FRUITS. 



CHAP. 



trained and pruned, in precisely the same manner as the 

 filberd ; for the seed will not produce a tree to resemble 

 the fruit of the original tree, except by mere accident. 







, 1 J3rn 



278. PEACH. The propagation, planting, training 

 and pruning, have already been spoken of fully ; but I 

 have here to speak of the preserving or protecting the 

 blossoms of wall-trees. The peach, like the nectarine, 

 will bear, and sometimes ripen the fruit well, against a 

 wall facing the west j facing the east, neither does well ; 

 and the proper situation of both, is, a wall facing the 

 south. Here the situation is as warm as our climate 

 will suffer it to be ; but the bloom comes out at so early 

 a season that that season is always a time of anxiety with 

 the gardener, on account of the frosts by which the 

 blossoms are frequently so severely attacked as to prevent 

 the coming of any crop at all. To protect the blossoms, 

 therefore, against the frost is a matter of great import- 

 ance. The boughs of the yew-tree and other evergreens ; 

 or, the spreading parts of fern, are used for this purpose, 

 Some people nail up mats in the evening and take them 

 off in the morning ; but to mat is very tiresome ; and, 

 as to the boughs and the fern, they must remain on day 

 and night j and, what with the putting them on and the 

 taking them off and their keeping off the sun and air 

 from the buds and the fruit, they generally do as much 

 harm as good. Frosts descend j that is to say, their 

 destructive effect comes down upon a tree perpendicularly. 

 It is not the cold that destroys the germ of the fruit. It 

 is the wet joined to the cold. That which is dry will not 

 freeze ; frost has power on those things only which have 

 moisture in them j and though there is moisture in the 



