices and levying taxes on liquors made from fruits. Peaches were grown in quantities wherever they could be made to succeed in the colonies, not for the fruit itself, but for the making of peach-vinegar, a sort of cider, and peach-brandy, a distilled liquor.
By the end of the first hundred years in America the English seem to have brought orcharding to a fine state of perfection in Virginia, the peach succeeding then, by all accounts, rather better than now. Bruce[114] gives an admirable summing-up of orchard-conditions at the end of the period named: "In the closing years of the seventeenth century, there were few plantations in Virginia which did not possess orchards of apple and peach trees, pear, plum, apricot, and quince. The number of trees was often very large. The orchard of Robert Hide of York contained three hundred peach and three hundred apple trees. There were twenty-five hundred apple trees in the orchard of Colonel Fitzhugh. Each species of fruit was represented by many varieties; thus, of the apple, there were mains, pippins, russentens, costards, marigolds, kings, magitens and batchelors; of the pear, bergamy and warden. The quince was greater in size, but less aciduated than the English quince; on the other hand, the apricot and plum were inferior in quality to the English, not ripening in the same perfection. Cherries grew in notable abundance. So great was the productive capacity of the peach that some of the landowners planted orchards of the tree for the mere purpose of using the fruit to fatten their hogs; on some plantations, as many as forty bushels are said to have been knocked down to the swine in the course of a single season."
Treasure after treasure of experience and narrative may be found in tracing the history of the peach in Virginia but space permits only the references that best illuminate the development and culture of this fruit in America. Two accounts must serve to give an idea of the peach in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Robert Beverly, in his _History of Virginia_ gives a good idea of the culture, kinds and uses of peaches in the early part of the Eighteenth Century:[115] "Peaches, nectarines and apricots, as well as plumbs and cherries, grow there upon standard trees. They commonly bear in three years from the stone, and thrive so exceedingly, that they seem to have no need of grafting or inoculating, if any body would be so good a husband; and truly I never heard of any that did graft either plum, nectarine, peach or apricot in that country, before the first edition of this book."
"Peaches and nectarines I believe to be spontaneous, somewhere or other on that continent, for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety, and finer sorts of them than the English. The best sort of these cling to the stone, and will not come off clear, which they call plum nectarines, and plum peaches or clint stones. Some of these are twelve or thirteen inches in the girt. These sorts of fruits are raised so easily there, that some good husbands plant great orchards of them, purposely for their hogs; and others make a drink of them, which they call mobby, and either drink it as cider, or distill it off for brandy. This makes the best spirit next to grapes."
The text for the only other account we have space to publish for the period under consideration is found in Washington's diary for February 22, 1760. "Laid in part, the Worm of a fence around the Peach orchard." The information in Washington's short statement is inconsequential but from it we form a pleasant picture of peach-growing at Mount Vernon. Washington owned a distillery and in another place we learn that "the distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach and persimmon brandy." To supply the needs of the plantation in fruit and brandy, there must have been a considerable number of trees, all seedlings, but set in straight rows, for Washington, the surveyor, would have no botch work in aligning and spacing. The fence, the worm of which Washington was laying on his twenty-eighth birthday, if typical of the times, was of split walnut-rails, laid zigzag. Eventually it became trellised with wild grapes, Virginia creepers, honeysuckles and morning-glories. The corners grew up to sassafras, brambles and other plants of the region. In spring, we picture then, the pink-petalled trees, in the peach-orchard at Mount Vernon, making obeisance to the Father of his Country as he rode the rounds of the plantation; in summer the shady shrub-grown corners of the worm-fence, sweet-scented with honeysuckle or aromatic with sassafras, furnished refreshing resting places as Washington watched his harvest; later, the orchard, voluptuous with fruit, gave gustatory promises of products to eat and drink and dazzled the eye with autumn colors of Virginia creeper, wild grape and sassafras. The peach-orchard not only served the appetite at Mount Vernon but was one of the most picturesque spots on the plantation.
Let the foregoing accounts of Smith, Bruce and Beverly suffice to give status to early peach-growing in Virginia. They apply equally well to Maryland, these neighboring colonies, it will be remembered, being called by one of our authors, "Leah and Rachel or the Two Fruitful Sisters." Of the peach in the states to the south at least a few words ought to be said.
In the discussion of Indian peaches we have had a good account of the early history of the peach in the Carolinas by Lawson. We now show the status of peach-growing in this region at a later period. In an account of South Carolina and Georgia, said to have been written by General Oglethorpe, printed in London in 1733, we find the following:[116]
"Mulberries, both black and white, are natives of this soil, and are found in the woods, as are many other sorts of fruit trees of excellent kinds, and the growth of them is surprisingly swift; for a peach, apricot, or nectarine tree will, from the stone, grow to be a bearing tree in four or five years' time."
