ITS HISTORY. 353 



The peach is a rather small fruit tree, with narrow, smooth, 

 serrated leaves, and pink blossoms. It is more tender, and of 

 shorter duration than most other of the fruits usually grown in 

 temperate climates. It is never raised in England, and not 

 generally in France, without the aid of walls. Even at Mon- 

 treuil, near Paris, a village whose whole population is mainly 

 employed in cultivating the peach for market, it is grown 

 entirely upon white-washed walls. China and the IJnited 

 States are, therefore, the only temperate countries where the 

 peach and the apple both attain their highest perfection in the 

 open orchard. The peaches of Pekin are celebrated as being 

 the finest in the world, and of double the usual size.* 



It is a curious fact in the history of the peach, that with its 

 delicious flavour were once coupled, in the East, certain notions 

 of its poisonous qualities. This idea seems vaguely to have 

 accompanied it into Europe, for Pliny mentions that it was sup- 

 posed that the king of Persia had sent them into Egypt to poison 

 the inhabitants, with whom he was then at war. As the peach 

 and the almond are closely related, it has been conjectured by 

 Mr. Knight that the poisonous peaches referred to, were swollen 

 almonds, which contain a considerable quantity of prussic acid. 

 But it is also worth remarking that the peach tree seems to hold 

 very much the same place in the ancient Chinese writings, that 

 the tree of knowledge of the old scriptures, and the golden 

 Hesperides apples of the heathens, do in the early history of the 

 western nations. The traditions of a peach tree, the fruit of 

 which when eaten conferred immortality, and which bore only 

 once in a thousand years and of another peach tree of knowledge, 

 which existed in the most remote period on a mountain guarded by 

 an hundred demons, the fruit of which produced death, are said to 

 be distinctly preserved in some of the early Chinese writings. 

 Whatever may have been the nature of these extraordinary trees, 

 it is certain that, as Lord Bacon says, " not a slip or sucker has 

 been left behind." We must therefore content ourselves with 

 the delight which a fine peach of modern times affords to the 

 palate and the eye. 



We believe there is at the present time, no country in the 

 world, where the peach is grown in such great quantities as 

 in the United States.f North of a line drawn from the Mohawk 

 river to Boston, comprising most of the eastern states, they do 

 not indeed flourish well, requiring some artificial aid to produce 



* The Horticultural world since our intercourse has been put upon a more 

 favourable footing with the "Celestial Empire," are looking with great eagerness 

 to the introduction of many valuable plants and trees, the Chinese being the 

 most curious and skilful of merely practical gardeners. 



t It will amuse our readers to read in Mclntosh's work, " The Orchard," that 

 " the Americans usually eat the clingstones, while they reserve the freestones for 

 feeding the pigs !" 



