It would afford me much pleasure to have a small place in your journal to notice a work published by Thomas Affleck, of Washington, Adam's county, Miss., in which I conceive he is attempting to teach southeners erroneous views on the subject of Southern Pomology. The work alluded to is "Affieck's Southern Rural Almanac," and from it I shall make a few quotations in regard to his views on the acclimation of fruit trees, notice them briefly, give my experience, and leave your readers, (which I hope are many in Mississippi,) to draw their own conclusions. The lively interest which I feel on the subject of Southern fruits is the only apology I have to offer for thus attempting to combat that which I know to be erroneous, so far as this section of the State is concerned.

As I have promised to occupy but little of your time, I give you the quotations first Mr. Affleck asks,"Can an individual plant, the growth of a rigorously cold, or even a cool climate, be made to thrive - not merely to exist - in a climate warm as ours? Experience has most amply proven that it can not: and experience, too, acquired at so costly a price, and by so many individuals as to be beyond dispute. Where are the tens of thousands of fruit trees which have been brought to the South from Europe, and the North, and West, in years past! Not one in a hundred are now living; and not one in a thousand ever bore a fruit 1 is is perfectly notorious. The individual trees are here meant Where proper means are used, they may be carried through a season or two, so as to admit of propagation from them here, thus bringing about a gradual and complete acclimation." "It has been said, and with truth, that trees brought southward more than a degree or two, invariably prove unfruitful." "And here we would remark, by the term acclimation we mean a rehabitation, rather, to a climate natural to the species, but to which the growth of wood and bark, made by the individual plant grown in a colder climate, is altogether ununited, and which rarely, if ever, does become adapted to a more southern temperature.

We have all seen northern-grown trees stand, year after year, making faint attempts at growings bearing a few leaves, which are dropped long before the proper season, neither branches nor stems increasing in diameter, and not a fruit to be seen. Yet, young trees propagated from these upon thrifty, southern-grown stocks, grow, thrive, and bear fruit Not always, perhaps, the trees first propagated, a second or third generation being often needed before a thorough acclimation is brought about Young trees, cut to the ground, and compelled to make an entirely new growth, commonly thrive well".

This wholesale and sweeping denunciation against northern and foreign fruit trees, does not at all agree with my experience. I have planted fruit trees received as far north as Boston, from Messrs. HOVEY & Co.; they not only lived, but grew - made fine, large, healthy trees, and produced abundantly the finest peaches I ever beheld - and I have fruited one hundred and ten varieties, many of them of southern growth, and grown in this immediate vicinity (Vicksburg), whore they have the soil, location, climate, and varieties that will enable them to grow as fine peaches as the world has ever seen or tasted. I have seen notices in the New Orleans papers that peaches from there are the best sent to that city. Being familiar with the peaches grown there, I now challenge any orchardist there, or Mr. Affleck either, to show handsomer or better fruit than I can from "these Northern individual trees".

From Messrs. Ellwanger & Barey, Rochester, N. Y., I recieved a lot of pear trees on quince stocks a few years ago; they, too, have grown finely, and produced fruit - one variety weighing as much as one pound twelve ounces (Duchess d'Angouleme). If any fruit grower that has procured trees grown at the "southern nurseries" that are healther or larger of their age, I will give him a silver cup, to be determined by any two individuals competent to judge. I have trees, also, from Saul & Co., Newburgh, N. Y., Minor's nurseries, Clarksville, Tenn., which have fruit on them at this time. These trees can be seen at any time twenty miles east of Vicksburg; also a large number from the Vicksburg nurseries, and of my own working; fine trees. Comparisons can be made from them by any one interested in these matters.

Mr. Affleck says, "a second or third generation being often needed before a thorough acclimation is brought about" Now I should like to know how many varieties of pear, apple, or peach he has produced from the seed worth eating! This is the only way a generation could be brought forth. In looking over his catalogue of fruits, I see nothing but the published varieties in cultivation - no superior seedlings mentioned two or three removes from the original. Let us examine this catalogue again, and see what he says about the ripening of fruits - his pears and apples ripening from one to three months later than with me, and peaches about six weeks. Location, one degree south of this, where fruits mature sooner. This looks to me as if he knew but little about our fruits, and all this gasconade about "acclimated fruits" well grown and adapted to this climate, is all for the purpose of selling his own trees, and injuring the sale of northern and western nurserymen. Affleck's prices are one to three hundred per cent higher than northern nursery rates, and if he should be fortunate enough to convince those who are in want of trees of the great superiority of his, then his purpose will be accomplished.

Let justice be done, however, to these trees brought from other States, from which I have gathered many a basket of luscious high colored fruit, and presented to my friends with the remark from them that they had no idea such fine fruit could be grown here. It might with the same propriety be argued that a foreigner could not live in our climate, or that animals brought from a colder climate would sicken and die immediately.

Mr. Affleck came to this State a few years ago from Ohio, and he seems to hare held his own pretty well When I first met with him, he was selling stock from the above State, yet not a word did I hear him say about their being unsuited for us, "But a change came o'er the spirit of his dreams" since he got among us, and now nothing "brought south more than a degree or two* will begin to do. " Circumstances alter cases," however, and he is now in for the "natives exclusively," determined to. make these bantlings of his own fruitful. Hoping they may prove fruitful to purchasers, and that we shall have a good account of them a few years hence, and not like many that I have known set out the first year hidden in grass, and set fire to "dear off" in the fall, ugrowing less and less" until they finally gave up the ghoet, and the cry was raised that our country was "not adapted to fruit" S. W. Montgomery. - Hinds county, Miss.