"They have oranges, lemons, apples and pears, besides the peach and apricot mentioned before. Some of these are so delicious that whoever tastes them will despise the insipid, watery taste of those we have in England; and yet such is the plenty of them that they are given to the hogs in great quantities."
A little later, 1740, Mr. Thomas Jones of Savannah wrote to Mr. John Lyde concerning the contents of his town-garden as follows:[117]
"As to our fruit, the most common are peaches and nectarines (I believe that I had a hundred bushels of the former this year in my little garden in town); we have also apples of divers sorts, chincopin nuts, walnut, chestnut, hickory, and ground nuts."
The third writer is Sir John Oldmixon who quotes a Mr. Archdale in regard to the fruits of Carolina. He writes:[118]
"Everything generally grows there that will grow in any part of Europe, there being already many sorts of fruits, as apples, pears, apricots, nectarines, etc. They that once taste of them will despise the watery, washy taste of those in England. There's such plenty of them that they are given to the hogs. In four or five years they come from a stone to be bearing trees."
The same author is worth quoting in regard to the early culture of the Melocoton peach in Virginia.[119] "Here is such plenty of peaches that they give them to their hogs; some of them, called malachotoons, are as big as a lemon and resemble it a little." The history of the word melocoton, by the way, is interesting. It comes from the Latin _melum cotoneum,_ literally, apple-quince. The corruption is of Spanish origin and in Spain "melocoton" is a common name for the peach. The word, however, is now common enough in English, no less than 29 variant spellings being found in the dictionaries and every extensive list of peaches having a number of varieties with melocoton as a prefix or an affix to the name.
Passing now to the northern colonies we find that the history of the peach in Pennsylvania begins with the history of the State. William Penn founded Philadelphia in 1682 and a year later, in describing the new country, names the peach as one of its assets:[120] "There are also very good peaches, and in great quantities; not an Indian plantation without them, but whether naturally here at first, I know not. However, one may have them by bushels for little; they make a pleasant drink; and I think not inferior to any peach you have in England, except the true Newington."
It would be hard to find a part of the earth better fitted in soil and climate for sure and abounding harvests of peaches than the Chesapeake peach-belt extending up through Maryland and taking in Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. We may be sure, then, that if the Indians were growing peaches in the abundance described by Penn in what is now Philadelphia, peach-orchards were not less common in all of the Chesapeake belt. That the whole region was bountifully supplied with this delicious fruit when settled by whites is further indicated, however, in a letter written by Mahlon Stacy from the "Falls of the Delaware," New Jersey, in 1680, to his brother Revell in England. He says:[121]
"I have travelled through most of the places that are settled, and some that are not; and in every place I find the country very apt to answer the expectation of the diligent. I have seen orchards laden with fruit to admiration; their very limbs torn to pieces by the weight, and most delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I have seen an apple tree from a pippin kernel yield a barrel of curious cider, and peaches in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach gathering; I could not but smile at the conceit of it; they are very delicate fruit, and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes."
We are told in Watson's Annals of Philadelphia[122] that one of the remarkable characteristics of Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1700 was that the whole of the main street, one mile in length, "was fronted with blooming peach trees."
An account of peaches in the Delaware region as late as the middle of the Eighteenth Century shows that even then the peach was regarded as indigenous "like maize and tobacco." This quotation, too, is interesting because it gives a glimpse of cultural methods, kinds, uses and danger from frost. The author was a Swedish clergyman, a resident of the region for some years. He writes:[123]
"Peach trees stand within an enclosure by themselves; grow even in the stoniest places without culture. The fruit is the most delicious that the mouth can taste, and often allowable in fevers. One kind, called clingstones, are considered the best; in these the stones are not loose from the fruit as in the others. Many have peach orchards chiefly for the purpose of feeding their swine, which are not allowed to run at large. They first bloom, in March, the flowers coming out before the leaves, and are often injured by the frosts; they are ripe toward the close of August. This fruit is regarded as indigenous, like maize and tobacco; for as far as any Indians have been seen in the interior of the country these plants are found to extend."
Pressed for space, we must conclude the discussion of early peach-growing in this region by quoting an account of the industry as it existed in 1750 when the Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited the colonies and spent some time in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Writing of orchards he says:[124] "Every countryman, even a common peasant, has commonly an orchard near his house in which all sorts of fruit, such as peaches, apples, pears, cherries, and others, are in plenty. The peaches were now almost ripe. They are rare in Europe, particularly in Sweden, for in that country hardly any people besides the rich taste them. But here every countryman had an orchard full of peach trees, which were covered with such quantities of fruit, that we could scarcely walk in the orchard, without treading on those peaches which were fallen off; many of which were always left on the ground, and only part of them was sold in town, and the rest was consumed by the family and strangers; for every one that passed by, was at liberty to go into the orchard, and to gather as many of them as he wanted. Nay, this fine fruit was frequently given to the swine.
