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.