Preface. vii 



posed, from advantages of climate, but frequently under adverse 

 circumstances. As for city-gardening, what has been done in Paris 

 of late years, on the most magnificent scale ever attempted, is beyond 

 all praise, and worthy of the best attention of all interested in town 

 improvement. Finally, the graceful way the French decorate their 

 apartments with plants, and develope beauty of vegetable form in 

 connexion with brilliant flowers, is well worthy our imitation. 

 However, as so many have during the past year seen their excellent 

 public gardens, and particularly that at Passy, their well-supplied 

 markets, and had a glimpse of their finished and careful fruit cul- 

 ture in the garden of the Exposition, I need hardly plead that we 

 may learn something from the French. France is the orchard of 

 Europe, and not only supplies us with enormous quantities of fruit, 

 much of which we might ourselves grow in the southern countiei 

 of England and Ireland, but she also sends us quantities of salads 

 in the winter and spring months, not grown in the mild and sunny 

 regions, but abundantly in the colder parts, where the climate is 

 quite as severe as our own j and if she only excelled in these two 

 points they would be worthy of the attention of the British culti- 

 vator. 



The climate requires a little consideration. Some have held that 

 our "bad climate" would always prevent us from equalling the 

 French as fruit-growers : others contended that it produced the finest 

 fruits, the French being hard, gritty, sandy, &c. ; while not a few 

 have spoken of " the fine climate of France" as if it were some 

 happy region in which the fruit-cultivator had merely to plant his 

 trees and sit under them, nature doing the rest, and not a country the 

 cliffs of whose coast are as plainly seen from our own shores as if 

 they were those of one of our large estuaries. I am alluding to the 

 climate of Paris and Northern France. France has several distinct 

 climates ; that of Paris does not differ so much from London as 



