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XVI. On the early Puberty of the Peach Tree. By Thomas 

 Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. fyc. President. 



Read March 2, 1813. 



It was asserted, a few years ago, by a gentleman who had 

 held an official situation in New South Wales, that a seedling 

 Peach Tree in that climate, had produced fruit under his 

 care when it was only sixteen months old, without having 

 been grafted. The silence of the French writers upon gar- 

 dening, respecting this earliness of puberty in the Peach 

 Tree, and the well known circumstance, that several years 

 generally elapse between the period when a tree first springs 

 from seed, and that in which it becomes capable of pro- 

 ducing blossoms and fruit, appear to have induced a general 

 disbelief of this account, which was mentioned to me, by 

 several of my friends, as an extravagant and ridiculous false- 

 hood ; and probably I should too readily have coincided 

 with them in opinion, if I had not previously noticed several 

 peculiar circumstances in the habits of seedling Peach Trees. 

 I had observed that such trees continued to grow as long 

 as the weather continued favourable ; and that their leaves 

 in almost every succeeding month, assumed a more mature 

 and improved character ; so that at the end of the first au- 

 tumn, the leaves of the parent and seedling trees, did not 

 differ much from each other ; and such seedling trees, though 

 they were retained in small pots till they were eighteen 

 months old, and subsequently trained against a wall in the 



