442 GARDENING AT TAPTON. CHAP. XX. 



terest only in such projected railways as were calculated 

 to open up new markets for their products. 



At home he lived the life of a country gentleman, 

 enjoying his garden and grounds, and indulging his 

 love of nature, which, through all his busy life, had 

 never left him. It was not until the year 1845 that 

 he took an active interest in horticultural pursuits. 

 Then he began to build new melon-houses, pineries, 

 and vineries, of great extent ; and he now seemed as 

 eager to excel all other growers of exotic plants in his 

 neighbourhood, as he had been to surpass the villagers 

 of Killingworth in the production of gigantic cabbages 

 and cauliflowers some thirty years before. He had 

 a pine-house built sixty-eight feet in length and a 

 pinery a hundred and forty feet. Workmen were con- 

 stantly employed in enlarging them, until at length he 

 had no fewer than ten glass forcing-houses, heated with 

 hot water, which he was one of the first in that neigh- 

 bourhood to make use of for such a purpose. He did 

 not take so much pleasure in flowers as in fruits. At 

 one of the county agricultural meetings, he said that 

 he intended yet to grow pine-apples at Tap ton as big 

 as pumpkins. The only man to whom he would " knock 

 under " was his friend Paxton, the gardener to the 

 Duke of Devonshire ; and he was so old in the service, 

 and so skilful, that he could scarcely hope to beat him. 

 Yet his " Queen " pines did take the first prize at a 

 competition with the Duke, though this was not until 

 shortly after his death, when the plants had become 

 more fully grown. His grapes also took the first prize 

 at Rotherham, at a competition open to all England. He 

 was extremely successful in producing melons, having 

 invented a method of suspending them in baskets of 

 wire gauze, which, by relieving the stalk from tension, 

 allowed nutrition to proceed more freely, and better 

 enabled the fruit to grow and ripen. Amongst his 

 other erections, he built a joiner's shop, where he kept 



