IN your issue for November, page 342, Mr. R. W. Furnas, of Nebraska, asks: "Are fruit trees gregarious or clannish in their formation or development? " My observation is, that that they are not, for I have seen two trees produced from one pit containing a double seed, each tree producing a peach different from the other. Again, Mr. Clement of Branch county, Michigan, has an apple orchard of 200 trees, the seeds for which were saved from Fall Pippins, gathered from a tree in Ohio; in his orchard there are trees ripening their fruit in August and others later, and some will keep until April and May. Some are large and fine flavored, others are small and inferior; and these are intermixed promiscuously over the orchard. Again, in 1859, I sold five peach trees to a Dr. Merideth, in Hannibal; they were to be one of a kind ripening from the earliest to the latest; in 1861 they all bore, and what was my astonishment to be informed that node of them ripened until the middle of August, and in ten days were all ripe and gone. The trees were planted in rich garden soil, and made a vigorous growth. I had no reason for doubting the statement, yet it was a circumstance which I wished to make amends for to the fullest extent.

I visited the place the next summer, and fouud the trees bearing according to order, and that the season before was only a sport. Although the instance which he gives would rather go to show that there was a clannish developement in his case; at least it's a condition which I would not like to attempt to produce from seed, and one that would require care on the part of both buddcr and planter to produce from budded trees. I am aware that our Western soil is spotted, there being often three or four different varieties of soil in one forty acre lot, which will make quite a difference in the size and color of fruit, but I don't think there is enough to change a yellow, freestone to a red cling. Perhaps with another year's experience, friend Furnas may find some way to account for this singular circumstance, or that it was only a sport. S. F. T.