36 



A PEACH ORCHARD RESURRECTION. 



peach tree on an exhausted soil. The ad- 

 mirable condition of the peach tree in Wes. 

 tern New-York, and Mr. Bissell's explana- 

 tion of it, we think fully corroborates our 

 opinion. 



We may add that we have had abundant 

 proof that it is only necessary to get the 

 stones of peaches from a perfectly healthy 

 district, plant them in 'properly prepared 

 soil, and bud them with healthy varieties, 

 to eradicate the Yellows, This course has 

 been pursued in this neighborhood for ten 



or fifteen years past. When it was com 

 menced, the Yellows was very prevalent in 

 and about Newburgh — now it is almost en- 

 tirely unknown, and all the gardens about 

 us abound with healthy trees having high- 

 flavored and delicious fruit. 



We hope some correspondent interested 

 in this subject, will do Mr. Bissell, and 

 cultivators generally, the favor to send him 

 the specimens of wood of the peach tree 

 thoroughly diseased of the Yelloivs, for an- 

 alysis. Ed. 



A PEACH ORCHARD RESURRECTION, 



BY J. W. DWINELLE, CaZENOVIA, N. Y. 



A. J. Downing — Deak Sir : Some 17 or 18 

 years ago. a row of Peach trees of a dozen 

 or more, situated on the farm of the late E. 

 S. Jackson of this place, bore fruit so 

 abundantly that they were all broken down 

 and ruined. That fall, a heavy plow pass- 

 ed over the field, burying the wreck of bro- 

 ken limbs, venerable roots, and numberless 

 peach pits deep beneath the surface. It 

 was then seeded down to grass, and the next 

 season, there was nothing there even to sug- 

 gest the idea of a controversy as to whether 

 peaches would grow on our sky approxima- 

 ting hills or not, such an unbroken field was 

 there of timothy and clover ! A heavy 

 sward was soon formed which forbid the 

 formation of anything beyond the herbace- 

 ous, and if there were germs below, it was 

 a secret of the grave, deep in its bosom bu- 

 ried, which nothing but a resurrection could 

 unfold. 



Thus matters rested, and thus was the 

 ground unbroken, until two years ago, when 

 another plow, * well beamed and driven,' 

 inverted the surface again, studding the 

 ground for rods around with pits — not hot- 

 t07filess, but from the bottom ! These gave 



a tolerable crop of peach trees last season 

 and consi'^ering the fact that the frost had 

 not had a fair chance at them, as good as 

 could be expected. This spring, saving the 

 irregularity of their arrangement, the whole 

 ground in that locality mostly resembles a 

 young nursery of peach trees. By slightly 

 removing the surface at almost any point, 

 you can find pits looking as fresh as those 

 of last season, all of them as ready for a 

 start, as though they had not just awaken- 

 ed from a Rip Van Winkle sleep of fifteen 



years or more 



I know that the seed of Egyptian wheat 

 has been preserved for 2, 000 years, and that 

 the germ of forest trees, is secure in the 

 ground for an indefinite period of time. 

 But the manner of preserving wheat so long 

 may have been one of the lost arts of the 

 mystic people of the Nile, besides too, when 

 found, it was in such decided proximity to 

 its spicy and well rosined possessor, that it 

 must have been at least half embalmed ! 

 And then the forest trees are but ' children 

 of the forest,' having primeval and undis- 

 ciplined ways of their own, subject to but 

 little of the tasteful refinement and book 



