560 THE LIBERTON MAINS NURSERY. [Jan. 



and beauty ? The rows of young apple trees, 6 or 7 feet high, 

 planted some 60 yards apart in the strawberry breaks, attract pass- 

 ing travellers in the Dalkeith omnibus in the early summer by the 

 novelty of their mass of blossom. Why should not the reproach 

 of high walls shutting out the landscape from the passing visitant, 

 and grievously complained about, as specially discordant to the 

 surroundings of this neighbourhood, by more than one Canadian, be 

 thus pleasingly done away ? Has the moral training of British 

 homes and School Boards yet to be distanced by the known practice of 

 Japanese and German urchins who walk daily through such rows 

 without touching the fruit ? But an object of thus exhibiting such 

 hedgerows is to show that shelter and profit may be thus simul- 

 taneously attained even now in the more secluded parts of an estate. 

 The apple plants were mostly pyramids, of the best hardy growing 

 sorts, at six years' growth of a corresponding height, and so richly 

 laden with fruit last summer, that some of the branches broke. 

 Indeed, the display of the yield of fruit exhibited at the late Apple 

 Congress in Edinburgh was thoroughly true to nature. Of course 

 the orchardist may also here consult his taste, though that be finical, 

 as to species and varieties as well as shape in the six acres or 

 so devoted to young stocks, wliich are here reared true to seed, and 

 usually then taken to a larger collection at Pilrig and elsewhere, so 

 that cordon and wall training may be practised. But even here 

 standard apples alternate with pyramids, while Victoria plums and 

 other different varieties are interspersed. Pears are not so thriving 

 a crop as in Lanarkshire, though lines of the " Fair Maggie," a 

 Clydesdale favourite, are grown in this orchard. Amongst other 

 notable fruits observed at Liberton were three acres of rasp canes, 

 six years planted, including the Prolific, Fill-Basket, and Baumforth ; 

 many thousand true gooseberry stocks interspersed with currants of 

 various sorts ; celery, and rhubarb, besides the strawberry plots from 

 which the place has gained political fame. Amongst other seed tests 

 of field crops, some acres of Gibson's Drumhead cabbages looked very 

 healthy. But the display of rose stocks, of which there are nearly 

 26,000 budded and unbudded, will always be a prominent attraction 

 to the visitor. Plants of varieties, which when brought from the 

 south of England sickened and died in Edinburgh in severe winters, 

 if reared in this nursery stand well through our northern winters. 



In the forest tree department the larger available space allows 

 interlining to be prosecuted with great benefit to the growing seedlings. 

 After a first year's planting, from seed or otherwise, only every 

 second row of plants is taken out, thereby allowing those left freely 

 to develop root growth, which is further hastened by agitation of the 

 surrounding earth V)y the spade so as to give thorough aeration 



