644 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the entire plain as well as llie individual I'lniil should be considered. 

 The selection should be made only of li-uils thai are desirable and 

 Avhich were grown on a plant wliich produced a large number of 

 these fruits. 



To suumiaiize brielly, we may say that the farmer may do much 

 to aid the movement for the production of better seeds. To do 

 this we must abandon the practice of trying to get seeds at the low- 

 est possilile price. It i-cquires considerable expense to produce high 

 grade seeds, and furthermore, well l)red seed jdants frequently pro- 

 duce fewer seeds than less desirable ones, hence the cost of pioduc- 

 tion is thereby increased. In the past the seedsmen have done much 

 in ])lacing the seed business on a basis where it serves the farmer 

 well. If they are to maintain and imj)rove this standard, they should 

 receive the support of every farmer and gardener. 



The experiments have shown the desirability of securing seed 

 of a variety from more than one source. By securing from several 

 sources a sufficient amount for the next year's jdanting and making 

 a test a year in advance, we may do much toward overcoming dis- 

 appointments which frequently accompany crop failures. 



PEACHES 



By J. H. HALE 



You don't really caie to know how I got started. I don't know 

 how much time you will want to devote to this subject, yet the question 

 my brother on *^ the left asks is an intei-esting one. How did any 

 of ns get started; w^hat has kept up the faith in rrs; what has made 

 it possible for us in Pennsylvania, New England or any other 

 state, to develop a successful peach orchard. 



I was born in comparative poverty, and my father died when 

 1 w-as only a year and a-half old, and left my mother with four chil- 

 dren and a moitgaged farm. When T was fourteen years old I was 

 at work, out by the month on a neighboring farm, at $12.50 a month 

 and board. Guess it was more than I was worth. It was a small 

 one-horse farm, and along in September I w^as sent more than a 

 mile from home, back in a clearing in the woods to cut and stack 

 up corn in an eighteen-acre field, which I own now, and have in 

 a peach orchard. They were lonesome days, working out there 

 alone. Eating my dinner one day on the sunny side of an old Vir- 

 ginia fence, there was a scrub peach tree, and on that tree there 

 were ripening and had dropped on the ground among the bushes, 

 a lot of' peaches, bright red little fellows, an inch or so in diameter, 

 and to a hungry boy, delicious in quality, and as I lay on the ground 



