No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 187 



We have a gentleman in Somerville with limited ground, but 

 all through the seasons 1883 to 1887, when Mr. Hale of 

 Connecticut was trying so hard to get peaches from his or- 

 chard and did not succeed a single year, that man had peaches 

 for our tables every year, and handsome specimens, all 

 grown from seedling trees. Therefore I believe we have 

 got to get back to first principles. I do not believe there is 

 anything in our soil or climate or anything else because of 

 which we cannot grow peaches just as well as when we were 

 boys. 



Mr. E. CusHMAN (of Lakeville). In regard to peach 

 culture, I wish to say that within sight of my house there 

 are forty acres of peach orchard owned by a gentleman from 

 Geneva, N. Y., and he bought on the shore of Lake Samoset 

 about one hundred or one hundred and twenty-five acres of 

 what you would call the nicest pasture land, land there is an 

 abundance of in Plymouth County, and growing sweet fern 

 and wild grasses. He ploughed that land and set these trees 

 with a good deal of care. The native residents were scofiing at 

 him, wholly incredulous, assuring him he never would get a 

 peach to a tree. It was my good fortune last spring to travel 

 through the Middle States at the time the peach orchards were 

 in blossom. I saw some beautiful sights, I assure you, but on 

 my return home about a week later this orchard was in blos- 

 som, and I saw no more healthy orchard anywhere in the 

 Middle States than I saw in my own township. That orchard 

 has been fertilized wholly by chemical fertilizers, al)out two 

 quarts of fine-ground bone and about a quart of muriate of 

 potash, and thoroughly worked into an excavation of about 

 six feet in diameter for each tree. The gentleman spent a 

 good deal of money setting out those trees, but his foreman, 

 in conversation with me, told me this fall that notwithstand- 

 ing the crop was injured very much indeed by a high wind 

 that swept over our county, and, I suppose, all over the 

 State, blowing our apples and peaches and fruit in some sec- 

 tions entirely to the ground, — notwithstanding, I am told 

 that the two crops three or four years from setting out had 

 paid for all the labor and the land. He has had no trouble 

 at all. There is no indication of the yellows. It looks as 

 if the orchard would be a o:reat success. He bouirht his new 



