36 THE MINIATURE FRUIT GARDEN. 



My walls have a nine-inch foundation of three 

 courses of brickwork in the ground, and they are 

 carried up to four feet above the surface (it is scarcely 

 safe to build them of a greater height), with nine-inch 

 piers fifteen feet apart. The coping for them is made 

 of boiling coal-tar mixed with lime and sand to the 

 consistence of mortar, which is placed on the top of 

 the walls thus -^ so as to carry off the water. This is 

 a most cheap and efficacious covering it can scarcely 

 be called a coping, as it does not project over the 

 edge of the wall. A coping of Portland cement is 

 even better, as it holds the wall together. 



The best description of bricks for these light walls 

 are the patent perforated bricks, but common stock 

 bricks will do. The very best lime should be used 

 (I have found the gray Dorking lime excellent), but 

 any kind of lime made from limestone will answer 

 well; that made from chalk in this county is not strong 

 enough. Their cost, as I learn from my bricklayer, 

 is about six shillings the yard in length ; thus a wall 

 of the above height, twenty yards long, should cost 

 six pounds. In places where bricks are cheap, they 

 may be built for less ; if they are dear and at a dis- 

 tance, their carriage will add to the expense. My 

 walls are six feet apart, and stand endwise, N. E. and 

 S. "W. ; so that one side of each wall has a S. E. aspect, 

 the other a N". W. ; on the former may be grown the 

 late-keeping pears, on the latter the earlier sorts, that 

 ripen from October till the end of November. We 

 thus have one excellent aspect the S. E. ; and one 

 tolerably good the IS". W. : so that no wall space is 

 lost. 



