PEACH AND THE PEAR. 29 



often to separate on opening the peach and to be 

 gluey and gummy. 



Should large quantities of double-meated seed be 

 found in a given quantity of budded seed it would rather 

 tend to signify that the trees were on land too rich, and 

 were being forced abnormally, and both the ovules had 

 been fertilized and stimulated, whereas, in the peach, 

 ordinarily, one ovule aborts and the other lives. Such 

 overstimulated trees would naturally suffer from early 

 decline from over gestation, unless abnormally fed, and 

 this abnormal feeding might cause premature decline 

 again — as we often see in high livers among mankind. 

 The leaves and the kernels have a strong flavor and 

 odor of prussic acid, and this is one of the peculiar 

 essentials of the Peach. The color of the flesh of the 

 Peach is either, as a rule, yellow or white, the latter 

 often being called reds, from the color next the stone, 

 and on the peninsula both are equally popular, some- 

 times the yellow and again the white gaining favor. 

 The yellow varieties probably furnish the best specimens 

 of the fruit, but at the present writing the white fruit is 

 causing increased inquiry for all purposes. The varieties 

 of the Peach run into the hundreds, but on the peninsula, 

 probably twenty varieties will cover all that are at pres- 

 ent usually planted. The natural tree has been known 

 to exist on the peninsula for more than a hundred years, 

 but as to the growing of the improved, or budded peach 



