362 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



dently inferred, from that circumstance, that none are imported. 

 Large quantities of apples are sent from the United States to 

 England, and sold to advantage.* 



The English have not yet learned the value of apples as food 

 for stock. Many of the farmers in the United States, after 

 repeated trials, both for fatting swine, for neat stock, and even 

 for milch cows, rate them in value in the proportion of three 

 bushels of apples as equal to two of potatoes. There are many 

 parts of England, where apples might be cultivated to advantage 

 for this very purpose, where the finest kinds might not ripen, 

 but where the inferior sorts would be likely to yield abundantly. 

 There are many hedgerows where they would grow to advan 

 tage ; and they certainly might be substituted, without loss to 

 beauty, and with a clear gain to utility, for many thorn-trees, 

 ash-trees, and others, which now stand in the parks and open 

 grounds of the country. 



Of pears I have seen several good kinds, but none comparable 

 to the Seckle or the Bartlett. This, however, may be mere 

 matter of personal taste. Melons are grown only under glass. 

 and by artificial heat. The English walnut grows abundantly, 

 and is used both dried and for pickling j and chestnuts are plen 

 tiful. The common shagbark, or hickory nut, I have not met 

 with, though it is sometimes imported. Filberts are cultivated 

 in the county of Kent for the market, on a gravelly soil, where 

 they are raised on small bushes, or trees with one stem, and suf 

 fered to grow not more than five or six feet high. They grow 

 together on the same ground with hops, and pear or apple-trees ; 

 and the proportionate number of each to an acre, is stated at 

 800 hills of hops, 200 filberts, and 40 apple or pear-trees. &quot; The 



* Small adventures sent in this way, as presents from friends to friends, are 

 often so badly packed at home, and so adroitly unpacked on the passage, and 

 withal, are taxed with such a variety of charges in the transit, that one is com 

 pelled, from bitter experience, to give up a much greater pleasure than that of 

 eating the fine fruit the pleasure of enabling one s friends to eat it. The Chris 

 tians, as we are called, have, at least many of them, very little honesty, and, one 

 would be half inclined to think, live upon a system of piracy, or privateering, or 

 reprisals, among themselves. The Turks have more ; for all travellers assert that 

 what is intrusted to their keeping, under a pledge of fidelity, is sure to be held 

 sacred. The violator of such a trust, upon conviction, would be likely to find 

 himself a head shorter. But then the Christians have a great deal more, and a 

 truer, faith ; and after all, common honesty is a very homely virtue, which any 

 body can practise if he would. 



