84* THE MANSE GARDEN. 



three or four feet from the walk, and twice as near to 

 one another as they should afterwards be when full 

 grown. The reasons for this close planting are, as 

 formerly stated, that the value of a few crops is more 

 than the expense of the trees, your rails are sooner 

 covered, and when the trees begin to meet and in- 

 commode one another you can then, having ascer- 

 tained their various qualities, give scope to the best, 

 by diminishing or rooting out the less worthy. For 

 one or two years, after the meeting has taken place, 

 you may delay the pain of execution by allowing the 

 young shoots to pass one another on the opposite 

 sides of the rails. 



To incur no more expense than is necessary, the 

 stakes may be placed two feet apart, in which case 

 the annual shoots will require to be conducted from 

 one resting place to another, by pieces of lath, or 

 wild brier, or willow of two years' growth. These 

 conductors require a firm and separate tying, distinct 

 from that which fastens more loosely the living wood ; 

 they thus give strength to the rails, and provide for 

 straighter training than is commonly done by having 

 the stakes twice as thickly set, and consequently at 

 double the expense of timber. 



It might be worth while, as an interesting experi- 

 ment, to construct the rails, or some portion of them, 

 after the manner of a Venetian blind, but having the 

 boards, one for each branch, broader and farther dis- 

 tant; and set to a proper slope, meeting the sun's 

 rays, so as to give the espalier nearly the full benefit 

 of a wall, together with a greater freedom from mil- 

 dew and troublesome insects. The boards thus placed 

 above one another, would, except the uppermost, cut 



