AMERICAN GARDENER. 185 



peach trees here are very short-lived. Six, seven 

 or eight years, seem to be the duration of their life. 

 This J\ ectarine had stood seventeen years, and was 

 likely to stand twice as long yet to come. It is 

 now growing in the garden of the late Mr. James 

 Paul, in Lower Dublin Township ; and there any 

 one may see it It is clear to me, therefore, that 

 the short life of the peach-orchards is owing to the 

 stock being peach. No small part of the peach- 

 trees are raised/ro7w the stone. Nothing is more 

 frequent than to see a farmer, or his wife, when 

 he or she has eaten a good peach, to go and 

 make a little hole andfiut the stone in the ground ', 

 in order to have a fieach tree of the same sort ! 

 Not considering, that the stone never, except by 

 mere accident, produces fruit of the same quality 

 as that within which it was contained, any more 

 than the seed of a carnation produces flowers like 

 those from which they preceded. The peaches 

 in America are, when budded, put on peach- 

 stocks ; and this, I think, is the cause of their 

 swift decay. They should be put on plum-stocks ; 

 for, to what other cause are we to ascribe the 

 long life and vigorous state of the Nectarine at 

 Mr. Paul's f* The plum is a closer and harder 

 wood than the peach. The peach-trees are de- 

 stroyed by a worm, or, rather, a sort of ?naggot, 

 that eats into the bark at the stem. The insects 

 do not like the plum bark ; and, besides, the 

 plum is a more hardy and -vigorous tree than the 

 peach, and, observe, it is frequently, and most 

 frequently, the feebleness, or sickliness, of the 

 tree that creates the insects, and not the inscets 

 that create the feebleness and sickliness. There 

 are thousands of peach trees in England and 

 16* 



