230 FRUIT CYLINDERS. 



thatched cottage will enable a tree to flower and perfect fruit that 

 elsewhere would not thrive. The Fig wants but a very little to 

 make it a hardy fruit-tree, for we see it at Hedsor Lodge, on the 

 banks of the Thames, fruiting freely as a standard. Certain 

 sheltered spots again are famous for Plums, as Dittisham parish 

 on the Dart, where the noted Dittisham Plum (a very superior 

 Plum, after the fashion of an Orleans), is cultivated for preserving, 

 and again in Staffordshire, on the Churnet, below Alton, there is 

 another Plum ground, where shelter and dryness appear to be 

 the only good properties of the locality. 



It is, therefore, evident that a wholesale system of fruit-growing 

 might be established in well-selected spots with evident advantage 

 to the community, but fruit walls for this purpose could not be 

 built without an unreasonable outlay ; besides they are net move- 

 able, and in the case of a tree failing on a wall, a tree has to be 

 torn up by the roots and put there to replace it, but here you 

 leave the tree in the earth and transplant the sheltering trellis 

 to it. 



No other system ever offered to horticulture possessed the 

 means of protection which this does, for there is now only one 

 side of the tree exposed, and any protection laid on the tops of 

 the columns will be so elevated that a person may walk under to 

 gather fruit, &c, and it must be admitted that all fruits want a 

 further protection than that from frost upon their blossoms. 

 Cherries and Plums require netting from birds. Gooseberries 

 and Currants the same. To cultivate Raspberries and Straw- 

 berries without protection would only be labour lost, for the birds 

 would take all ; even Apples and Pears are pilfered when exposed, 

 and in the case of keeping such as Gooseberries and Currants on 

 the trees till late in the season for dessert, they can now be snugly 

 housed. I need only name one further advantage, and it is this, 

 that the ripening of the wood depends mainly upon the amount of 

 dryness, not only in the air but in the earth, and any one now, by 

 regulating the communication between his tarpaulin overhead 

 and his drain tiles under ground, may lessen foul weather 

 amazingly, and, whatever the farmer may say of the fertilising 

 effects of rain, I should prefer the great bulk of our winter storms 

 to pass over fruit-tree grounds without wetting them. It is the 

 sweltering hollows, coombs, or valleys that yield the best fruits, 

 where the staple is good and the sun pours in and the storms 

 blow over ; therefore whatever is most convenient should be used 

 for shelter all round, and in the orchard these cylinders will 



