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FKUIT IN MISSISSII'PL 



AMERICAN rOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY — TIIIK I) SESSION. 



These rrocoedinc^s will soon be ready for distribution, and, judging from some early 

 paijes with which we have been favored, the publication will be a great improvement 

 on all the previous ones, not only in the value of the material, but in its tabteful and 

 excellent mechanical execution. 



The State reports include Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, 

 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, ]\Iaryland, Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, and tlie 

 District of Columbia. In all these reports we shall find much valuable information, 

 which we must pick out as we get time. Mississippi we are glad to find among the 

 reports, as we know so little of the fruit-growing capacities of that great southern 

 reo-ion — say from North Carolina on the east, to the Mississippi, — embracing the 

 Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. "We therefore take the Missis- 

 sippi report as the most novel and interesting document of the kind in the proceed- 

 ings, and lay it entire before our readers. 



Strawberries, it is said, continue in bearing through May and June. "What sur- 

 prizes us, is, that they do not ripen sooner, as Peaches are there ripe in June, and 

 Apricots in May. Pears on Quince stock, six and seven years from bud, twelve to 

 twenty feet high, and six to eight inches in diameter! Julienne Pears, eight ounces ! 

 Bartletts, sixteen ounces! Beurre Diel, twenty-four ounces! White Doyenne, large 

 and fine without cracking. Chaumontel weighing a pound, sugary and melting! 

 We have always said this Pear would do well in a warmer soil and climate tlian ours, 

 and here is the proof. Mississippi beats the island of Jersey in the production of this 

 famous fruit. 



This report is encouraging to the south, and is calculated to open all our eyes in 

 reo-ard to the fruit-growing resources of the United States in the aggregate. 



RErORT FROM MISSISSIPPI. 



A report upon the subject of fruit growing in the State of Mississippi, should properly 

 be prefaced Avitli a few remarks upon the soil and chniate. 



Soil.— My locality is six miles south of the city of Natchez, between the tliirty-fir>t 

 and thirty-second degrees of north latitude. The surface soil is a rich, black, vegetable 

 mold, about eighteen inches in depth, resting upon a strata of hard clay, underlaying 

 wliich is a yellow loam, filled with fresh water shells. Tliis great loamy formation, elevated 

 about two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, extends along the right hank 

 (ascendinir) of the Mississippi River, from the thirty-first degree of north latitude, as far 

 up as Vicksburg, (thirty-two and one-half degrees north latitude,) and runs horizontally 

 eastward from the river, a distance of twelve to fifteen miles, at which point a marine and 

 fresh water deposit, Avith recent sea shells, crops out followed by the eocene formation of 

 geologists. 



Upon the first belt of soil next the river, (the richest upland in our State,) porous in its 

 texture, abounding in phosphate, and the underiaying strata of loam in the carbonate of 

 lime, the native forest trees grow luxuriantly, and attain a majestic size. The Magnolia, 



