FRUIT CULTURE. 221 



The field-bean is a common crop here ; it is now in blossom, 

 and a peculiarly sweet scent from it, every now and then, comes 

 in a full, delicious flood over the hedges. 



The country over which we walked in the afternoon, between 

 Leominster and Hereford, was in some parts extremely beauti- 

 ful : considerable hills, always, when too steep or rocky or sterile 

 for easy cultivation, covered with plantations of trees ; the lesser 

 hills and low lands shaded by frequent orchards. These were 

 generally of apples, sometimes with pears intermixed some- 

 what rarely entirely of pears. Many of them appeared much 

 like the one I have described, and occasionally there was a reg- 

 ularly planted one of fine, thrifty trees. In the poorer orchards, 

 where the trees were of all ages, they frequently were planted 

 not more than fifteen feet apart, and when so, as far as I observ- 

 ed, were invariably small in size and unhealthy. In the better 

 ones, the trees stood oftenest thirty feet apart one way, and 

 twenty another ; rarely at much greater distance than this, but 

 sometimes as much as forty. 



