Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless commonly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor since, the world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so extended a scale as in America during the half-century following the Revolutionary war. The country between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi was being rapidly settled and on nearly every farm from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, barring a few in the northernmost parts of this great area, peaches were planted. They furnished food not only for the pioneers but were used in fattening pigs and in the earlier part of the period, at any rate, were, with apples, the chief supply of ardent spirits which every farmer then kept on hand for daily use. There were millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 but until that time there were but few named varieties. Then the art of budding began to spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of peaches was passed through the sieve of selection; local varieties quickly acquired fame; and, as means of communication developed, the new varieties began to be disseminated, until, in 1850, American nurseries were selling over 400 varieties, a number which at the close of the century had increased to over 1000. THE CARE OF THE PEACH IN COLONIAL TIMES Peach-growers, in the period under consideration, gave their trees much the same care as is given in the present time except that they did not spray. Pests were fewer and yet some were especially troublesome, notably the peach-borer, the remedies for which were as numerous as today. Curculio, then as now, almost prohibited the culture of nectarines. A rot, the brown-rot, without doubt, did much damage. Peach-yellows, as yet, was not the scourge it now is but, as we shall see, was well in evidence. There were faddists in those days as in these. Thomas Coulter of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, was one of the original "sod-mulchers"--at least year in and year out he inveighed against cultivation. He managed to get himself in all of the publications of the times for a period of a half-century. We find his method discussed in Volume V of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, in the _Domestic Encyclopaedia_[140] in 1803 and, as late as 1821, a full account was published in the _American Farmer_.[141] We quote the article in full, as it came out in the three publications named, as a record of the times and because it contains a number of novel ideas some of which may commend themselves to modern orchardists of the sod-mulch school who want a cheap and easy way of growing peaches.