HAMPDEN SOCIETY. 137 



fruit, and, in three or four years, his labor is compensated by a 

 quantity of good fruit, for his own use, and, soon after, a good 

 supply for market. Good fruit always finds a ready market, 

 and commands a high price. A gentleman in Connecticut, who 

 has given some attention to raising fruits, informed the writer 

 that, after his early fruit had all been disposed of at good profits, 

 he sent to New Haven sixty baskets of later peaches, and obtained 

 for them two dollars a basket, — one hundred and twenty dollars 

 for this single parcel of fruit ! He probably received three or 

 four times as much for his earlier and rarer productions. 



The peach tree is short-lived, and subject to disease and de- 

 struction from enemies ; but it is easily reproduced, and a little 

 attention will secure a constant supply of bearing trees. The 

 diseased and worthless trees of the garden should be uprooted 

 and removed. Wherever peach trees are killed by the winter, 

 the shortening-in pruning will prove a preservative. Cut off a 

 part of last year's growth, either in the Fall, or in February or 

 March, before the sap circulates, and the tree will live and flour- 

 ish, bear more and better fruit, shade less ground, and live much 

 longer. To secure good fruit on trees bearing large crops, one 

 half of the green fruit, at least, should be picked off when small, 

 and sometimes much more. 



Peach trees require a rich, free soil. They live longer in 

 gravel than in loam, but grow more rapidly in the latter. Yard 

 composts, ashes, chip-manure, and slacked lime, all do well for 

 peaches. The trial of hard coal-ashes, placed around the trees 

 in the spring, has proved a successful protection, prevented too 

 early blossoming, and seems to have protected from the borer and 

 other insects. 



Pears. This may be considered the popular fruit of the day. 

 It is but a few years since we were able to name a dozen varie- 

 ties of good pears in New England, and hardly as many more 

 inferior ones. Now, the cultivators of this fruit can present, on 

 exhibition, 175, and even 200 varieties. The pear tree is of 

 slow growth, but of long duration. When a stock of trees is 

 once in bearing, the work of supplying a competency of good 

 fruit is done ; they will bear a century. The Endicot pear tree, 

 18 



