Chinese Cling holds a high place in the esteem of American pomologists for its intrinsic value, because it was the first peach in one of the main stems of the peach-family to come to America, and because it is the parent, or one of the parents, of a great number of the best white-fleshed peaches grown in this country. The variety is not now remarkable for either fruit- or tree-characters, being surpassed in both by many of its offspring, except, possibly, in quality. The flavor is delicious, being finely balanced between sweetness and sourness, with sweet predominating, and with a most distinct, curious and pleasant taste of the almond. The fruits are too tender for shipment and very subject to brown-rot. The trees are weak-growers, shy-bearers, tender to cold and susceptible to leaf-curl. Chinese Cling created a sensation in pomology when it was brought to America because it was very different from any other peach then here and was superior to any other in several characters. Its seedlings quickly came into prominence with the result that possibly a hundred or more of the varieties named in _The Peaches of New York_ have descended from it. The attempt to hold it and its seedlings in a distinct group fails, as we have tried to show in discussing groups of peaches, because through hybridization they are hopelessly confused with other stocks. The color-plate is an excellent illustration of Chinese Cling. Chinese Cling was found growing in the orchards south of the city of Shanghai, China, by Robert Fortune, the indefatigable English botanist, who was sent to China by the London Horticultural Society to collect useful and ornamental plants. Fortune sent the peach to England in 1844 under the name Shanghai, a name which it retains, with variable spellings, in Europe. Chinese Cling was imported as potted plants to America in 1850 by Charles Downing through a Mr. Winchester, British consul at Shanghai, China. Downing forwarded one of the trees to Henry Lyons, Laurel Park, Columbia, South Carolina, with whom the variety first fruited in America. Lyons called the new fruit "Chinese Peach." In 1871 the American Pomological Society placed Chinese Cling on its recommended list of varieties, a place it still holds. [Illustration: CHINESE CLING] Tree rather weak in growth, upright-spreading, round-topped, not very hardy, medium in productiveness; trunk thick; branches stocky, reddish-brown mingled with light ash-gray; branchlets with short internodes, olive-green more or less overlaid with dark red, smooth, glabrous, with numerous large and very small, inconspicuous lenticels.