The book contains: An account of the history and uses of the peach; a discussion of the botanical characters of the species of cultivated peaches; an account of the peach-regions and of peach-growing in New York with the most important statistics relating to this fruit; and, lastly and in greatest detail, the synonymy, bibliography, economic status, and full descriptions of all the most important cultivated peaches, with briefer notices of varieties of minor importance and of those appearing in peach-literature which are now no longer grown. In foot-notes running through the text, biographical sketches are published of the persons who have done most in America toward improving the peach. Incidentally, all that was thought would be helpful in breeding peaches was included. So, too, whatever appeared to be of interest to students of ecology has been given a place. As in the preceding books, color-plates occupy prominent places in this volume. Pains and expense have not been spared in the attempt to make the plates the best possible with the present knowledge of reproduction in colors. All who have seen the plates in this and the first four fruit-books of the series will agree that the reproductions of peaches are more accurate than those of the apples, grapes, plums or cherries, and yet these are not as exact as might be wished. Although most carefully selected, an illustration of one or two fruits does not give an adequate picture of a variety. Neither does the camera take colors quite as the eye sees them nor can the plate-maker quite reproduce what the camera takes. The illustrations are of life-size as the peaches grow on the grounds of this Station and represent specimens of average size and color. The fruits, as shown in the plates, look small for the reason that a flat picture of a round object minifies size. In all of these fruit-books it has been difficult to decide what varieties merit color-plates and full descriptions. Briefly, the choice of sorts to be illustrated and described in detail has been determined by the following considerations: (1) By the value of the variety for home or commercial orchards; (2) the probable value if the peach is a new sort on probation; (3) its desirability as a parent in breeding new peaches or to show combinations of varieties, to illustrate new characters, or to show the range in variation--in a word to enlighten the peach-breeder; (4) not a few varieties are described and illustrated to show the trend of peach-evolution--for their historical value; (5) to show relationships of varieties.