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44 FBUITS IN THEIR SEASON.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
, . , —' Xi. The Peach. Its Itaxy *' Hom...
_appearance had long been desired , when M . Desprez , a judge at Alengoncame to Paris in 1810 as deputy to the legislative corps ,
, and , being a lover of nature , spent much of his leisure in the Imperial nursery-grounds at the Luxembourg , in the study of fruit-trees _
and of peaches in particular . Looking often very attentively at the leaves , lie was struck one day with the glands or little red
protuberances which many of them have on the edges of their petioles , or on their first serrationsand which no one had yet observed ; and oil
_carefully studying their , form found that some peach-trees never had anyothers had them always in a regular globular formand in
, , others again they were invariably of an irregular or kidney-shape . He mentioned this to Messrs . ' Porteau arid Turpin , the learned
editors of the new and enlarged edition of Du Hamel _, who also beginning to study them soon found that he "was quite correct in
his observations , and owning with shame that they who had spent their lives in studying fruit-trees had never noticed these glands
until pointed out to them hj the legal amateur , acknowledged them to be an infallible mode of distinguishing varieties , most valuable as ''
it could be referred to at almost any season , and adopted therefore in all subsequent works , even in England , peaches being now
always divided into kinds without glands on the leaves , and with globular or reniform glands . The fruits , accordingly as they
part from or adhere to the stone , are divided into free-stones ( jpeches ) and cling-stones ( _pavzes . ) The tree flowers very early in the spring ,
and its pink rosaceous blossoms , with numerous red anthers surrounding a single pistileven when they escape the blighting east
, wind which is England's vernal bane , and which too often prema-,. turely withers themsoon drop offleaving the ovary to mature into
a large fleshy drupe , covered with , a thick velvet-like skin , and containing an oval stone irregularly furrowed with numerous
corrugations , within which is a kernel strongly impregnated with hydrocyanic or prussic acid . The flesh of this drupe is so juicy that it is
found when ripe to contain eighty per cent , of water . The fruit varies in size from the " Monstrous Pavy of Pomponne , " which
often measures fourteen inches in circumference , to the dwarfs grown in France on tiny trees about a foot high , which are placed
in pots upon the dessert-table to display their eight or ten peaches , each about two inches in diameter , which , however , are mere
curiosities , being too bitter to be eaten . As regards abundant produce in , favorable seasonsthe peach may rivalany tree in the teeming
condition of its branches , , of which a notable example was afforded in 1816 , when thirty-two trees in the garden of Wortley Hall , most of
which had been planted in 1801 , brought forth an aggregate of no less than 15 , 184 peaches and nectarines . The tree is popularly
supposed to be particularly short-lived , but this is probably an opinion imported from Francewhere the custom of grafting the
_jDeach upon almond stocks induces , a premature decay , so that they
rarely survive their twentieth year ; for , grown as seedlings , oir
44 Fbuits In Their Season.
44 _FBUITS IN THEIR SEASON .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1861, page 44, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091861/page/44/
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