From Thomas Rivers   9 September 1867

My Dear Sir/.

I am tempted to submit to you the result of a curious cross in peaches.

Some three years since my son wishing to raise, a fine peach with fine flowers, took some pollen from that brilliant beautiful variety the “Double Crimson Chinese peach” & fertilised carefully (ie removing the stamens from the female parent) some flowers of a variety called Leopold the 1^st.² this is a very large melting peach giving large pale flowers. Last spring one of the seedlings raised from the crossed flowers blossomed & to our surprise gave no sign of change, for its flowers were large & pale like its female parent, this tree escaped notice till very recently when it was found full of Almond-like fruit their pulp even harder & more almond-like than those given by the male parent the Double Crimson Chinese Peach.

I enclose two fruit

N^o. 1 is the seedling raised from the fertilised flowers

N^o. 2 is the fruit of the Double Crimson Peach the male parent of N^o. 1

The force of the male in making a fine large peach into a fruit more almond-like than itself is to me most surprising

Pray forgive my intrusion   I am looking anxiously for your new book³

I am My D^r Sir | Y^rs. very truly | Tho^s. Rivers