712 



PRACTICE OF GARDENING. 



Part III. 



perfect peaches ; and which are known to contain the Prussic acid which operates unfa- 

 vorably in many constitutions. The tree has been cultivated time immemorial in most 

 parts of Asia ; when it was introduced into Greece is uncertain : the Romans seem ta 

 have brought it direct from Persia, during the reign of the emperor Claudius. It is first 

 mentioned by Columella, and afterwards described by Pliny. Tlie best peaches in Eu- 

 rope are at present grown in Italy on standards ; and next may be cited those of Mon- 

 treuil, near Paris, trained on lime-whited walls. {Mozard, sur 1' Education des arbres d 

 Fruits, et principaleinent du Pccher, &c. 1814.) We visited these gardens in May, 1819, 

 and examined more particularly those of Jean Pierre Savard, the principal proprietaire 

 cultivateur. His trees were that season covered with aphides, and the principal part of 

 treatment in which he seemed expert was that of varying the position of the branches of 

 the tree every year, by elevating to a greater angle the weak, depressing the strong, and 

 cutting out the old, naked, or twigless shoots ; thus presenting at all times a well balanced 

 tree. The stems of these trees, when first planted, and for one or two years afterwards, 

 are hooked to the wall, to prevent their being stolen ! Mozard's garden was visited by 

 the Caledonian Horticultural deputation in 1817, who found wholesome management, 

 but nothing new. In England, there are but few sorts of peaches that come to tolerable 

 perfection in the open air, in ordinary seasons. The best adapted for this purpose are the 

 free stones ; but all the sorts ripen well by the aid of a hot-wall or glass, and may be 

 forced so as to ripen in May or June. The tree is generally an abundant bearer ; one 

 of the noblesse kind, at Yoxfield, in Suffolk, which covers above six hundred square feet 

 of trellis under a glass case, without flues, ripens annually from sixty to seventy dozen of 

 peaches. [Hort. Trans, iii. 17.) 



4482. Use. It is a dessert fruit, of the first order, and makes a delicious preserve. In 

 Maryland and Virginia a brandy is made from this fruit. " The manufacture of this 

 liquor, and the feeding of pigs, being," as Braddick observes (/Tor^. Tr. ii. 205.), " the 

 principal uses to which the peach is applied in those countries." The leaves, steeped in 

 gin or whiskey, communicate a flavor resembling that of noyeau. 



4483. Cnterion of a good peach, A good peach, Miller observes, possesses these qual- 

 ities : the flesh is firm ; the skin is thin, of a deep or bright red color next the sun, and 

 of a yellowish-green next the wall ; the pulp is of a yellowish color, full of high-flavored 

 juice ; the fleshy part thick, and the stone small. 



4484. Varieties. Linnaeus divides the A. Persica into two varieties ; that with downy 

 fruit or the peach, and that with smooth fruit or the nectarine. There are various in- 

 stances on record [Hort. Trans. Yo\. \. p. 103.) of both fruits growing on the same tree, 

 even on the same branch ; and one case has occurred of a single fruit partaking of the 

 nature of both. The French consider them as one fruit, arranging them in four divi- 

 sions : ilxeptches, or free stone peaches, the flesh of whose fruit separates readily from the 

 skin and the stone ; the ptches lisse, or free stone nectarines, or free stone smooth peaches ; 

 the pavies, or cling-stone peaches, whose flesh is firm and adheres both to the skin and 

 stone ; and the brugnons, or nectarines, or cling-stone smooth peaches. Knight (Hort. 

 Tr. iii. 1.), Robertson [Hort. Tr. iii. 582,), and various botanists, consider the.peach 

 and almond as one species. 



4485. The flat peach of China {Hort. Trans. 

 vol. iv. pi. 19.) is a curious flattened fruit {fig. 489.), 

 sweet and juicy, and vAih. a little noyeau flavor. 

 Knight has fruited it, and considers that from the 

 early habits of the tree it will prove a valuable acqui- 

 sition. He has " found excitability of habit to be 

 hereditary in the seedling offspring of plants, and to 

 be transferable by the pollen ;" and, therefore, ima- 

 gines " there will be no difiiculty in obtaining from 

 the flat peach other varieties of similar habits, free 

 from the deformity which has recommended it to the 

 Chinese." {Hort, Trans, v. 272.) 



4486. There are many fine varieties qf the peach : 

 Tusser, in 1573, mentions peaches, white and red ; 

 Parkinson, in 1629, enumerates twenty-one; and Mil- 

 ler, in 1750, thirty-one varieties. In the garden of the Luxemburg, at Paris, are seventy 

 varieties ; and above double that number of names are to be found in the catalogues of our 

 nurseries. Tliree distinguished and ingenious attempts have been made to class the va- 

 rieties of peaches and nectarines, by the leaf and flower as well as the fruit ; tlie first is 

 by Poiteau, in the Bon Jardinier ; the next by Count Lelieur, in his Povione Franf-'aise ; 

 and the third by Robertson, nurseryman, of Kilkenny, whose arrangement is founded on 

 the glands of the leaves. But as these systems are not yet sufficiently perfected to render 

 them available for this work, all we can do is to submit the follov/ing table : — 



