580 THE PEACH. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



THE PEACH. 



Persica vulgaris, Dec. Rosacece, of botanists. 



Pecker, of the French ; PJirschbaum, German ; PergicJcteboom, Dutch ; Persico, 

 Italian ; and el Melocoton, Spanish. 



THE Peach-tree is a native of Persia and China, and was brought 

 from the former country to Italy by the Romans in the time of the Emperor 

 Claudius. It was considerably cultivated in Britain as early as the 

 year 1550, and was introduced to this country by the early settlers 

 somewhere about 1680. From Persia, its native country, its name in all 

 languages Persico Pecher Peach has evidently been derived. 



The peach is a rather small fruit-tree, with narrow, smooth, serrated 

 leaves, and pink blossoms. It is more tender and of shorter duration than 

 most other of the fruits usually grown in temperate climates. It is never 

 raised in England, and not generally in France, without the aid of walls. 

 Even at Montreuil, near Paris, a village whose whole population is 

 mainly employed in cultivating the peach for market, it is grown entire- 

 ly upon white-washed walls. China and the United States are, there- 

 fore, the only temperate countries where the peach and the apple both 

 attain their highest perfection in the open orchard. The peaches of 

 Pekin are celebrated as being the finest in the world, and of double the 

 usual size. 



It is a curious fact in the history of the peach, that with its delicious 

 flavor were once coupled, in the East, certain notions of its poisonous 

 qualities. This idea seems vaguely to have accompanied it into Europe, 

 for Pliny mentions that it was supposed that the king of Persia had sent 

 them into Egypt to poison the inhabitants, with whom he was then at war. 

 As the peach and the almond are closely related, it has been conjectured 

 by Mr. Knight that the poisonous peaches referred to were swollen al- 

 monds, which contain a considerable quantity of prussic acid. But it is 

 also worth remarking that the peach-tree seems to hold very much the same 

 place in the ancient Chinese writings that the tree of knowledge of the 

 old Scriptures, and the golden Hesperides apples of the heathens, do in 

 the early history of the western nations. The traditions of a peach- 

 tree, the fruit of which when eaten conferred immortality, and which 

 bore only once in a thousand years and of another peach-tree of 

 knowledge, which existed in the most remote period, on a mountain 

 guarded by a hundred demons, the fruit of which produced death are 

 said to be distinctly preserved in some of the early Chinese writings. 

 Whatever may have been the nature of these extraordinary trees, it is cer- 

 tain that, as Lord Bacon says, " not a slip or sucker has been left behind." 

 We must therefore content ourselves with the delight which a fine 

 peach of modern times affords to the palate and the eye. 



We believe there is at the present time no country in the world 

 where the peach is grown in such great quantities as in the United 

 States. North of a line drawn from the Mohawk river to Boston, 

 comprising most of the Eastern States, they do not indeed flourish well, 

 requiring some artificial aid to produce regular crops ; but in all the 

 Middle, Southern, and Western States, they grow and produce the 



