Richmond Daily Times

CITY

FRUIT.-We have rarely known our markets to be more abundantly supplied with fruit than they have been the present season. The supply of peaches, melons and cantelopes has never been larger, and prices have been reasonably moderate. The quality of the fruit too, has been generally good; the melons excelling in size and flavour even the produce of former seasons whilst the peaches are, many of them, superb. The finest peaches, however, which we have seen, were gathered from a thrifty orchard belonging to Mr. James Via, nurseryman, about a mile west of the city. A few evenings since we took a pleasant stroll over the beautiful landscape lying between the city and the town of Sydney—entered the enclosure of Mr. Via, a little beyond Sydney, and partook of some of his choicest fruit. He has in his nursery, a fine collection of fruit trees, of all kinds, suited to our soil and climate; and we are sure we cannot perform a more acceptable service to those desirous of procuring choice fruit-bearing trees, than by directing them to the neat and thrifty nursery of Mr. Via.

A very erroneous impression appears to prevail generally as to the effects of fruits upon physical comfort. So far from a generous consumption of ripe fruits being productive of ill effects, a writer in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal contends, with great force, that the reverse is true. "The very maladies, (says the writer,) commonly assumed to have their origin in a free use of apples, peaches, cherries, melons and wild berries, have been quite as prevalent, if not equally destructive, in seasons of scarcity." This we believe to be indisputably true; as also the following conclusion, arrived at by the same writer : "No one, we imagine, ever lived longer, or freer from the paroxysms of disease, by discarding the delicious fruits of the lands in which he finds a home. On the contrary, they are necessary to the preservation of health, and are therefore caused to make their appearance at the very time when the condition of the body, operated upon by deteriorating causes not always understood, requires their grateful, renovating influence." Let the people, then, indulge freely in the use of sound, ripe fruits-the anathemas of quacks in medicine, to the contrary notwithstanding