49 



PART III. 

 MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Foreign Notices. 

 GERMANY. 



Fbuit Trees on the Rhine. — The valley of the Rhine, from Cologne to 

 Mentz, a distance of ninety miles, may be called (except in those parts 

 where it occasionally widens considerably) one vast orchard. The rocks 

 and hills on each side are in favourable aspects clothed with vines, and the 

 whole of the bottom of the valley not occupied by the river and roads is 

 thickly planted with fruit trees, which are even scattered, in many of the 

 wider portions, over the ground devoted to corn and garden vegetables. 

 The principal fruit trees are pears, plums, and walnuts, with a small pro- 

 portion of apple trees, and here and there, in a garden, a standard peach or 

 apricot. Of the pears, part are dried in the sun or near the fire, after being 

 pared and cut into slices, and part boiled down into syrup. The plums, 

 which are mostly of the same oblong purple variety, with a coarse 

 and indifferent flavour, are partly eaten fresh, or prepared as sauce for 

 poultry, &c., and partly used after fermentation, for the distillation of 

 an ardent spirit, but are chiefly dried and exported to Holland, whence 

 they are sent to England, and there sold under the name of prunes. 

 From the walnuts oil is obtained to a small extent, but the produce is 

 principally sold for the dessert. The walnut trees were much injured 

 by the intense cold of last winter (1826-7). Of the branches of some 

 the extremities only are blackened and destroyed ; of those of others, half 

 or two thirds of their length ; and of those of others, the entire extent, 

 the trunk alone retaining any vegetable life : however, the vigorous young 

 shoots prove to be sufficiently active to repair the mischief in the course of 

 time. These last present a singular appearance in the landscape, resem- 

 bling trees, with all their branches blackened and scorched by a conflagra- 

 tion, on whose trunks ivy, or some other climbing plant, had subsequently 

 established itself. 



The tourist, who sees the Rhine steam-boats dart past him down the 

 river, at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and which, in connection 

 with those from Rotterdam, resume the conveyance of goods to London from 

 all parts of the adjoining districts in four or five days, cannot help speculat- 

 ing on the facility with which a naturally beneficial traffic in the finer fruits 

 might be carried on between this garden of the Prussian dominions and the 

 British metropolis. The valley of the Rhine enjoys a climate warm enough 

 to ripen as standards all the finer pears and plums (and probably the 

 hardier peaches and apricots), as well as late grapes ; and has, ready built, 

 scores of miles of south fence walls, which would serve for training the ear- 

 lier grapes upon ; and these fruits, thus cheaply produced, might be con- 

 veyed to London at no great e*xpense, and with less risk of damage than in 

 half a day's journey by land. Nor would this plan require any long time 

 for its execution ; as, if the present fruit trees, which are healthy but 



Vol. IV. —No. 13. e 



