To show how quickly the peach gives returns and how great the return from the capital invested, the following figures, savoring a good deal of American boastfulness of dollars and cents, are illustrative:[197] "The peach farms in Upper Delaware and Maryland have returned to their owners the most fabulous amounts for their investments far exceeding in profit any other staple crop that has been raised in the Middle States, and on a scale never before heard of in this or any other country. Some of the orchards containing from 1000 to 1300 acres have netted their owners from $20,000 to $30,000 annually. A peach orchard in New Castle county, Delaware, of 400 acres, netted the owner in one crop, $38,000. One in Kent county, Maryland, of some 600 acres, produced a crop paying $31,000, and the same orchard in 1879 yielded $42,000. In 1873, the Delaware Peach Growers' Association reported that there were sent from the Delaware peninsula to the northern markets of Philadelphia and New York 1,288,500 baskets of peaches, or 2577 car-loads by the railroad. Adding the quantity shipped by steamers and sailing vessels, and the amount canned, the actual quantity amounted, in the aggregate, to 2,000,000 of baskets. In 1872, the whole district, comprising the Eastern Shore of Maryland, marketed 3,500,000 baskets. The late Col. Wilkins, on Chester river, Kent county, Maryland, had 1350 acres in with peach trees, numbering 137,000, producing in bearing years from $30,000 to $40,000 annually." Commercial peach-growing in the South is of recent development--its history is known to all pomologists of the present generation. It began in the seventies, the impetus being given by the introduction of a number of early, bright-colored, very showy peaches that could be marketed in northern cities in May and June. It took years, however, to develop means to send these peaches to market and it was not until in the nineties that the perfection of refrigerator cars and rapid transportation was such that the southern crop cut any figure in the peach-markets. The introduction of the Elberta in the seventies may be said to be another stone in the foundation of the peach-industry in the South. After Georgia became a factor in the culture of this fruit in America in the nineties, the State was followed in lesser degree, by South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas. In most of these southern states the peach-orchard is so near the cotton-plantation--often the two are interplanted--that the owners rob Peter to pay Paul in the care of the two crops. But this is not always the case, and at its best the southern peach-orchard is the consummate flower of modern commercial peach-growing.