MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 361 



And many of those trees were healthy and vigorous at 20 years 

 old or more, and bore nearly every year. Some were 20 to 30 feet in 

 height, and from four to six inches through the trunk. 



Yet, in that whole region now scarcely a peach tree can be found, 

 and those who helped us eat those peaches, if alive (alas, how few 

 could now be found ), would assert that peaches could not be grown 

 there. 



Why is this, and if peaches can be grown as easily as they could 

 then, why have the trees disappeared, and if new ones have been set 

 in their places, why have they died in a few years, yielding only one 

 crop, and often not that? 



I have my opinions upon these questions, and propose to give 

 them before I close. It is not because those trees were natural fruit, 

 and therefore hardier than the varieties of today, for while there were 

 some such, many were of budded stock, and of such sorts as are even 

 now considered among the best standard varieties. Early York, Early 

 and Late Crawford, Halis, Melocoton, Old Mixon, both freestone and 

 clingstone, are among the varieties that 1 knew nearly a half century 

 ago as vigorous and productive, and for a family garden at a nearby 

 market they cannot be much excelled today. 



It is not because the soil was new then, because some of those old 

 gardens had been in cultivation more than two hundred years before I 

 was born; but in those days the gardens were not manured altogether 

 with the heating manure from grain-fed horses. The manure was usually 

 a compost of all the contents of the barnyard, where from three to six 

 cows were kept for every one horse. People then burned wood in- 

 stead of coal, and the ashes was used, either leached or unleached, 

 upon the cultivated fields, furnishing in manure and ashes, potash and 

 phosphoric acid with but little nitrogen. 



Then, too, there were many trees of natural fruit, small, not of 

 first quality for eating or even for cooking, late in ripening and the 

 trees hardy in their native soil. It was from the seed of such peaches 

 that the stocks were grown into which were set the buds of better 

 varieties, and the stocks imparted something of their native vigor and 

 hardiness to the tree. There were also native fruit known as the Rare- 

 ripes, which would usually produce the same from seed, and required 

 no budding to produce fruit which then was classed as of first quality 

 for home use, though not firm enough for shipping far to market. 



The manure used around the trees or on the crops grown among 

 them was not calculated to force a rapid or a rank growth 'of wood, 

 too tender to withstand the cold weather, nor was it applied in the fall 

 to stimulate growth as soon as the ground thawed in the spring, or 