This fruit is, however, sometimes kept for winter use, and for this purpose they are prepared in the following manner. The fruit is cut into four parts, the stone thrown away, and the fruit put upon a thread, on which they are exposed to the sunshine in the open air, till they are sufficiently dry. They are then put into a vessel for winter. But this manner of drying them is not very good, because the rain of this season very easily spoils and putrifies them, whilst they hang in the open air. For this reason a different method is followed by others, which is by far the most eligible. The peaches are as before cut into four parts, are then either put upon a thread, or laid upon a board, and so hung up in the air when the sun shines. Being dried in some measure, or having lost their juice by this means, they are put into an oven, out of which the bread has but just been taken, and are left in it for a while. But they are soon taken out and brought into the fresh air; and after that they are again put into the oven, and this is repeated several times until they are as dry as they ought to be. For if they were dried up at once in the oven, they would shrivel up too much, and lose part of their flavour. They are then put up and kept for the winter. They are either baked into tarts and pyes, or boiled and prepared as dried apples and pears are in Sweden. Several people here dry and preserve their apples in the same manner as their peaches.
The peach trees have, as I am told, been first planted here by the Europeans. But at present they succeed very well, and require even less care than our apple and pear trees."
Kalm[125] also gives an account of the colonists' method of making peach-brandy, which, as we have seen, plays so important a part in the peach-industry of the times. Brandy-making, according to Kalm, was simplicity itself and it is not to be wondered that in those days of strong drink peach-brandy was popular. The following is Kalm's description: "They make brandy from peaches here, after the following method. The fruit is cut asunder, and the stones are taken out. The pieces of fruit are then put into a vessel, where they are left for three weeks or a month, till they are quite putrid. They are then put into the distilling vessel, and the brandy is made and afterwards distilled over again. This brandy is not for people who have a more refined taste, but it is only for the common kind of people, such as workmen and the like."
Kalm, travelling from Trenton to Princeton, found the country thickly settled and full of orchards:[126]
"During the greater part of the day we had very extensive corn fields on both sides of the road. * * * Near almost every farm was a spacious orchard full of peach and apple trees, and in some of them the fruit had fallen from the trees in such quantities as to cover nearly the whole surface. Part of it they left to rot, because they could not take it all in and consume it. Wherever we passed by we were always welcome to go into the fine orchards and gather our hats and pockets full of the choicest fruit, without the possessors so much as looking after it."
The soil and climate of Long Island and the lower reaches of the Hudson, similar to those of the Chesapeake peach-belt, are so well adapted to peaches that we may be sure that the early settlers in New York eked out their scanty fare with this fruit soon after settlements were made. Trade with the colonies to the south, where peaches were common before the Dutch were established on Manhattan Island, began almost immediately after the arrival of the Hollanders in America, and knowledge of the adaptability of peaches to conditions in the New World was no doubt quickly acquired from Virginia, if, indeed, the aborigines were not cultivating this fruit in the region as Penn found them doing on the site of Philadelphia. Yet careful search in the colonial records of New York shows no early accounts of peaches, there being few such accounts, by the way, of any agricultural product, no one having undertaken the task of describing the natural and agricultural resources of this State as was done by several able observers for Virginia and the New England states.
No doubt, however, orchard-planting as a general practice was long delayed in New York because of political and economic conditions. The Dutch came to America as traders and not as home-makers, and almost from the day they landed were in trouble with both their savage and their civilized neighbors so that actual or petty warfare prevented them from planting orchards until in 1647 when the reins of government were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant, a farmer as well as a soldier, who at once set about encouraging the planting of fields, gardens and orchards. He brought, we are told, fruits, flowers, farm and truck-crops from the neighboring colonies and Holland and these he not only planted on Manhattan Island but sent to the settlements up the Hudson. The peach may readily be grown in suitable soils from Albany down the river to New York, and, by the end of the Seventeenth Century, we are told by travelers, naturalists and missionaries that this fruit was in common cultivation by the whites and was even rudely tilled by the Indians of the Hudson Valley.
But, in eastern New York, away from the coast, the peach did not find the climate as congenial as in the colonies to the south and then, too, from the following record, the peach-borer early became troublesome. Kalm says:[127] "Peach-trees have often been planted here (Albany, New York) and never would succeed well. This was attributed to a worm which lives in the ground, and eats through the root, so that the tree dies. Perhaps the severity of the winter contributes much to it." We have another reference to show that winter-killing must have been a discouraging factor in peach-culture in this part of New York in early days as it is now. Cadwallader Colden, appointed first surveyor-general of New York in 1719, and in 1761 lieutenant-governor of the Province, a botanist of note, who had a patent of land in what is now Orange County, wrote in 1737 that cold had killed the peach-trees the previous winter.
