554 General Notices. 



lishing an opinion of the merits or demerits of any particular variety. Such 

 were my reflections on reading the article at p. 678, headed " Select Plums." 

 Your correspondent, " .T. B. W.," received fruit of the Reine Claude de 

 Bavay on the 10th inst., after a journey from France, and proceeds to give 

 his opinion of it. Now this is at least more than a fortniglit after its perfect 

 maturity here ; for in England, south of Trent, it ripens as nearly as possi- 

 ble, allowing for the variation of our seasons, from the middle to the end of 

 September ; and, when fully ripe and slightly shrivelled at the stalk, it is 

 brimfull of a rich, sugary, refreshing juice. In my opinion it is more grate- 

 ful to the palate than the Green Gage, Avhicli, when fully ripe, fatigues the 

 taste with its lusciousness. I ate some fruit of the Reine Claude de Bavay 

 from my tree, I think about the 15th inst. ; they had lost their juice and 

 were not good. The Queen Mother plum, as you well know, is a small 

 plum, good enough, but not worthy of much notice. Kirk's plum is really 

 good. The Precoce de Tours, one of our least hardy plums, I have some 

 pleasant recollections of; three very large standard trees, planted by my 

 great grandfather, used in my boyhood to bear once in four or five years a 

 tolerably good crop, worth gathering to send to market ; in other seasons 

 only a very thin sprinkling. In these seasons of scarcity we, the boys, had 

 the privilege of shaking the trees and appropriating the plums to ourselves. 

 What "jolly" seasons they were, and how often they came ? This plum is 

 indeed only fit for a wall. The Early Prolific, mentioned at p. 063, is a 

 seedling raised from it with smooth instead of downy shoots as that has, 

 and with blossoms so hardy as to withstand nine degrees of frost on the 3d 

 of last May, which killed everything besides, among fruit. The trees are 

 standards. Its fruit is perhaps a little longer than those of its parent ; it 

 is more juicy and brisk in flavor ; in shape and appearance mucli like it. It 

 is indeed a Precoce de Tours hardenized. 'Why should not we gardeners 

 make a word ? There is another seedling from the same parentage like 

 the above, now common in the nurseries ; for both have been in being nearly 

 20 years, called the Early Favorite. This has downy shoots, is a trifle ear- 

 lier, of higher flavor, but not so hardy. " J. B. W." should tell us where 

 he lives, and whether he cultivates the plums he mentions as standards, or 

 against walls, as such information satifies readers and prevents many inquir- 

 ies. Your correspondent has omitted to mention two very valuable and very 

 hardy late plums, Coe's Late Red, and St. IMartin's Quet^che, a yellow 

 plum of excellent quality and most profuse bearer, as a standard or pyra- 

 mid.— (Card Chron., 1850, p. 693.) 



Peach Stocks. — About ten years ago I planted, by way of experiment, 

 a Grosse Mignonne peach in the middle of a sm.all pit, and trained it right 

 and left to a trellis a foot from the glass. As it increased in growth. I kept 

 giving it more room, and it progressed tolerably well, but I never felt satis- 

 fied with it. In one year, however, (1847,) I gathered eight dozen of fine 

 fruit from it, in July and August ; but, with that exception, it never pro- 

 duced more than a few dozen, until this year, when I had ten dozen well 

 set and stoned on it. In July, however, when the swelling process was 

 going on, it died just befoie the crop was ripe. The cause of deatli was 



