PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 325 



married, he being then a major, on returning from America, after 

 the conquest of Canada, took with him the j^oung trees from 

 which all the fruit of that name in England were derived. This 

 is a far more probable history than that of their having been 

 introduced from France, as they made their appearance in the 

 English nurseries soon after Gage's return. If France possesses 

 a fruit of cognate character, may it not have been introduced 

 from the country of the fur nations where the Gage appears to 

 be indigenous, by the way of Canada. 



Of all the Gages, the finest I have ever eaten was one in the 

 garden of my most esteemed friend, the late John DeGraff, of 

 Schenectady. He called it by the name of Schuyler, and informed 

 me that he had obtained the grafts from a tree growing in^the gar- 

 den of General Schuyler at Albany, which tree, it was asserted, 

 •had been brought by that general from the Susquehanna river. 

 There is also a dwarf variety of plum indigenous on the sand 

 hills of our coast from Plum Island, in Long Island south, south- 

 wards. This has a high and agreeable flavor, and might, beyond 

 doubt, be made a fine fruit by cultivation. Wild cherries of 

 many varieties are also found in our woods. As to flowers : we 

 owe the American Rliododendron of our gardens to plants 

 brought back from Europe, and, after admiring it clothing vast 

 slopes of the Catskill's, with its splendid flowers, I met the first 

 cultivated plant I had ever seen or heard of in Glasgow, in 1815. 

 The Kalina, of even greater beauty, has not entered our gardens; 

 the Girardea, the very pride of our woods in June, is not known 

 in our catalogues, and the Commissioners of the Central Park 

 have carefully extirpated the beautiful Azaleas Avhich filled every 

 moist dingle of their domain. 



Dr. Trimble. — Amongst the really valuable fruits that are 

 neglected in our country, the apricot stands first. This superb 

 fruit, as it is found in France, Italy, Persia, or California, is 

 hardly inferior to anything that grows, either in quality or 

 beauty. Should apricots such as we have seen, be placed in a 

 show^ window in Broadway, most of the people passing would 

 stop to admire their beauty — many w^ould go in to ask what they 

 were, and those who would buy them would have to pay several 

 dollars a dozen. Yet, this fruit will grow in orchards, on good 

 sized trees— and these trees will bear abundantly almost every • 

 year — are not liable to the diseases that make the peach so 

 short-lived, nor the knots that 30 disfigure the plum cr cherry. 



