FRUIT CULTURE. 171 



The ill success attending the raising of melons for the past 

 ten years, and the increased facilities for bringing them from 

 the South, have caused most cultivators to stop growing them for 

 the market. On the new burnt lands of Maine they are grown 

 in perfection ; and the greatest success attending their culture 

 here has been where ashes were largely used in compost. 



The glory of the peach seems to have departed — certainly 

 from our own vicinity. That scourge of the tree, the yellows, 

 has swept away orchards from entire counties. Beginning near 

 Boston, it is gradually extending "West, taking nearly every 

 tree in its progress. For a year or two, peaches were grown in 

 Weston and adjoining towns, when they had failed entirely in 

 Brookline. So in Lincoln, Acton, Billerica, after running out 

 in Weston ; and the disease is still marching on, baffling in its 

 progress the most critical examination — which has failed to 

 discern either a reason or a remedy. When a tree is attacked, 

 it should be taken immediately from the ground. There is 

 remaining in this vicinity part of two orchards, where the 

 owners have strictly followed this plan, and the result is, a part 

 of their trees remain. Li walking across New Jersey a few 

 years ago, from Amboy to Philadelphia, for the purpose of 

 examining the peach orchards, I found, where a few years before 

 tiiousands of acres were devoted alone to trees, only a few 

 scattered, sickly looking trees left. The best orchard I saw 

 was one where the owner had made a liberal application of salt 

 to the soil. In my own experience, I found that wood ashes, 

 freely used, were an excellent fertilizer. The land should not be 

 made so rich as it should be for the pear. Excessive manuring 

 gives too much wood at the expense of the fruit. Where whale 

 oil soap had been freely used on the bodies and at the roots, the 

 trees remain healthy the longest. It is absolutely necessary, in 

 growing the peach to perfection, that the land should be kept 

 perfectly clean, and the young fruit unsparingly thinned. On 

 two full grown trees, one closely thinned and the other not, you 

 get from one to three bushels on one, and one bushel on the 

 other ; the one bushel sells in market for from three to five 

 dollars ; the three bushels, from seventy-five cents to one dollar 

 per busheL To any one not familiar with the price in Boston 

 market, this statement may seem overdrawn, but it is not. I 

 remember having at the market, in 1856, ten bushels of early 



