THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK
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.