44 THE PEACH 



started in growth. In testing them, as I should 

 have done when I first saw them, and taking 

 hold of one I lifted it out of the ground almost 

 without an effort, and the consequence was that 

 two-thirds of those trees died. This is what the 

 men used to call " covering their tracks," but this 

 case was the last of their "track covering" for me. 

 In looking into the old authorities, in their re- 

 commendations of soils for peach growing, we can- 

 not go amiss in recommending every thing, for tak- 

 ing them altogether, we find them running pretty 

 much in the same groove, winding up with the old 

 discriminating degrees of comparison of " good, 

 better, best," the same as our- agricultural fairs 

 rank their fruits on exhibition, from the luscious 

 peach to the useful pumpkin, and I think from my 

 experience, I may say that they are all about right, 

 for I have never met with a formation yet upon 

 which I could not succeed in raising peaches ; even 

 low, wet, swampy lands can be made to grow them 

 with the proper ditching and draining; but the 

 peach, of all the fruits we grow, adapts itself to 

 more formations and climates than any other spe- 

 cies of fruit, from the tropics to the State of Mas- 

 sachusetts, and through all this territory, where- 

 over cultivated, it excels all other fruits grown, for 

 its great beauty, lusciousness and adaptability to 

 the taste, not only of man, but even of the lower 

 animals, birds and insects. From my experience, 

 I can say that it is well adapted to a Gneiss forma- 



