ature of
the soil. In stiff clays the potatoes are invariably watery and
waxy, but in light sands and loams, they are tolerably dry and
mealy. Manure also deteriorates their quality, and in general
they are best when grown on new lands. Potatoes are in
consequence very commonly planted in the fields, as a first crop,
and are found to pulverize land just brought from a state of
nature into cultivation more than other root. An abundant crop of
wheat, barley, or oats, may be safely calculated to succeed them;
more particularly if a light covering of manure be applied at the
time of their planting.

[* For the Colonial Garden, see
Appendix.]

The colony is justly famed for the goodness and variety of its
fruits: Peaches, apricots, nectarines, oranges, grapes, pears,
plums, figs, pomegranates, raspberries, strawberries, and melons
of all sorts, attain the highest degree of maturity in the open
air; and even the pineapple may be produced merely by the aid of
the common forcing glass. The climate, however, of Port Jackson,
is not altogether congenial to the growth of the apple, currant,
and gooseberry; although the whole of these fruits are produced
there, and the apple, in particular, in very great abundance; but
it is decidedly inferior in quality to the apple of this country.
These fruits, however, arrive at the greatest perfection in every
part of Van Diemen's Land; and as the climate of the country to
the westward of the Blue Mountains, is equally cold, they will
without doubt attain there an equal degree of perfection; but the
short period which has elapsed since the establishment of a
settlement beyond these mountains, has not allowed the
nltramontanians to make the experiment.

Of all the fruits which I have thus enumerated as being
produced in this colony, the peach is the most abundant and the
most useful. The different varieties which have been already
introduced, succeed one another in uninterrupted succession from
the middle of November to the latter end of March: thus filling
up an interval of more than four months, and affording a
wholesome and nutritious article of food during one-third of the
year. This fruit grows spontaneously in every situation, on the
richest soils, as on the most barren; and its growth is so rapid
that if you plant a stone, it will in three years afterwards bear
an abundant crop of fruit. Peaches are, in consequence, so
plentiful throughout the colony, that they are every where giv