The traveler who visits New York today finds many orchards on the Hudson but in them he sees comparatively few peaches. The peach is much more at home two hundred miles west about the Central Lakes and along the shores of Lake Ontario. Here, it is interesting to learn, peaches were grown in considerable quantities long before the region was settled by the whites--how long we have no record nor do we know much of the character of the fruit. John Bartram in his _Travels from Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego and the Lake Ontario_, an account of a journey made in 1743, mentions apples, peaches, plums and grapes growing about the Indian villages passed through on his route. Whether these peaches came from the white settlements nearer the Atlantic, or at a much earlier date from the Indians to the South, or both, we cannot even surmise.
Sullivan's army, which came to this region in 1779 to chastise the Indians, found and destroyed considerable numbers of fruit-trees, among them many peaches. After Sullivan's raid the region was quickly settled by whites who, following the examples of the Indians, planted apples and peaches, the orchard soon becoming a prominent asset to every farm. Collections of pioneer papers frequently mention the great adaptability of these lake-regions to peaches. In Conover's _History of Kanadasaga and Geneva_[128] there are sixteen references to the peach-orchards about Seneca and Cayuga lakes in and about the year 1800. As in the South, the products seem to have been used chiefly in making peach-brandy.
David Thomas,[129] Aurora, Cayuga County, New York, was the pioneer horticulturist, fruit-grower and nurseryman in this part of the State and soon after coming to New York in 1805, we learn from several references to his orchards and nurseries in his own writings, began planting peaches. All of the named varieties from the South and East were tried in his orchard and if valuable were propagated and sold from his nursery. According to his son, John Jacob Thomas, the pomological writer, he had in 1830 "the most extensive and valuable collection of bearing trees west of the Hudson." Through him the western counties of the State were stocked with named peaches and other fruits.
Of peaches in the New England colonies, we need say but little. Except in favored parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, this fruit was little grown in these northern colonies. It is not at all probable that New England Indians ever planted peaches and for a generation after the whites came the struggle for the necessities of life kept them from indulging in so great a luxury as a peach-orchard. Strong drink was as commonly used by the Puritans as by the Churchmen in Virginia and peach-brandy would have been as acceptable but it was easier to produce cider, and rum from the West Indies could be had with little trouble. Still, peaches were sparingly grown in the New England colonies.
The Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent peach-pits, along with seeds of other fruits, to be planted by the colonists.[130] Twelve years later George Fenwick, Saybrook, Connecticut, writes to Governor Winthrop that he is "prettie well storred with chirrie & peach trees."[131] Justice Paul Dudley,[132] who seems to have been the leading horticulturist in Massachusetts in his time, writes in 1726: "Our Peaches do rather excel those of _England_, and then we have not the Trouble or Expence of Walls for them; for our Peach Trees are all Standards, and I have had in my own Garden seven or eight Hundred fine Peaches of the Rare-ripes, growing at a Time on one Tree." From another statement made by Justice Dudley,[133] we learn that peaches were still being grown from the stone and may assume that budding was not known or so careful a horticulturist as our author would have mentioned it. He says: "Our Peach Trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three Years from the Stone. I have one in my Garden of twelve Years Growth, that measures two Foot and an Inch in Girt a Yard from the Ground, which, two Years ago, bore me near a Bushel of fine Peaches."
SEEDLINGS GIVE WAY TO BUDDED TREES
About the close of the Eighteenth Century the planting of pits for permanent trees began to give way to budding. It does not appear who began budding peaches on this side of the Atlantic but the desirability of budded stock was discussed as early as 1736, for in that year we find the English botanist, Peter Collinson, urging his American colleague, John Bartram, to "graft Plums and Nectarines on Peach stocks."[134] The matter had evidently been under consideration before for Collinson tells Bartram "Pray try; I have great opinion of its succeeding."[135] Bartram is hard to convince and ten years later Collinson is still urging him to bud, for, in a letter of April 26, 1746, he writes, rather impatiently, "Though thou canst not see, yet I have told thee what inoculating a Peach stock may do."[136]
Probably the Princes, pioneer nurserymen in America, in their nursery at Flushing, Long Island, first began to bud the peach, for in their catalog of 1771 they offer 29 sorts though most of these appear to be types rather than varieties. Twenty years later they list 35 varieties with the statement that all "are inoculated." John Kenrick,[137] father of William Kenrick,[138] the pomological author, who for years was Prince's chief competitor, his nurseries being located at Newton, Massachusetts, began business in 1790 by planting a quantity of peach-stones the trees from which he did not bud. Four years later, we are told, he learned to bud and greatly extended his assortment of varieties, making a specialty of budded peach-trees.[139]
Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless commonly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor since, the world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so extended a scale as in America during the half-century following the Revolutionary war. The country between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi was being rapidly settled and on nearly every farm from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, barring a few in the northernmost parts of this great area, peaches were planted. They furnished food not only for the pioneers but were used in fattening pigs and in the earlier part of the period, at any rate, were, with apples, the chief supply of ardent spirits which every farmer then kept on hand for daily use. There were millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 but until that time there were but few named varieties. Then the art of budding began to spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of peaches was passed through the sieve of selection; local varieties quickly acquired fame; and, as means of communication developed, the new varieties began to be disseminated, until, in 1850, American nurseries were selling over 400 varieties, a number which at the close of the century had increased to over 1000.
