The Peach is the favorite, and in many instances almost the only fruit tree cultivated by our planters. Requiring a soil of but moderate fertility, its culture is so easy, its enemies and diseases are so few, and the return so speedy, that there is no excuse for being without good peaches.

We escape the yellows and the curl entirely, except in our northern importations, and even these generally recover, though checked for a season. We have the borer, but not abundantly, though he is on the increase. The worm in the fruit itself, is also very trouble, some here, being much more common than at the north. This insect seems to have a preference for certain white fleshed varieties, and the two kinds most to his taste, appear to be the White Blossomed Incomparable, and Morris White. Of these two varieties, you will hardly find a fruit, without from one to three or four of these insects about the stone.

There is also a species of borer - a white grub, about an inch long, that eats directly under the bark, completely through the sap-wood, entirely around the limb or trunk, generally taking those not over an inch in diameter. Concealed by the bark, he eats quietly through the new wood, and very likely the first intimation you may have of his presence, is that your young peach, cherry, plum or perhaps elm trees, (for he is a general feeder,) are broken square off by the wind or their own weight. Happily, this insect is not very abundant.

Of the above enemies to peach culture, the borer and the worm in the fruit are the most serious, but fortunately they are easily managed. If the ground about the tree be kept clean and free from weeds, the borer will not usually attack it, still less if the stem be protected by a few quarts of lime or leached ashes, placed around the collar of the tree in the spring.

If a lodgment be already effected, the worm can either be cut out, as he lies near the surface, or hot water can at this season of the year be poured about, and into his haunts, which will destroy the grub without any injury to the tree. The worm in the fruit, is much less frequent in orchards where the pigs are permitted to consume the fallen fruit.

Another somewhat serious difficulty in peach culture, is a result of bad pruning. It is the tendency to overbear and break down, from the excess of the crop. More peach trees in this vicinity, are destroyed or seriously injured from this cause, than any other.

If the tree be properly shortened in, it will not overbear, and if the branches are not allowed to divide in forks, the tendency to break and split off in case of a full crop is prevented.

But in seasons like the present, the loss of peaches by decay while approaching maturity, is more annoying than anything else in peach culture. When the season is warm and wet, very few kinds of peaches will ripen well, especially on moist or very rich soils.

Indeed, the most suitable soil for the peach, is quite the reverse of that which is best adapted to the apple or quince. These delight in low rich valleys or bottoms, and in such soils, the tree and fruit will continue growing vigorously until late in the season, and apples from such locations may be kept well in the winter. But the peach, to ripen sound and high flavored, requires a dry and but moderately fertile soil; a hill-side being as good a situation as any, and it is all the better if it faces the north.

When the trees are planted, the holes may be made large and enriched, to give a good growth of wood, but afterwards applications of lime, ashes or leaf mould are much better than those which excite rank growth, as they do not impair the flavor of the fruit, or cause it to decay.

It is the general belief here, that this fruit can be propagated from seed, with considerable certainty of procuring good peaches. Not that by planting a peach stone, you will invariably get a peach precisely like the one from which it sprung, but the chances are in favor of such a result, while it is still more probable that the variation of the seedling, if any, will be merely in size or time of ripening. But in very many cases, the seedling is precisely the same as its parent. For example, there is a peach known here as the White English, a cling of good quality, described hereafter. It reproduces itself from the seed with remarkable uniformity. Dr. Cam At has pointed out to me three trees, all seedlings of this variety, and the stones from three different sources, all remarkably uniform in size, shape and quality, and identical with each other and with the fruit from which they originated.

There is also the Blouton cling, described below, that is propagated from seed, with the same certainty. Other instances might be mentioned. From the facts that have come to my knowledge, I am inclined to believe that the stone of a cling is more likely to produce a tree identical with its parent, than one from the free-stone varieties. It is also, the general opinion, that a stone from a seedling, is more likely to reproduce its kind, than if taken from the fruit of a grafted or budded tree. Still free-stone peaches will often reproduce their kind from seed. I have a small free-stone peach, of about second quality, a fine bearer, and one of the earliest, which is very common about here, and invariably raised from the stone. It is much hardier than the first rate budded peaches generally, of the same season, bearing a fine crop the present year, when most of the imported varieties were cut off by frost, a quality which renders this peach desirable.

At the north, I believe, the free-stone peaches are universally preferred, and the trees are mostly propagated by budding. Here most tastes decidedly prefer clingstone peaches, and the great majority of trees are seedlings. There I suppose one would be laughed at who should resort to seedlings, with the hope of getting from them a supply of first rate peaches. Here, until very recently, it was the common, and in truth a tolerable successfill practice. Is it owing to the different class of peaches cultivated in each section, that this diversity of belief and practice exists?