OCTOBER. 



473 



dillas, water melons, and rose apples may be attractive in the pages of Paul 

 and Virginia, but would be turned away from an English dessert. Who 

 cares to taste twice the loquats that now come from Madeira ; they are 

 about as good as the worst apricot that ever ripened. Mangosteens can 

 never be had out of palatial gardens ; and as to mangoes, they find no favor 

 by the side of a nectarine. It may be safely asserted that beyond the pine 

 apple, the orange, the banana, the purple guava, the litchi, the mangosteen, 

 and the cherimoyer, there is little to be hoped for among tropical produce 

 fit for a dessert. The four first we have, the three last are all but unattain- 

 able. 



But while we are obliged to express our want of faith in the merit of the 

 greater part of the fruits still unintroduced, there is one application of a 

 heated orchard house to which Mr. Rivers draws attention, and in which we 

 agree with him. The orange tree and all its kindred might really repay the 

 cultivator. In England we hardly know what a good orange is ; but there 

 is no reason why we should not ripen them as well and as easily as grapes. 

 A heated orchard house offers the means. 



" As an ornamental greenhouse and conservatory tree, the orange is an 

 old friend ; and perhaps no tree in the known world has suffered, and does 

 suffer, such vicissitudes of treatment, yet living and seeming to thrive un- 

 der them. It glories in a tropical climate, and yet lives and grows after 

 being poked into those cellar-like vaults used for its winter quarters on the 

 Continent ; it gives flowers in abundance under such treatment, and would 

 even give its fruit — albeit uneatible — if permitted. Nearly the same kind 

 of cultivation has been followed for many many years in England : it has 

 rarely had heat sufficient to keep the tree in full vigor, and its roots in pots 

 or tubs must have suffered severely from having been placed out of doors in 

 summer on our cool damp soil, and in winter on a stone floor still more cold. 

 If roots could make their complaints audible, what moaning should we hear 

 in our orangeries all the winter ! In cultivating the orange for its fruit, the 

 first consideration is to procure some of the most desirable varieties ; those 

 delicious thin and smooth-rinded oranges we receive from St. Michaels ; the 

 Maltese Blood oranges, and the Mandarin would be most desirable ; with 

 the present facilities of transport, young trees of these could be procured. 

 There are also some sweet oranges cultivated in France, of which trees 

 could be readily procured ; but the first-named varieties seem to me most 

 worthy of the careful cultivation to be given them in the tropical orchard 

 house. The first matter of import is the soil best adapted for the orange ; 

 there are many recipes given in our gardening books, but the most simple 

 compost of all, and one that cannot fail, is the following: two parts sandy 

 loam, from the surface of some pasture or heathy cammon, chopped up with 

 its turf, and used with its lumps of turf, about the size of large walnuts, and 

 its fine mould, the result of chopping, all mixed together, one part rotten 

 manure at least a year old, and one part leaf mould ; to a bushel of this 

 compost add a quarter of a peck of silver or any coarse silicious sand — 

 calcareous sand and road sand are injurious — and the mixture will do for all 

 the fruit trees of the tropical orchard house, as well as for oranges. In 

 VOL. XXII. NO. X. 60 



