24 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



became so shady that we raised only a partial crop of squashes. 

 But about the fourth year, the trees should bear well, and 

 the land will not bear much else but peaches. With all the 

 ailments and drawbacks that we encounter in the peach cul- 

 ture, there is nothing to-day that I consider so quick and sure 

 of paying a profit. If you can get two or three good crops 

 from your trees, they will pay three or four times the expense. 

 And let us all hail the day when we shall again have peaches 

 so abundant that we can afford to feed them to the pigs. 

 (Applause.) 



One very important feature in the cultivation of the peach 

 is the thinning of the fruit. This year our orchard set 

 extremely full. Unfortunately for the orchard I had left and 

 gone to another Shaker family. I urged the necessity of 

 thinning the peaches. They said, " Those trees are strong ; 

 they have been headed in, and they have made large and 

 strong branches, and they will bear a heavy weight of fruit." 

 It is true, the branches are large. I could hang my whole 

 weight on them, and I weigh pretty near 200 pounds. There 

 was not a branch of those trees broken this season. But 

 that is not the whole of it. If you do not thin your peaches, 

 where they set very thick, the fruit will be small, and the crop 

 will draw too heavily on the vitality of the tree, and every 

 one that we take off that we do not need is a relief to the 

 tree. Year before last we did not get more than a hundred 

 bushels from this orchard, but the price we got for them paid 

 us quite well for the acre and a quarter. I sold some of them 

 for $S a bushel, and the whole product averaged 14 a bushel. 

 I think that paid very well for an acre and a quarter of corn 

 land. 



One of our Springfield men told me that when he was a 

 boy, he went to his uncle's on a visit, and his uncle told him 

 to go into the orchard and get as many peaches as he wanted, 

 but to bring the peach-stones back with l^im. " I didn't 

 know," he said, "but he wanted to plant them, and after- 

 wards I thought he wanted to see how many I ate." He said 

 he took in fifty-two peach-stones. I said, " Do you mean to 



