University of Virginia Library

8587. TREES, Peach.—

I thank you for
your experiment on the peach tree. It proves
my speculation practicable, as it shows that five
acres of peach trees at twenty-one feet apart
will furnish dead wood enough to supply a fire-place
through the winter, and may be kept up at
the trouble of only planting about seventy peach
stones a year. Suppose this extended to ten
fire-places, it comes to fifty acres of ground,
five thousand trees, and the replacing about
seven hundred of them annually by planting so
many stones. If it be disposed at some little distance,
say in a circular annulus from one hundred
to three hundred yards from the house,
it would render a cart almost useless.—
To T. M. Randolph. Ford ed., v, 416.
(Pa., 1792)