AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Ill 
can go to sleep for a life time in the security of 
his fencing. 
We may add that where the wall foundation is 
laid on the surface of the ground, a plow furrow 
within a foot of the wall, if possible, with the 
earth thrown up against the base, is all the 
better for the wall, thus enabling the surface wa¬ 
ter to pass off" without getting into the foundation 
There are some incidental items which we 
might name in further connection with the sub¬ 
ject, but they would be so incident to individual, 
or local control that they may as well be left to 
the judgment of the proprietor himself. 
Healthy Stables. 
To be healthy, stables should be warm. Large 
cracks in the floors, large holes in the siding, or 
broken windows near the stalls, do not promote 
warmth or health. Stalls on the north and west 
sides of the barn should be made with double out¬ 
side walls, and be filled in with tan-baik, saw¬ 
dust, or other non-conducting material. 
Stables to be healthy should be well ventilated. 
In their desire to make their horses and cattle 
comfortable in winter, some farmers keep every 
window and door and opening closed as tight as 
a bottle. They forget what foul deposites are be¬ 
ing constantly made on the floors of the stalls, 
and what rank and pungent odors are continually 
rising into the mouths, nostrils and eyes of the 
poor animals, and from which they cannot escape. 
If such persons would notice, particularly on 
opening their stables in the morning, what a pow¬ 
erful stench fills the air, they would view this 
matter differently. And if this did not open their 
eyes, let them be tied up in their own stables 
twenty-four hours. Their nausea, burning eyes, 
and inflamed lungs would convince them that 
their animals had a hard time of it, and that it 
was wonderful they did not all sicken and die. . 
It is not the easiest matter to secure these two 
conditions of a healthy stable, and at the same 
time, warmth and pure air; but something can be 
done towards it. The stalls being well built, as we 
have mentioned, air can be introduced gradually 
through open window's in a distant part ot the 
barn. The impure air can be carried off by ven¬ 
tilators on the top of the building. And last, but 
not least, the stalls can be kept clean, and the 
floors daily sprinkled with gypsum or saw-dust, to 
absorb the liquid manure and foul odors. 
_ ___—- 
Luck and Pluck. 
Every community has its “ lucky ” man. The 
boys in the street know him, and point him out as 
he passes, the admiring crowd lift their hats to 
him, the unsuccessful envy and perhaps traduce 
him. Success seems natural to him. If he was 
not born with a gold spoon in his mouth, he 
has long since exchanged his wooden one for 
it Every tiling h6 touches seems to turn to 
his advantage. °That farm he bought a few 
years since, would now sell for double the 
money. If there is but one good crop raised in 
the town, you will be sure to find it in his 
fields ; and then what prices his produce always 
brings him. Depend upon it, there’s something 
in jt ° u^e’s a lucky man.”—This is the out¬ 
side view, and a most pernicious one. Let a 
man “ curse his stars,” complain of his hard 
fate, and sigh and wait for luck; let him feel 
the'conviction that success is something inde¬ 
finite, uncertain, which may or may not follow 
effort, as a kind of mysterious, uncontrollable 
chance may direct, and it is not difficult to pre¬ 
dict his future. His stars will all be unlucky; 
the golden comet with its splendid train of glo¬ 
rious results, for which he looks, will never be 
seen above his horizon. 
The man of "luck” is a man of “pluck.” 
We like that word. It is solid and yet elastic. 
It has a ring like steel. It tells of a man who 
does not know when he is conquered. If the 
backward Spring disappoints his calculations for 
a large corn crop, he is sure to have a flue field 
of buckwheat; or if this fail, he rejoices in a 
fallow ready for a notable yield of Winter grain. 
If debt presses heavily upon him, it but bends 
him more closely to his work. But more than 
all is the “ plucky ” man distinguished by ven¬ 
turing boldly when there is a probability that 
success may be attained. Scarcely a man of fifty 
years, but remembers the time that success 
was within his reach, had he possessed nerve 
enough to break from his old routine, and fol¬ 
low the opening ; while many a one has been 
deterred from competence and even fortune, by 
timidly adhering to “good old ways,” good — 
only in age. The cultivator especially, who 
hopes to succeed now, must have not only the 
energy which rises against opposition, and bears 
up under misfortune, but also the enterprise 
which looks for and adopts improvements; and 
there never was a time when such enterprise 
had surer promise of success, for never before 
were improvements, both in the manner and 
the implements of cultivation, more marked and 
abundant. The plucky man of to-day will be 
the lucky man ten years hence. 
American Fruits.—Past and Present.. II. 
BY LEWIS F. ALLEN-ERIE CO., N. Y. 
(Continued from page 82.) 
THE PEACH. 
