The young trees coming up, after any of the old trees split off or die, and are cut away, will bear fruit the second year; but this fruit will not ripen so easily as the fruit on the old trees from the same stem. Three years after the trees are cut off by the ground, they will be sufficiently large and bushy, to shade the ground so as to prevent grass of any kind from matting or binding the surface, so as to injure the trees; therefore; ploughing is useless, as well as injurious; useless, because nothing can be raised in the orchard, by reason the trees will shade all the ground, or nearly so; injurious, because either the roots, stocks or branches will be wounded: neither is it necessary ever to manure peach-trees, as manured trees will always produce less and worse fruit, than trees that are not manured; although by manuring your peach-trees, they will grow larger, and look greener and thicker in the boughs, and cause a thicker shade, yet on them will grow very little fruit, and that little will be of a very bad kind generally looking as green as the leaves, even when ripe, and later than those that never have been manured." None of the varieties that we now grow was then cultivated. Taking the sorts described in 1800 we find that four were red-fleshed; eight, yellow-fleshed; thirty-four, white-fleshed; eighteen, freestones; nineteen, clingstones, and twelve nectarines. There were no flat, or Peento, peaches but a sort known as Venus's Nipple was seemingly a typical beaked peach. In 1800, Baltimore was the best market for peaches in America and was near the Chesapeake peach-belt. We are fortunate in having a description of peach-growing around Baltimore at about that time. Richard Parkinson, an English farmer and agricultural writer, came to America to rent one of George Washington's farms in 1798. The two could not agree and Parkinson rented a farm near Baltimore on which was a peach-orchard. He published an account of his experiences in two very readable volumes and from this work we quote in part the story of his peach-orchard. Perhaps allowances should be made, for Parkinson seems to have been soured by failure and some of his expressions are such as might be expected from an opinionated Englishman undergoing new experiences in America just after the Revolution. Parkinson says:[142] "It would astonish a stranger to see the quantity of fruit in these parts, which makes the country to look beautiful twice a-year, when the trees are in blossom, and when the fruit is on the trees ripe. But the fruit is chiefly for the use of hogs and can be applied to no better purpose.