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ZxtraH of a Letter from Robert R. Livingston, Ejq; to 

 the late Wm. Livingston, Efq; Governor of ^Qw-Jerf^ey, 

 1785, on the Subject of Green-gage Plumbs. 



Mrs. LIVINGSTON mformed me when I was lafl at 

 Elizabethtown, that you had not been fuccefsful in raifmg the 

 green-gage plumb. I fend you two of a very fine kind ; I 

 have now above twenty bearing trees, none of which have 

 been grafted, but were all the offspring of one that was raifed 

 from the ftone of a grafted tree, which has produced fome 

 hundred trees, as thofe I fend you will do, if planted in a 

 loofe foil. The general complaint is, that this fruit drops 

 before it ripens : I do not find that this is the cafe with 

 mine, except fo far as is neceflary to keep the tree from being 

 over-loaded. — I cannot help thinking, therefore, that thefe 

 trees have in many places fuffered (in common with an higher 

 order of beings) from the ignorance of their phyficians, who 

 Infift that this evil arifes from too great a quantity of fap, 

 or, in other words, from too much health, and accordingly 

 dire£t a fpare regimen, and plant them in ftiff foils, where 

 they cannot feed without difficulty ; and left they fhould not 

 fuffer enough from this treatment, they cut their roots, put 

 fiones in their mouths, bind their bodies with bandages, and 

 even go fo far as to pierce and beat them, as if the fruit of 

 this tree, like that of religion, was the offspring of mortification. 



