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wanted is a nursery iu the country, so that the tiees will become acclimated, and 

 there can be no doubt but that apples, pears, and plums, will do as well as in 

 any country as far north as this. 



As for peaches, our hopes and prospects are not so flattering. Tn 1846, I had 

 twenty peach trees, which, in March, showed buds for as many bushels of fmit ; but 

 a severe frost in April killed them down to the very roots. A neighbor of mine 

 had beat me, in that he had thirty or forty bushels of the fi'uit the season before, 

 and had hopes of a hundred at the time, but his shared the fate of mine, or nearly 

 so. A few sprouted, and made a great effort to live. We could raise peaches 

 here, if we could prevent the sap from starting before the late severe frosts in the 

 spi-ing. I do not agree with the theory, that hard freezing before the sap has 

 started kills these trees. For forty yoars I have watched these trees in the west, 

 and I have never been satisfied that either the fruit or the tree has been injured 

 by the frost before the sap starts in the spring. But invariably, if the sap has 

 started, and is followed by a black frost, that is, something liarder than a mere 

 white frost, the fruit, if not the tree, is killed. 



Various remedies have been tried and recommended for this evil — a northern 

 declivity, covering the roots with straw when the ground is frozen, &.c. Cut 

 the best, as I think, is engrafting the peach upon the wild plum. The plum, we 

 know seldom fails of bearing fruit on account of frost, because it is late in putting 

 forth its sap; and if the peach top is dependent on the plum root for sap it can- 

 not get it, nor start its buds, until the plum root — according to the law of its 

 nature — gives it. And as that period is so late, that the frost usually does not 

 injure the plum, neither can it injure the peach. Another advantage of this 

 mode of grafting is, that the worm has sometimes killed the peach by goring its 

 root; but that occurrence, as far as I know, never happened to the plum. 



The raising of peaches in this climate, is a desideratum of which most per- 

 sons despair. It is laid to the climate; but in this I think they are mistaken. 

 Lower Canada, Vermont, New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and I think 

 Michigan, once were favored witli abundance of this delicious fruit. In 1812, 

 when I first emigrated to Northern Ohio, those farms which had been long 

 enough cleared to have peaches on them, abounded in tliis fruit. And the trees 

 and fruit continued to grow and do well until about the year 1830, when the 

 late spring frosts began to kill — not merely the fruit, but the trees themselves. 

 And what is singular, the frost took those in the vallies in one year, and those on 

 the hills iu another. And so on from one location to another; until, in 1836, 

 when I left that country, there were but few ])eaehes left. And from the 

 newspapers I learn that since then, this same cause has worked farther and 

 farther south, until fears are entertained of tlip loss of this fruit as far as Pliila- 

 deljihia and Baltimore. 



