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This is a fruit about half-way between a peach and a plum. The stone is like the plum, and the flesh rather more like the peach. It is esteemed, principally, because it comes earlier in the season than anything else of the kind.

It is used as a dessert-fruit, for preserving, drying, and various purposes in cookery. It does well on plum-stock, and best in good deep, moist loam, manured as the peach and plum. The best varieties produce their like from the seed. Seedlings are more hardy than any grafted trees. Grafts on plums are much better than on the peach. The latter seldom produce good hardy, thrifty trees, although many persist in trying them. The apricot is a favorite tree for espalier training against walls and fences, in small yards, where it bears luxuriantly. It also makes a good handsome standard tree for open cultivation.

It is as much exposed to depredations from curculio as the plum, and must be treated in the same way. Cultivation same as peach. It produces its fruit, like the peach, only on wood of the previous year's growth; hence it must be pruned like the peach. Especially must it be headed in well, to secure the best crop.

Varieties are quite numerous, a few of which only deserve cultivation. Any of the nine following varieties are good:—

Brown's Early.—Yellow, with red cheek. A very productive, great grower.

Newhall's Early.—Bright-orange color, with deep-red cheek. A good cling-stone variety, every way worthy of cultivation.

Moorpark.—Yellow, with ruddy cheek. An enormous bearer, though of slow growth. It is a freestone variety of English origin, and needing a little protection in our colder latitudes.

Dubois' Early Golden.—Color, pale-orange. Very hardy and productive. In 1846, the original tree at Fishkill, N. Y., bore ninety dollars' worth of fruit.

Large Early.—Orange, but red in the sun. An excellent, early, productive variety.

Hemskirke.—Bright-orange, with red cheek. An English variety, vigorous tree, and good bearer.

Peach.—Yellow, with deep-brown on the sun-side. An excellent French variety.

Breda.—Deep-orange, with blush spots in the sun. A vigorous, productive, African variety.

Roman.—Pale-yellow, with occasionally red dots. Good for northern latitudes.

From these, planters may select those that best suit their localities and fancy. They are a little liable to be frost-bitten in the blossoms, as they bloom very early. Otherwise they are always very productive. They are ornamental, both in the leaf and in the blossom. Eaten plain, before thoroughly ripe, they are not healthy; otherwise, harmless and delicious. Every garden should have half a dozen.