From being an almost universal fruit a hundred 
years ago, in most localities from latitude 43° 
north, down to the Gulf of Mexico, the peach now 
flourishes and bears fruit successfully in but few 
sections and these favored by influences not always 
understood. In the early settlement of the limbered 
country throughout the States, with the exception 
of Northern New-York, Vermont, New-Hamp- 
sliire, and Maine, peaches even of the choicest 
varieties grew, flourished, and bore abundantly ; 
and now, where it has scarcely grown within the 
memories of middle aged and of old men, tradi¬ 
tionary tales are current of the wonderful crops 
which their grandfathers and fathers gathered. 
For their disappearance no absolute or conclusive 
reason is given, other than that the old, or first 
planted trees, after flourishing twenty, thirty, or 
forty years—which latter age many individual 
trees were known to reach—died out, and the 
young orchards which replaced them, would not 
live, or, if living at all, they declined a few years 
afterwards, until after repeated endeavors at their 
cultivation, they were abandoned in despair. 
Even where no sane man would now think to 
plant a peach—in cloggy, clammy, and cold soils ; 
high and bleak exposures ; low, frosty valleys ; 
open plains—all alike, once bore the peach in high 
quality and abundance. Now, nobody is bold 
enough to plant a peach tree except in a warm, 
sandy, or gravely loam, in the vicinity of large bod¬ 
ies of water, which wards off the earlier and later 
frosts, or in .some genial locality, forward far be¬ 
yond others in its immediate neighborhood, in at¬ 
mospheric influences It is needless to particul¬ 
arize. Such is the known fact throughout all our 
States. One would suppose that where t ic wine- 
grape abounds, as among the Ohio and Kentucky 
hills, about Cincinnati and other vine districts, 
the peach would grow equally well, There are 
some peach orchards thereabouts, but their own 
ers tell us, if they get a good crop once in foul 
years, it is quite an average of their production. 
In private gardens, closely sheltered, the peach 
is frequently produced in localities, outside of 
which it utterly fails as an orchard fruit, only 
showing an exception to the general rule. And for 
all time to come, we fear, unless some extraor¬ 
dinary atmospheric change shall take place, oui 
once favorite homes of the peach will scarcely 
know it again. Yet so delicious is this fruit, and 
so readily in point of time does it bear, if it bear 
at all, that so long as the slightest hope of success 
remains,every lover of its excellence will strive for 
its production as a luxury for his private table, 
even when abandoning it for market cultivation. 
The present best peach growing soils for market 
purposes, are in the vicinity of the Chesapeake 
and Delaware bays, in Virginia, Maryland, and 
Delaware ; in that part of New-Jersey lying south 
of the Camden and Amboy Railway; and in 
the westerly part of Long Island, near the Sound, 
with perhaps a narrow strip on the south 
border of Connecticut, near the Sound, and pos¬ 
sibly a few miles in small localities, scattered 
along up the Hudson river, half way to Albany. 
From this point westwardly across the State of 
New-York, until a line is met running south from 
Sodus bay, on Lake Ontario, a peach tree is 
scarcely to be found. West of this line, on a 
strip extending south a dozen to twenty miles 
to the head of Lake Ontario, the peach grows 
luxuriantly. Then southerly, skipping the table 
land of the eastern end of Lake Erie, upward, 
west to near Erie in Pennsylvania, on the Lake 
Shore, and from there to Toledo near its 
western extremity, and thence northwardly, in 
Eastern Michigan, to about the latitude of Detroit 
—are the localities now embracing pretty much 
all the peach-growing soils for market purposes, to 
be found in the Atlantic and interior country of 
the middle and northern States. 
Why the finest peaches should grow in abund¬ 
ance within a mile or two of Lake Ontario, in the 
comparatively cold latitude of 43°, equally as well 
as in the sunny soils bordering the Chesapeake in 
39°, while the intermediate hack country south, 
all the way to the Potomac, should either not 
grow the peach at all, or but fitfully, is one of 
those strange phenomena in nature, for which it 
is not altogether easy to account. But such ap¬ 
pears now to be the fact, although they once grew 
and flourished over a considerable portion of it. 
There are some other points contiguous to those 
named, and connected with them by elevation, 
depression, streams, or lakes, which, perhaps, are 
equally favorable for peach growing, but the lines 
of country enumerated are mainly those which 
now furnish our northern peach markets. Even 
some of them are said to be failing, and it would 
be nothing stranger than what has already hap 
pened, if the peach should altogether desert these 
favored soils within the next twenty years, while 
other places, extending over wide belts of the 
country, should once again grow the fruit in per¬ 
fection. 
The peach is probably the most fitful in growth 
and bearing, within our whole circle of Northern 
fruits; and I take leave of it, advising every one 
w.ho owns a spot where it will grow and bear, 
without costing a great deal more than it comes 
to, to attempt and persevere in its cultivation, i 
THE PEAR. 
As the pomological reading public have already 
had a surfeit of this subject from my own and 
other pens, I choose, at present, to say nothing 
further about it, but will proceed with the Pr.BM, 
whenever space may be afforded in your columns. 