THE CARE OF THE PEACH IN COLONIAL TIMES
Peach-growers, in the period under consideration, gave their trees much the same care as is given in the present time except that they did not spray. Pests were fewer and yet some were especially troublesome, notably the peach-borer, the remedies for which were as numerous as today. Curculio, then as now, almost prohibited the culture of nectarines. A rot, the brown-rot, without doubt, did much damage. Peach-yellows, as yet, was not the scourge it now is but, as we shall see, was well in evidence. There were faddists in those days as in these. Thomas Coulter of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, was one of the original "sod-mulchers"--at least year in and year out he inveighed against cultivation. He managed to get himself in all of the publications of the times for a period of a half-century. We find his method discussed in Volume V of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, in the _Domestic Encyclopaedia_[140] in 1803 and, as late as 1821, a full account was published in the _American Farmer_.[141] We quote the article in full, as it came out in the three publications named, as a record of the times and because it contains a number of novel ideas some of which may commend themselves to modern orchardists of the sod-mulch school who want a cheap and easy way of growing peaches.
"Transplant your peach-trees, as young as possible, where you mean them to stand; if, in the kernel, so much the better ... because, in that case, there will be no check of growth, which always injures peach-trees. Plant peach-trees 16 feet apart, both ways, except you would wish to take your waggon through the orchard to carry the peaches away; in that case, give 24 feet distance to every fifth row, one way, after transplanting. You may plough and harrow amongst your peach-trees, for two years, paying no regard to wounding or tearing them, so that you do not take them up by the roots. In the month of March, or April, in the third year after transplanting, _cut them all off by the ground_; plough and harrow amongst them as before, taking special care not to wound or tear them in the smallest degree, letting all the sprouts or scions grow that will grow; cut none away, supposing six or more should come from the old stump; the young scions will grow up to bearing trees on account of the roots being strong. Let no kind of beasts into peach-orchards, _hogs excepted_, for fear of wounding the trees; as the least wound will greatly injure the tree, by draining away that substance which is the life thereof; although the tree may live many years, the produce is not so great, neither is the fruit so good.
After the old stock is cut away, the third year after transplanting, the sprouts or scions will grow up, all round the old stump, from four to six in number; no more will come to maturity, than the old stump can support and nourish; the remainder will die before ever they bear fruit. These may be cut away, taking care not to wound any part of any stock, or the bark. The sprouts growing all round the old stump, when loaded with fruit will bend and rest on the ground in every direction, without injuring any of them, for many years, all of them being rooted in the ground, as tho' they had been planted. The stocks will remain tough, and the bark smooth for 2 years and upwards; if any of the sprouts or trees from the old stump should happen to split off, or die, cut them away, they will be supplied from the ground, by young trees, so that you will have trees from the same stump for 100 years, as I believe. I now have trees, 36, 20, 10, 5 and down to one year old, all from the same stump.
The young trees coming up, after any of the old trees split off or die, and are cut away, will bear fruit the second year; but this fruit will not ripen so easily as the fruit on the old trees from the same stem. Three years after the trees are cut off by the ground, they will be sufficiently large and bushy, to shade the ground so as to prevent grass of any kind from matting or binding the surface, so as to injure the trees; therefore; ploughing is useless, as well as injurious; useless, because nothing can be raised in the orchard, by reason the trees will shade all the ground, or nearly so; injurious, because either the roots, stocks or branches will be wounded: neither is it necessary ever to manure peach-trees, as manured trees will always produce less and worse fruit, than trees that are not manured; although by manuring your peach-trees, they will grow larger, and look greener and thicker in the boughs, and cause a thicker shade, yet on them will grow very little fruit, and that little will be of a very bad kind generally looking as green as the leaves, even when ripe, and later than those that never have been manured."
None of the varieties that we now grow was then cultivated. Taking the sorts described in 1800 we find that four were red-fleshed; eight, yellow-fleshed; thirty-four, white-fleshed; eighteen, freestones; nineteen, clingstones, and twelve nectarines. There were no flat, or Peento, peaches but a sort known as Venus's Nipple was seemingly a typical beaked peach.
