CHAPTER VIII 



PEACHES 



"A little peach in an orchard grew, — 



A little peach of emerald hue; 



Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew." 



— Eugene Field. 



Although the peach is not a native of North 

 America it has become in many ways the most 

 typically American of all the fruits we grow. 

 Just as we Americans are the most tempera- 

 mental of all peoples, so the peach is the most 

 temperamental of all fruits. We might almost 

 endow it with human qualities and call it a 

 "nervous" fruit, for certainly no other is more 

 capricious in its behavior in the orchard. Al- 

 though the most sensitive to cold of any tree 

 fruit of the North it sometimes shows surpris- 

 ing resistance along these lines and again it 

 may give up the ghost before a slight frost that 

 might otherwise pass unnoticed. Fortunes have 

 been made and lost in growing it and "peach 

 sections" in various parts of the country have 

 come and gone. Localities have been heralded 

 as "sure crop" districts only to see peach cul- 

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