Chap. XXIV.] FRUIT CULTURE. 431 



For the Southern Couiitica. 

 IMufk Iseliia Urown Itscliiii Brown Turkey Coureourcellc IJliuichc. 



Medlars. 



Tlio Nottin^'lmni is tlic best kiiiJ. 



Nutf. 



Lambert's Filbert (Kentish cob) is the best. 



ruiple Filbert Pearsou's Prolific Co^ford (also goo.l). 



Of the Quinces the Portugal is the best. 



Of the various waste spaces where good fruit might be grown 

 the most conspicuous are the railway-embankmeuts. Here we 

 liave a space quite unused, and on which for hundreds of miles 

 fruit-trees may be planted, that will after a few years yield 

 profit, and continue to do so for a long time with but little 

 attention. I am not aware that any attempt has been made to 

 cultivate fruit-trees on these places in England ; but learning 

 that one had been instituted in France, I went to see the 

 experiment which has been made for a distance of eight leagues 

 or so along the line from Gretz to Colommiers — Chemin de fer 

 do I'Est, The French see the great advantage of utilising, in this 

 way, spots at present worthless, and they are beginning to work 

 iit it. 



A cheap fence of galvanised wire runs on each side of the line, 

 and on this Pear-trees are trained so that their branches cross 

 each other ; and, though only in their fourth year, they are at 

 the top of the fence. In some parts they are trained in like 

 manner on the slender but very cheap and slight kind of wooden 

 fence, so common in France. By training them in a way to 

 cross and support each other, before the time the fence decays 

 the trees are perfectly self-supporting, and form a very neat 

 fence themselves. This is a plan well worth adopting in many 

 gardens where neat dividing-lines are desired. 



Those who have travelled by day from Brussels to Louvaiu, or 

 from Leopoldsdorf to Soleman, on the Belgrad, Gratz, and Vienna 

 line, cannot fail to have remarked that the railway is flanked at 

 intervals on both sides by Apple and Pear trees, either growing 

 naturally or trained as espaliers. 



Accordin;;!; to Dr. Morren's report in the ' Belgique Ilorticolc ' of February 18G9, 

 the trees planted three years previimsly between tlie first-uamcd towns had so 



