AND ITS DISEASE. 37 



increase in quantity in favor of West Chester, and 

 in profits there is no approximate comparison. In 

 Chester county the peach crops were more valua- 

 ble than any other farm crops I ever raised, except 

 my early strawberry crops in Maryland, while the 

 peach crops in Maryland were quite unsatisfactory 

 and discouraging from the causes assigned. The 

 peach is a perishable fruit, and to enjoy it to the 

 full, its rich, luscious saccharine taste, which it can 

 only acquire at maturity on the tree, it must 

 have a home market, a quick and careful convey- 

 ance, and then all these advantages can be enjoyed 

 by the consumers in our cities and towns by its cul- 

 ture in the adjoining counties of Eastern Pennsyl- 

 vania supplying the demand, instead of relying 

 upon fruit wanting in all these good qualities. The 

 time is at hand when all the peaches for our north- 

 ern markets will be grown in the North, and every 

 great centre of population will be supplied with its 

 favorite fruit from its immediate surrounding coun- 

 try. This is briefly my experience in peach grow- 

 ing in the North and in the South, on a scale about 

 equal in number of trees cultivated, and which I con- 

 sider a full, fair and satisfactory test, as shown in the 

 comparative statements made ; but as the ground for 

 the first year, in this southern trial at peach growing 

 or at least twenty acres of it, was planted in straw- 

 berries, and was with another orchard of some ten 

 acres occupied in the same way and continued for 



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