27S STATE nORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY, 



autumn, to ripen the growing tree, is plowed under to stimulate it into a more 

 vigorous life. If this course of cultivation is thoroughly followed for a few 

 years, I think the most skej)tical will admit that growing rye is a fertilizer of 

 no insignificant qualities. In this way the fertility of our orchards will be 

 constantly increasing, their vigor continually improving, and they will not fail 

 to give us an abundance of that large, luscious, and highly-colored fruit, which 

 always tempts the buyer and delights the producer by giving him an ample 

 reward for his labor. I know that some respectable cultivators protest against 

 the utility of rye as a fertilizer, but their failures may be attributed to some 

 deviation from the most approved methods of doing this work. I remember 

 reading an account of an experiment to fertilize with green rye, where the 

 speaker said that " all the benefit he derived from it was by pasturing it during 

 the autumn and early spring." Such experiments stultify common sense and 

 ought never to be published except as an exhibition of lolly, or as giving the 

 reason why experiments in farming so frequently fail. They stultify them- 

 selves and bring disapointment to the experimenter. The end attained in 

 such a course is equal to the means used, when you consider the real nature of 

 the transaction. "Water will not run up hill." "Nothing will not produce 

 something" in horticulture any more than in nature; but the larger the quan- 

 tity of green vegetation that is plowed under in springtime, the more marked 

 will be the eiTect on the orchard thus treated, "and don't you Ibrget it." One 

 year of tliis work is not enough. It must be followed up from year to year, as 

 long as you wish your peach trees to come to the ingathering laden with bril- 

 liant fruit. They do not require high fertilization, but they must have some 

 nourishment, in addition to constant cultivation or prove a failure. 



VARIETIES OF PEACHES TO PLANT. 

 BY A. HAMILTON. 



"When peaches are scarce as they were this year almost any kind or quality 

 will sell at remunerative prices, but when they are plentiful as they were last 

 year only the very choicest will sell at really good figures. It may also be 

 stated that in scarce as well as in plentiful years superior fruit will sell at a 

 proportionately superior price, therefore, there can be no (piestion about the 

 desirability of growing fruit of extra size, quality and appearance. But what 

 are these superior varieties, and how and where can they be procured is the 

 question asked and the one I desire, as far as I can, to answer and hear dis- 

 cussed at this meeting. 



In almost every large orchard there is a tree receiving the same cultivation 

 and growing on the same soil, that produces better fruit than do the other 

 trees of the same variety, and by using the best of tliese selected from the 

 hundreds of thousands of trees growing in the great peach orchards by which 

 we are surrounded to propagate Irom, trees could be obtained that would pro- 

 duce fruit very much superior to tliat produced by the ordinary trees of tlie 

 same, or what appear to be the same, old varieties now in general cultivation, 

 and tliat would bo more profitable to cultivate and of course more desirable to 

 set. The most remarkable of these remarkable trees to which my attention 

 has been called and which have attracted general attention in the neighbor- 

 hoods in which they are growing, are those owned by Mr. Reeks of Douglas, 



