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.