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XXXII. Observations on the Flat Peach of China. In a 

 Letter to the Secretary. By Thomas Andrew Knight, 

 Esq. F. R. S. Sf-c. President. 



Read January 7, 1823. 



My Dear Sir, 

 I received from you, in the summer of 1820, some buds 

 of a variety of Peach, which the Horticultural Society had 

 imported from China, as the well-known Flat Peach, and 

 which you supposed to be the same as the fruit of which a 

 figure is given in the Horticultural Transactions ;* though 

 that was said to have been imported under the name of 

 the Java Peach. In the last summer I obtained fruit from 

 the buds I received from you, which was perfectly similar 

 to that delineated in the Transactions ; and part of which 

 I should have sent to the Society, but that the whole of it 

 was spoiled by cold and wet weather, which suddenly occurred 

 after the lights had been (injudiciously in this climate) taken 

 off. I can therefore speak only of the habits of the tree, 

 which are very singular ; and which, I think, will render it a 

 valuable acquisition in our gardens. It appears to possess 

 more than ordinary hardiness, with a degree of excitability 

 far exceeding any which can be, even temporarily, given to 

 any other known variety of Peach. In the last year its blos- 

 soms unfolded in January, though my Peach-house had till 

 that period remained wholly open ; and they set very freely 



* Volume IV. page 512, PI. 19. 



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