In 1800, Baltimore was the best market for peaches in America and was near the Chesapeake peach-belt. We are fortunate in having a description of peach-growing around Baltimore at about that time. Richard Parkinson, an English farmer and agricultural writer, came to America to rent one of George Washington's farms in 1798. The two could not agree and Parkinson rented a farm near Baltimore on which was a peach-orchard. He published an account of his experiences in two very readable volumes and from this work we quote in part the story of his peach-orchard. Perhaps allowances should be made, for Parkinson seems to have been soured by failure and some of his expressions are such as might be expected from an opinionated Englishman undergoing new experiences in America just after the Revolution. Parkinson says:[142]
"It would astonish a stranger to see the quantity of fruit in these parts, which makes the country to look beautiful twice a-year, when the trees are in blossom, and when the fruit is on the trees ripe. But the fruit is chiefly for the use of hogs and can be applied to no better purpose.
On my farm at Orange-Hill, only three miles from Baltimore, the last year I was there, I sold all my peaches to two men at four pence per peck, and let them have a cart and a horse to take them into the city to sell, knowing I had only made four pence per peck on the average the year before, and gathered them myself. These men agreed to pick them, and feed the horse in town at their expence. It was the opinion of every one that they had got a great bargain, and many others wished they had had it. They picked about one-half of them, and carried them to Baltimore: but, alas! they gave up the business, saying they could not make wages, although they at first had said that they would certainly take every peach, intending, if the market should not suit, to carry them to the stills, &c. I was in hopes all this exertion would make this bargain successful, as four pence per peck would pay much better than to give them to hogs, as I have no knowledge of what number a hog will eat. Seeing this scheme frustrated, and thinking it a sin and a shame to see such a number of fine peaches rot on the ground, I mounted my horse and rode to the stills, as there were many small ones within three or four miles of me in the country. They have been erected for this use; but many of them are never used after the first year; and I am of the opinion that they will not pay expences. The men at the stills were civil enough; they offered to lend me the still, and let me find a man to work it, &c. or they would work it for me; but, from every information I could obtain, I found that my peaches would not more than pay the carriage to the stills and hardly that; and after selling them to the owners of the stills, they would not give me so much for my fruit, as would pay me for my trouble; nor will peaches pay the farmer, to be given to the hogs, if they be not so situated that the hogs can run where they are; and that happened not to be my case.
As a striking instance of the little profit of stills, Mr. O'Donnel, at Canton, had planted an orchard, of great extent, of red peaches, for the purpose of making peach-brandy. The red peach is reckoned much superior to any other for brandy. Although Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had grown to bear in great perfection and he had a still and the other necessary apparatus, the profit proved so small, that he suffered the whole to go waste, and his pigs consumed the produce; and, in the winter, rooted up all those fine peach trees, and planted the ground with Indian corn, having previously manured the land with dung from Baltimore for the purpose of an orchard. Now this gentleman had some hundreds of acres of woodlands unimproved in this plantation; therefore, the cause could not be for want of land.
My fine turnips, Indian corn, potatoes, &c. were in the field by the orchard without any fence. Indeed hogs are not allowed to run at large within five miles of Baltimore, by an act of assembly; and mine were too valuable to risk such a misfortune; and especially as I was a great hog-shooter myself, it would have been fine diversion for any of my neighbours to have shot one of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these plants would not succeed, all that remained was to fatten my own hogs with them. I had but seven hogs; and they would have employed a man with horse and cart half a day to feed them; for, after a short time, they will only eat the best peaches, and refuse the others as a man would. I found this plan would not answer; and the consequence was, that, after every trial and exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now my farm was so situated that the great road through the heart of the country went through it, five or six stage-coaches, and great numbers of other carriages of all kinds. In all probability some of my own countrymen as merchants (for there begin to be many of these gentlemen to settle their accounts with the American merchants, and I suppose they will increase) seeing this waste committed, would, on returning to England, relate their story in this way--That when at the tavern at Baltimore on the same day, the fruit-people were asking eleven pence apiece for peaches. An Englishman says to himself, 'What idle fools those Americans are! and I think all the English, when they get to America, are as bad: but, when I get there, I will set them the example.' But when there, he finds himself much disappointed, and does not know how it is that he does not increase in riches, while neither himself nor his family enjoys any comfort. He at last finds out that the Americans are not a set of fools as he once thought: and, as he must have a name for them, perhaps he calls them rogues; which, if Lord Chesterfield was right in his observation, pleases a man the best of the two.
