Garden Notes. 503 



fresh and healthy on the tree as long as those of anj' other 

 peach. 



But there is, what I consider a much more remarkable 

 "curiosity" in the peach tree line. It is that of which I 

 think I sent you a specimen twig some years ago, under the 

 name of the Beville peach. Its dwarfish and compact habit 

 is truly unique. Its branches are as short and sturdy as 

 those of a Roman apricot. I have now a tree, eight or ten 

 years old, grafted upon a plum stock, which would make the 

 narrow eyes of a Chinaman open wide with delight. It 

 measures about eighteen inches to the first branches, and its 

 nearly globular head reaches to the height of about four feet, 

 reminding one, in winter, of a currant bush, trained tree- 

 fashion, but when in bloom, so dense are the flowers that, 

 were it not for the young leaves, whose green points begin to 

 pierce through them, the whole head, seen at a distance, 

 might be mistaken for a gigantic blossom of the pink-colored 

 Hydrangea. The petals are large, and the leaves have reni- 

 form glands ; of course there is not room for one flower in a 

 hundred to expand its fruit. Indeed, a perfect specimen has 

 never yet ripened with me. It is, however, said to be very 

 good, and I have lately heard, that it is grown, for its fruit, 

 in the neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. 



I am indebted for my trees, to the kindness of J. D. Wat- 

 kins, Esq., of Elbert, who obtained them for me from the 

 garden of J. E. Calhoun, Esq., of Millwood, S. C, a gentle- 

 man almost as well known at the south for his zeal in pro- 

 moting rural improvements, and for his unostentatious liber- 

 ality, as is his near relative, the great senator, for his political 

 renown. In a note to me, Mr. Watkins states, that Mr. Cal- 

 houn raised this peach more than twenty years ago, from a 

 stone, brought by a man named Bevil, from some Indian 

 town of the old Creek Nation, in Georgia, and that the stones 

 uniformly produced the same sort. He recommends that it 

 should be called either the "Cherokee," or the "Calhoun" 

 peach. 



Echinocactus Ottonii has flowered with me twice this year. 

 Some time in June last, two buds appeared on ribs diametri- 

 cally opposite. They grew with equal step till when about 

 the size of buckshot, then one of them stopped short, and 



