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 and supplied many specimens to G. Johnston, who was then preparing his History of the British Zoophytes (1838). It was here too that he first found fossils in some of the older rocks previously regarded as unfossiliferous—the discovery of which proved the presence of Bala Beds (Ordovician or Lower Silurian) in the neighbourhood of Gorran Haven. In 1841 he read a paper before the British Association at Plymouth “On the Fossil Organic Remains found on the south-east coast of Cornwall,” and in 1843 he brought before the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall an account of his discovery of fish remains in the Devonian slates near Polperro. Peach was transferred for a time to Fowey, and in 1849 to Scotland, first to Peterhead and then to Wick (1853), where he made acquaintance with Robert Dick of Thurso. He collected the old red Sandstone fishes; and during a sojourn at Durness he first found fossils in the Cambrian limestone (1854). Peach retired from the government service in 1861, and died at Edinburgh on the 28th of February 1886.

 PEACH, the name of a fruit tree which is included by Bentham and Hooker (Genera plantarum, i. 610) under the genus Prunus (Prunus persica), its resemblance to the plum is indeed obvious. Others have classed it with the almond as a distinct genus, Amygdalus, while others again have considered it sufficiently distinct to constitute a separate genus, Persica. In general terms the peach may be said to be a medium-sized tree, with lanceolate, stipulate leaves, borne on long, slender, relatively unbranched shoots, and with the flowers arranged singly, or in groups of two or more, at intervals along the shoots of the previous year's growth. The flowers have a hollow tube at the base bearing at its free edge five sepals, an equal number of petals, usually concave or spoon-shaped, pink or white, and a great number of stamens. The pistil consists of a single carpel with its ovary, style, stigma and solitary ovule or twin ovules. The fruit is a drupe (fig. 1) having a thin outer skin (epicarp) enclosing the flesh of the peach (mesocarp), the inner layers of the carpel becoming woody to form the stone, while the ovule ripens into the kernel or seed. This is exactly the structure of the plum or apricot, and differs from that of the almond, which is identical in the first instance, only in the circumstance that the fleshy part of the latter eventually becomes dry and leathery and cracks open along a line called the suture.

The nectarine is a variation from the peach, mainly characterized by the circumstance that, while the skin of the ripe fruit is downy in the peach, it is shining and destitute of hairs in the nectarine. That there is no essential difference between the two is, however, shown by the facts that the seeds of the peach will produce nectarines, and vice versa, and that it is not very uncommon, though still exceptional, to see peaches and nectarines on the same branch, and fruits which combine in themselves the characteristics of both nectarines and peaches. The blossoms of the peach are formed the autumn previous to their expansion, and this fact, together with the peculiarities of their form and position, requires to be borne in mind by the gardener in his pruning and training operations. The only point of practical interest requiring mention here is the very singular fact attested by all peach-growers, that, while certain peaches are liable to the attacks of mildew, others are not. In the case of the peach this peculiarity is in some way connected with the presence of small glandular outgrowths on the stalk, or at the base of the leaf. Some peaches have globular, others reniform glands, others none at all, and these latter trees are much more subject to mildew than are those provided with glands.

The treatment in horticulture of the peach and nectarine is the same in every respect. To perpetuate and multiply the choicer varieties, peaches and nectarines are budded upon plum or almond stocks. For dry situations almond stocks are preferable, but they are not long-lived, while for damp or clayey loams it is better to use certain kinds of plums. Double-working is sometimes beneficial, thus an almond budded on a plum stock may be rebudded with a tender peach, greatly to the advantage of the latter. The peach border should be composed of turfy mellow