72 THE PEACH 



our orchards as we treat our crops ; rotate at a time 

 and in a way to suit our own convenience, and not 

 to suit the tastes and convenience of fungoid toad- 

 stools and infusoria, our enemies in peach growing 

 and so insignificant too, that we have to use 500 or 

 1000 diameter microscopic power to bring them 

 within the range of our vision. 



11 Nature abhors a vacuum," so said the old Phil- 

 osophers ; their successors said nature did no such 

 thing and proved it. We can point to farmers as a 

 class residing within one hundred miles of the city 

 of Philadelphia, who let their corn land rest every 

 alternate year, while the farmers in Pennsylvania 

 found out long ago that they could not afford their 

 lands any such indulgence; each field must pro- 

 duce a crop annually and respond liberally to good 

 treatment. This is the course to be pursued in 

 peach growing and this is what we intend to do. 

 We have found out long ago through dearly bought 

 experience that the system of" masterly inactivity" 

 never did nor never will pay in farming at least. 

 Whether the peach is a long lived or a short lived 

 tree, or a large tree or a small tree we shall not 

 stop here to enquire, but we intend to make it pro- 

 duce as long at least as our faithful horse labors on 

 the farm, or our generous dairy cow affords us milk 

 and what more could we ask of the peach ? With 

 care and exemption from disease we may double 

 the period of its production, for such is its lon- 

 gevity in th^ healthy districts not one hundred 



