188 Wisconsin State Horticultukal Society. 



branch or knot, were surmounted by grand heads, to which age had 

 apparently given no defect. The beech is a slow grower. The 

 present age of those trees must be reckoned by centuries, and they 

 seemed good for one or two centuries longer. This evidence of the 

 wide range of the beech, and its adaptation to so low a latitude, 

 was a surprise to me, as it must be to many northern admirers of 

 this interesting tree. 



As the trees of North Georgia are substantially all deciduous, 

 like our own, save the pine, which is unevenly distributed in the 

 parts I visited, somewhat as in portions of our own state, it is only- 

 on close observation that in the winter time, trees unknown at the 

 north can be distinguished. These are numerous, nearly all of in- 

 ferior size and inconspicuous. One, however, soons learns to know 

 the sweet gum, the persimmon, the fig, the Pride of India, lime, 

 oak, etc. The last is here a small and insignificant tree, and the 

 Pride of India is, deprived of its foliage, a sprawling, ugly, 

 scrofulous looking tree, in which no right-minded man, out of 

 India, can feel any pride. Of pines, I saw no large ones in the 

 vicinity of Marietta or Atlanta, although small ones of recent 

 growth are abundant, scattered about in old fields that have been 

 neglected, or gathered in groves in places more adapted to their 

 growth. The pine appears to spring up spontaneously almost 

 everywhere in neglected places, and grows with surprising rapidity. 

 I saw groves of pine fast putting on the appearance of the forest 

 primeval, in which were trees a foot in diameter, and my credulity 

 was not a little taxed when informed that they were covering old 

 fields, under cultivation up to the time of the late war. Trees of 

 all varieties grow there much faster than here. 



Of fruit trees, to which my attention was especially directed, 

 Northern and Middle Georgia appears to be peculiarly adapted to 

 the peach. The healthful appearance of the tree, alike in all con- 

 ditions of care or neglect, and the universal testimony of the 

 people, convinced me that nowhere else in the Union, are soil and 

 climate better adapted to the growth of this delicious fruit. It at- 

 tains here a size and flavor decidedly beyond the average in New 

 Jersey, Delaware or Michigan, and the crop is seldom cut off or re- 

 duced by its only enemy, an untimely spring frost. Yet strange 

 to say, there appears to be, at least in the localities I visited, no 

 market for this fruit. There is no home market, because every- 



