Fruit-growing on Railway Embankments. 18 1 



would suffice to supply a couple of Covent Gardens j but most 

 conspicuous of all, perhaps, are the railway embankments. Here 

 we have a space quite unused, and on which for hundreds of 

 miles may be planted fruit trees, that will after a few years 

 yield profit, and continue to do so for a long time with but 

 little attention. I am not aware that any attempt has been 

 made to cultivate fruit trees on them in England ; but learning 

 that one had been instituted in France, I went one day to see the 

 experiment, which has been made for a distance of eight leagues or 

 so along the line from Gretz to Colommiers Chemin de fer de 

 1'Est. The French see the great advantage of utilizing spots at 

 present worthless in this way, and are beginning to work at it -, but 

 to all intents and purposes they are nearly as backward as ourselves. 

 It is true you now and then hear of somebody becoming a rentier 

 by planting a barren mountain side with cherries, but on the whole 

 they have nearly as much to do as we have with regard to fruit 

 culture in waste and profitless places. However, they have com- 

 menced, and it is most likely the first trial will be a profitable one, 

 though by no means so inexpensive as like ones might be made. 

 A cheap fence of galvanized wire runs on each side of the line, and 

 on this pear trees are trained so that their branches cross each other, 

 and they are, though only in their third year, nearly at the top of 

 the fence. In some parts they are trained in like manner on the 

 slender but very cheap and slight kind of wooden fence, so com- 

 mon in France. By training them in a way to cross and support 

 each other, before the time the fence decays the trees are perfectly 

 self-supporting, and form a very neat fence themselves. This is a 

 plan well worth adopting in many gardens where neat dividing 

 lines are desired. Some good fruit was gathered last year, but of 

 course the trees are too young to bear anything worth while for 

 another year. Judging from appearances, they will bear abun- 

 dantly this year, and for many to come. But this, although some- 

 thing in the right direction, does not occupy more than a mere 

 thread of the space on each side of the line, and I cannot but think 

 that much more might be done on the remaining surface by plant- 



