PRACTICAL BOTANICAL RESULTS. 69 



enormous quantities upon white walls ten to twelve feet high, 

 with movable copings two feet wide. These walls or screens 

 are built of brick, stone, or even of felt, parallel to each other 

 in an east and west direction, and thirty feet apart, and only 

 the south side is utilized. In this way the crop is certain and 

 of the finest quality, as the prices obtained indicate. Apples 

 of the Calville Blanc variety, raised on Paradise stocks, with 

 shelter, are often sold at from fifty cents to seventy-five cents 

 each, and are sent even to St. Petersburg, where they are 

 sold for one dollar and fifty cents apiece. The finest winter 

 pears, as Easter Beurre, are produced in perfection only on 

 walls ; while many others, as Duchesse d'Angouleme, are 

 grown admirably on trellises with a movable roof for protec- 

 tion from cold rains and frosts during spring. At Montreuil, 

 are two. hundred and fifty gardens devoted to the wall culture 

 of the peach, the land between the walls being planted with 

 strawberries, asparagus and other vegetables. As experi- 

 mental culture must occupy a long period of years, it is of 

 the utmost consequence to have it tried upon lands inalien- 

 ably devoted to the object, lest they be sold for house-lots, 

 which threatens the famous pear-orchard where our eminent 

 pomologist. Colonel Wilder, has experimented with so great 

 success in years past. The Royal Horticultural Society now 

 cultivate in their fruit department, at Chiswick, near London, 

 four hundred varieties of apples, three hundred and fifty 

 of pears, three hundred of plums, four hundred and thirty of 

 cherries, two hundred and twenty of grapes, and one hundred 

 of figs. From this garden were distributed, in 1871, seventy 

 thousand plants, sixty thousand packages of seeds, and four 

 thousand five hundred packages of scions and cuttings. The 

 possible benefit to be derived from such collections, properly 

 managed, must be immense. The importance of having such 

 standard plantations for the purpose of verifying names and 

 comparing varieties, is shown in the fact that in England it has 

 been discovered, at the exhibitions of the Horticultural Society, 

 that the Black Hamburg gi-ape is sold under thirty-six dif- 

 ferent names, the Black Cluster under forty-six, and the 

 Grosse Mignonne peach under forty. If this can happen in 

 the case of common kinds of fruit, what mistakes may not be 

 looked for in those which are less known ? 