When I took this farm, I had not a doubt, that, by some extraordinary exertion, I should be able to make something handsome from peaches, and so near Baltimore. Before I took the farm, when I enquired how peaches sold in the market, perhaps they would tell me eleven pence apiece, and eleven pence a peck on the same day. That used to stagger me very much: but it is so: and the man who offers you a fine Newington peach for eleven pence or a five-penny bit, sells but few each day; and lives, although very poorly, at a very great expence; consequently his profit must be great on each article. The man who sells the peaches at eleven pence each, will not grow rich by his business, any more than the grower. Then we come to the calculation of my profit at four pence per peck, which is the best and greatest price. Could the scheme be put in execution, it will, generally speaking, require two men and one horse and cart each day, to pick thirty pecks and carry them to market; and thirty pecks are more than any white man can sell one day with another. A black man is much better for this business than a white man; although they are in general ignorant, they are impudent: thirty pecks of peaches, at four pence per peck, is just ten shillings per day for peaches; and the two men's wages are worth, at that season of the year, one dollar per day each, and one pint of whiskey, which will be sixteen shillings for the men: the cart and horse are worth one dollar and a half per day; but you could not hire it for less than two dollars. Now the expences on this business are one pound seven shillings and three pence per day, and the produce is ten shillings. But as I sold them, I made profit each day on thirty pecks of peaches two shillings and nine pence: the reader may plainly see that there could not be any thing done better. This shews in this part of the work where I am on the Eastern Shore, one hundred miles and upwards from market, that the reader will be convinced the cherries and peaches pay the best for hogs."
ADAPTABILITY AND VARIABILITY IN THE PEACH
In the preceding pages our narrative has flitted from continent to continent and country to country in a belt encircling the earth. Few other fruits are found under such varied conditions and over such extended areas. We have seen that peaches are found wild and cultivated over much of Japan; as far north as Vladivostock in Korea; once a wild inhabitant of some part of China it is now cultivated in nearly every section of that vast empire where agriculture is an industry; the trees are so abundant and so much at home in the orchards and forests of the Turkestans and Persia as to have given rise to the belief that they have always grown there. While not so common as in Asia, yet peaches thrive in all of southern Europe and readily submit to artificial culture in pots and on walls in northern European latitudes. Coming to America with the first Spaniards, the peach found such congenial surroundings that it spread rapidly, freely and widely, leading botanists three centuries later to call it a native. In the fruit-areas of the United States, after two centuries of cultivation, though sometimes a luxury and the crop often a speculation, the peach is so perennially plentiful that it is to be found, fresh, canned or evaporated, in every home in the land and the species is represented in American pomologies by over 1000 sorts which have originated in this country.
However, in tracing the history of the peach from China to America, we have not wholly shown the range of adaptability of this fruit. The peach has become adapted to the clear skies, strong light, long seasons and hot climate of northern Africa, where, under modified cultural treatment, it is a common fruit in Egypt[143] and the other states bordering on the Mediterranean. It thrives on the islands in the Mediterranean and on those of the North Temperate zone almost to the tropics in the Atlantic and the Pacific, as the Azores, Canaries, West Indies and Hawaiian group. As long ago as 1649 the Azores were famous for peaches and Colonel Norwood, author of _A Voyage to Virginia_,[144] in a gustatory reminiscence tells us that they were of so good quality that he "did not fail to visit and revisit them in the dead of night to satisfy a ravenous appetite nature has too prodigally given me for that species." In the sub-tropic climate of Guadeloupe Islands, French West Indies, there is a peach peculiar to the region differing in shape, flavor and in heat-resisting qualities from the common run of this fruit.[145]
The Aryan race has taken the peach across the equator in the pathways of discovery, conquest and civilization, and made it a favorite fruit in the gardens and orchards of the South Temperate as well as in those of the North Temperate zone. In the colonies of South Africa the peach seems to be as common as any deciduous fruit, native sorts being planted with those from Europe and America. Of the Transvaal Yellow Peach, R. A. Davis, horticulturist of the colony, says:[146] "Generally speaking, it is the fruit most commonly grown in the Transvaal, and it may safely be said that where it will not grow no other peach stands much chance of thriving. The writer has seen them flourishing by the side of the railroad amongst granite boulders, the result of a chance pit thrown from the window of a railway carriage. It is also extensively grown as a hedge around homesteads, having been planted after the primitive method of turning a furrow where the hedge was wanted and simply dropping the seeds in after the plough. It is commonly recognised that the peach hedge should duly appear and bear fruit in two years from planting the seed. The writer has also seen them growing by the side of water-furrows and dams, with the whole of the roots on one side of the tree at least immersed in water."
