THE CURL IN THE POTATOE. 199 



ground, and the current of ascending sap be in consequence diverted 

 into, and through the tubers. Mr. Dickson, and myself, however, per- 

 fectly agree that a tuber, or part of one, which is soft and aqueous, 

 affords a better plant than one which is firm and farinaceous ; and the 

 trifling difference of opinion between us, being purely hypothetical, is of 

 no importance. 



I observed that the crops of potatoes, which I raised from the late 

 ripened tubers above-mentioned, were not quite so early as others of the 

 same variety ; but I attribute this variation in the periods of the maturity 

 of the crops solely to different degrees of luxuriance in the plants, and to 

 the increased size of the tubers in the one. In quality, the produce of 

 both was the same. 



XXV. ON THE EARLY PUBERTY OF THE PEACH-TREE, 

 [Read before the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, March 2, 1813.] 



IT was asserted, a few years ago, by a gentleman who had held an 

 official situation in New South Wales,.that a seedling peach-tree in that 

 climate had produced fruit under his care when it was only sixteen 

 months old, without having been grafted. The silence of the French 

 writers upon gardening, respecting this earliness of puberty in the peach- 

 tree, and the well-known circumstance that several years generally 

 elapse between the period when a tree first springs from seed, and that 

 in which it becomes capable of producing blossoms and fruit, appear ta 

 have induced a general disbelief of this account, which was mentioned to- 

 me, by several of my friends, as an extravagant and ridiculous falsehood ; 

 and probably I should too readily have coincided with them in opinion, if 

 I had not previously noticed several peculiar circumstances in the habits 

 of seedling peach-trees. I had observed that such trees continued to 

 grow as long as the weather continued favourable ; and that their leaves, 

 in almost every succeeding month, assumed a more mature and improved 

 character; so that at the end of the first autumn, the leaves of the 

 parent and seedling trees did not differ much from each other ; and 

 such seedling trees, though they were retained in small pots till they 

 were eighteen months old, and subsequently trained against a wall in the 

 open air, and in a cold and late situation, produced fruit when only three 

 years old. 



I therefore thought it not improbable that, with the aid of glass and 



