AND ITS DISEASE. 15 



peach growing, by advising farmers to let hazard- 

 ous cultivation be collateral and subordinate, and 

 apply their main strength to other employment 

 more certain and equally profitable; concluding 

 that peach trees could not be profitably cultivated 

 on an extensive scale in that part of the country, 

 that a succession of Peaches might be kept up for 

 domestic use by " planting a few trees every year," 

 and thus a death blow was given to general peach 

 growing on a large scale, and it has only since been 

 encouraged by the direction to plant a few Peach 

 trees about the garden and buildings, and this has 

 been observed in Eastern Pennsylvania to the pres- 

 ent day, as one of the oracular sayings of the savants 

 of that period. This pretext for the encouragement 

 of our lazy indulgences without further effort to 

 master the difficulties that beset us, and giving our 

 time and attention to other departments of farming 

 requiring less thought giving us less profit and 

 more labor is the legacy left us by these writers 

 and in our farming interests we are consoled with 

 the dangerous doctrine that in our economic and 

 domestic prosperity many things within our capa- 

 city to acquire by our own industry on the farms 

 are cheaper to buy than to raise, thereby reversing 

 the old maxim " that a penny saved is a penny 

 earned," and just here for the want of a little more 

 brain, a little labor, and another step higher up the 

 ladder of energy, Pennsylvania is not only hand 

 ing over annually, pennies, but millions of gold to 