The Spaniards, no doubt, planted the peach in parts of South America soon after the discovery of the continent and it now runs wild on both coasts. Thus, Darwin in his famous voyage found the islands at the mouth of the Parana River, Argentina, "thickly clothed with peach and orange trees carried there by the waters of the river."[147] Many references to wild peaches on the Pacific Coast may be found, as interesting as any being one from Bertero who says that on Robinson Crusoe's island, Juan Fernandez,[148] "The peach is so abundant that one can scarcely form an idea of the quantity of fruit that it bears. They are in general of good quality despite the state of wildness." According to Oakenfull,[149] in Brazil, "Of all the fruits introduced from abroad, the peach has made itself more at home than any." Wight[150] reports the peach and nectarine in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia under cultivation and as escapes from cultivation in seemingly all degrees of evolution. The peach-drying industry is important in the province of Coquimbo, Chile. According to Lounsbury the peach is the most common fruit-tree in Argentina. He says:[151] "It grows almost everywhere most luxuriantly, bears heavily and as yet no very serious insect or fungus pest for it has become widespread. Solid blocks of thousands of trees are not uncommon about Buenos Ayres. Most of the choice varieties of Europe and America have been introduced." The culture of this fruit in South America falls short of that in North America only because of the lack of advancement in horticulture--the one continent is a century behind the other in this field of agriculture.
In temperate Oceanica the peach plays as important a part in horticulture as any other of the deciduous tree-fruits. In early days in New Zealand, "vast groves of peaches existed, sometimes, as in the Waikato, extending for miles, where magnificently grown trees cropped without limit."[152] Both the peach and nectarine are grown in the horticultural regions of the island. Wherever the fruits of temperate climates are cultivated in Australia, there may the peach be found. If one may judge from the attention given this fruit in the agricultural literature of New Zealand and Australia, it holds the same high place in the horticulture of these islands in the Pacific that it has in Europe and America.
The types of peaches are almost as diverse as the regions in which the fruit is an inhabitant. The 2181 varieties described in _The Peaches of New York_ attest the variability of the species in America and Europe, many of our sorts having come from the Old World. This great number of kinds can be distinguished by reason of differences in skin, flesh, flavor, aroma, stone and season, the attributes of which have been mentioned several times in foregoing paragraphs. The structure of leaf and tree offers as many more taxonomic characters. It is interesting to note the extreme forms in fruit and tree the peach has taken on in its centuries of world-wide wanderings.
Round, flat, beaked, free or clingstone peaches with smooth or downy skins and red, yellow or white flesh, sweet, sour or bitter, in all combinations, and each often modified by soil and climate, are known to American growers of this fruit. But there are many peaches with less well-known characters. Thus, a peach in China bears fruits as heavy as one pound apiece with extraordinary keeping and shipping qualities;[153] another Chinese peach of the Honey type has a tree with a maximum height of only seven or eight feet;[154] growing in the same locality, Poliping, China, is a variety with extraordinarily long leaves;[155] the _Paak wat to_ peach from China is a white-stoned sort;[156] a variety in the French West Indies has fruits that peel easily and withstand a continuous temperature in ripening season of 76 to 90 degrees;[157] from Kashgar comes a peach that will keep for several months;[158] in Chinese Turkestan there is a nectarine "said to keep for several weeks after fully ripe;"[159] even more remarkable is the Feitcheng peach which ripens in late September and can be kept, if wrapped in paper, until February;[160] as remarkable as any is the Transvaal Yellow of South Africa which we have seen in a foregoing paragraph grows "amongst granite boulders," "as a hedge around homesteads" and "beside water furrows and dams, the roots of one side of the tree immersed in water;" the Fragrant Peach and the Firm Peach from China are not yet known in America;[161] another Chinese peach is a dwarf, "grown in pots indoors, which fruits at a height of fifteen inches and bears peaches on the main trunk though the stem be scarcely larger than a lead pencil."[162] Most of the examples named are from China but others can be found in every distinct region in which peaches have long been grown.
Every well-marked geographical region in which the peach is grown comes, sooner or later, to have a type of varieties of its own; yet the universal stamp of the peach--of cultivated _Prunus persica_--is on them all. These facts imply two important things. First, the peach is an exceedingly flexible fruit, capable of being moulded to fit many conditions of environment; and, under cultivation, training, feeding and culture in unlike regions, soils and climates, may still be greatly improved and the improvements all intensified and augmented by crossing and selecting. Second, the peach, a gift to the world from China, has seemingly, in its centuries of cultivation by the Orientals, taken on sufficient immutability to make it one of the most stable of species, especially in its fruits. The many races and thousands of varieties are all best put in one species; many varieties come true to seed; and peaches from seed seldom "revert" to worthless forms as so many seedling fruits habitually do. Cultivated plants, as all who work with them know, differ widely in variability. Some, as corn, the cucurbits, and grapes and plums with their many species, are so variable as to be almost unmanageable in attempts to improve them; others, as the cereals, are quite too immutable for the best work of the breeder. The peach is neither a stone wall nor shifting sand in the matter of variability.