FRUIT GARDEN. 259 



in northern latitudes and cold situations, the espa- 

 lier form (as practised near Paris) may be not only 

 useful, but indispensable. This differs in nothing 

 from the ordinary mode but in pruning less severely. 

 The cultivators at Montreuil, instead of shortening 

 the branches to three or four eyes, leave them fif- 

 teen or twenty feet long, and lay them down in such 

 way as shall soonest and most completely enable 

 them to cover the frame to which they are at- 

 tached. 



With regard to product, "few and fine" is the 

 general maxim. The thinning discipline must not, 

 therefore, be omitted; because it is that which will 

 best fulfil both parts of the rule. (See on this head, 

 article Apple-tree.) 



The gum and canker are the diseases most com- 

 mon to the plum-tree, for which heading down is 

 the best remedy.* When wasps attack the fruit 

 they are most effectually kept off by nettings. 



The CRANBERRY (Vaccinium macrocarpum) . This 

 plant is a native of our own country, and merits 

 more attention than has been given to it, as the ex- 

 periments of the late Sir Joseph Banks prove at 

 once the facility and the profit of making it an ob- 

 ject of garden culture.f 



Growing naturally in swamps and bogs, it has 

 been too hastily concluded that it would not succeed 

 but in grounds " often inundated and always wet." 

 But that this belief is erroneous can no longer be 

 doubted, as we learn from London, an eminent 

 practical writer, that " the cranberry can always 

 be made to thrive on the margin of a pond ;" while 

 the experiments of Salisbury (an amateur of the art) 

 demonstrate that " it will even bear abundantly in 

 pots filled with bog earth, and placed under the 



* Abercrombie. 



f On a bed eighteen feet square, he raised three and a half 

 bushels, Winchester measure. See Hort. Trans., vol. i.,p. 71. 



