8o Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



Cherry-trees should be planted also as ornaments. To 

 relegate fruit-trees to the kitchen-garden and orchard is 

 not far from a mistake. If apple and pear-trees had 

 varieties like the double-blossomed cherry, they, too, 

 would be allowed a place, perhaps, near the roses and 

 lilies. In some parts of the continent, cherry-culture as 

 in Kent is one of the principal sources of wealth. This 

 is specially the case with the villages at the foot of the 

 hills which fringe the valley of the Rhine. When the 

 cherry-crop is ripe, the schools are all closed for a fort- 

 night ; young and old, master and servant, all set to work 

 to get in this luscious harvest of the trees. Italy and the 

 islands of the Greek Archipelago export some of their 

 cherries to Egypt. They are carried to Alexandria, where 

 the pleasant tartness always secures for them an imme- 

 diate and profitable market. 



THE PEACH (Amygdalus Persica)* 



ONE of the poets has a passage beginning 



4 ' Whether or not the blushing peach 

 Was Eden's once forbidden fruit, 

 I cannot tell " 



The question may be unhesitatingly answered for him, 



* Hooker and Bentham, in the "Genera Plantarum," i. 610, 

 adopt the same course with the stone-fruit trees as that which they 

 have followed in respect of the apple and pear, the quince, etc., as 

 mentioned on page 42 ; they place the whole, that is to say, in the 

 single comprehensive genus Prunus. 



