596 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A " 12 " measures 10 inches in diameter. 

 An "8" „ 11 



A "6" „ m 



A "4" „ 14 



A"l" „ 18 



Then there are " Thimibs " and " Long Toms," and goodness knows 

 what else besides, all going to show how absurd and complicated the 

 present system is. 



Peaches and Nectarines. 



It is very difficult to get people to understand the peculiar relationship 

 which exists between Peaches and Nectarines — that they are practically 

 one and the same plant. Of course each tree is a different individual 

 specimen or representative, but they are all either continuations or 

 descendants of one and the same plant. If the particular individual has 

 been raised by grafting or budding, it is, of course, simply a continuation 

 of the plant from which the graft or bud was taken ; or if it has been raised 

 from seed it is the direct descendant or child of the plant which produced 

 the seed. Now we know that if we sow a Plum-stone a Plam-tree will 

 come up ; or if we sow an Apple-pip an Apple-tree will come up and 

 nothing else — better or worse than its parent it may be, just as children 

 generally are — but, a Plum or an Apple for all that, and nothing else. 

 And if anyone were to show us a Pear-tree and tell us he raised it from 

 an Apple-pip, we should knoiv he was mistaken — had got his seeds or 

 labels mixed or something ; or if we saw a tree bearing both Apples and 

 Pears, we should know it had at some time or other been grafted or budded, 

 because the Apple and the Pear are two absolutely difterent plants, and 

 the seed of one cannot produce a plant of the other, nor can a graft or 

 bud of the one bear fruit of the other. But Peaches and Nectarines are 

 not thus distinct ; they do not stand in at all the same relationship to 

 each other — or want of it — as do Apples and Pears, Plums and Apricots, 

 &c. On the contrary, if you sow^ the stone of a Peach it is quite 

 likely that the plant which grows up from it may turn out to be a 

 Nectarine ; and vice versa, if you sow a Nectarine you may as likely as 

 not raise a Peach. But further than this, so intimate is the relationship 

 between them (one may almost say, so identical are they) that a Peach- 

 tree will not infrequently bear a Nectarine in the midst of all its other 

 crop of Peach fruits, and our illustration, Fig. 236, which comes from the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, shows a fruit which was three-quarters Peach and 

 one-quarter Nectarine. Nor was it only an apparent or superficial like- 

 ness, for not only was the skin of the three-quarters rough and woolly 

 like a Peach, and the skin of the other quarter smooth and shiny like a 

 Nectarine, but the flesh underneath the two parts partook of the nature 

 of the Peach and Nectarine — that is to say, three-quarters of the fruit 

 were soft-fleshed like a Peach, whilst the other quarter under the 

 Nectarine skin was of the firmer, smoother- textured, and more luscious 

 character which distinguishes the Nectarine. No one, therefore, need be 

 astonished if any of these interchanges between the two fruits should come 

 under his own observation. The raising of Peach-trees from Nectarine 



