Horticultural Tour in the Netherlands. 395 



One that he called the lion, but which seemed to be the poire 

 milon, o. melon pear, he told me, with all the lively gestures of 

 a Frenchman, was " tres-grande," tres-superbe," " tres-deli- 

 cieuse ;" in short, that it was " the devil of a pear." I nar- 

 rowly scrutinised the shoots of this ^'^ poire fameu&e" ?a\di felt a 

 strong conviction that it was the pear known in England as 

 Uvedale's St. Germain, or pound pear, recorded in your 

 pages as being sometimes of great weight. I may here re- 

 mark, that I am now exceedingly sceptical when 1 hear our 

 Continental neighbours give descriptions of fruits or plants ; 

 experience has told me that what to their warm imaginations 

 seems so grand and beautiful, to our business-like ideas 

 assumes quite a differen^aspect. 



In the neighbourhood of a city like Bruges, with a popu- 

 lation of 40,000 inhabitants, we should suppose that, at least, 

 one nursery would be found; but nothing of the kind exists, 

 and the few plants exposed in the flower-market (prefectoire) 

 are supplied by the small gardeners. Trees are cultivated 

 in different gardens by amateurs*, and sold to help to pay 

 the gardening expenses : economy is the order of the day ; 

 and an Englishman, unless an eyewitness, can scarcely form 

 an idea to how great an extent it is practised. 



Mr. Chantrell, to give me a thorough view of rural affairs, 

 took me to spend a day with one of his tenants, who held 

 a farm of 200 acres, and which, as all the Flemish farms 

 are very small, was equivalent to a 500- acres farm of good 

 land in England. The tenant, indeed, ranked as a large 

 farmer ; but the contrast between his mode of living and 

 that of an English farmer of the same class was so striking, 

 that, at the risk of being tedious, I will give you a short descrip- 

 tion. A long, low, brick building, with a thatched roof, the 

 counterpart of many of the cottages in the fens of Cambridge- 

 shire (by the way, the self-same method of building exists 

 here generally ; the farm-houses and cottages are all brick, the 

 roofs thatched, and the gables raised a little above the roof), 

 contained, at one end, two rooms (a parlour and kitchen), 

 inhabited by the farmer and his family ; the other end con-^ 

 sisted of the stable and cowhouse ; round the living-room, 

 which was neatly paved with bricks and clean in the extreme, 

 were three or four berths (I can call them by no other name, 

 as they were round the sides of the room in the exact manner 

 of the berths of a ship), and in these, containing neat beds, 

 slept the farmer, his wife, eight children, and a female ser- 

 vant ! I In answer to my enquiry, why they did not sleep in 



* All cultivators of plants, whether for sale or not, are here called 

 amateurs. 



