The Peach Tree.
Persica malus.
A tree very frequent against our garden walls. The trunk is covered with a brown oark. The branches grow irregularly. The leaves are beautiful: they are long, narrow, and elegantly serrated at the edges. The blossoms are large, and of a pale red. The fruit is too well known to need much description: it consists of a soft pulpy matter, covered by a hairy skin, and inclosing a hard stone, in which is a kernel of a pleasant bitter taste.
The flowers are to be used. A pint of water is to be poured boiling hot on a pound weight of peach blossoms; when it has stood four and twenty hours, it is to be poured off, through a sieve, without squeezing, and two pounds of loaf sugar is to be dissolved in it, over the fire: this makes an excellent syrup for children. It purges gently, and sometimes will make them puke a little. They have so frequent occasion for this, that people who have children, have continual use for it.
