376 Notes and Reflections during a Tour : — 



shading. By sowing broadcast also, the progress of the 

 seedlings is much more rapid ; and it deserves to be better 

 known by English nurserymen, that when French gardeners 

 wish to forward the growth of camellia stocks or cuttings, or 

 young plants of any of the more strong-growing green-house 

 shrubs, they do not put them at once into little pots as we do, 

 but plant them in beds of earth in their pits or frames for a 

 month or two, and afterwards, when they are well rooted and 

 have made a good shoot, they transplant them into pots. 

 This mode is, perhaps, more necessary for their dry atmo- 

 sphere than for ours; but we have no doubt it might be 

 advantageously adopted in this country, on the principle of 

 saving labour and hastening maturity. Mr. Calvert has the 

 merit of having endeavoured to increase the commerce of 

 heaths, camellias, pelargoniums, and Australian plants in this 

 part of Fi-ance, and that of roses and orange trees in England ; 

 his efforts, we believe, have not been without a certain degree 

 of success. He is, however, engaged in various other pursuits, 

 and is much from home, which may be one reason why his 

 nursery was not in such good order as we could wish to see a 

 specimen of an English nursery in a foreign country. The 

 mode of getting the work done is worthy of notice; only two 

 or three gardeners are regularly kept, and every now and then, 

 when the weeds get beyond the economic point, and other 

 labours accumulate, a quantity of military are hired for a day 

 or two to get through it. Mr. Calvert arrived at Rouen the 

 day before we did, after an absence of several weeks, and we 

 were told that in three days after we visited him, he put thirty 

 soldiers to work, and removed every weed from his premises. 

 We must not forget to notice his practice of shortening the 

 young shoots of the rose acacia in July, by which means they 

 make second shoots in August, and are kept flowering all the 

 autumn till stopped by the frost. 



Detennemare^ & Nursery , and a few others that we glanced 

 at, offer nothing for particular remark. The great leading 

 articles in all of them are standard roses, and the fashionable 

 flower the georgina. 



Vallefs Nursery is almost limited to the culture of orange 

 trees and roses. Of the latter M. Vallet has introduced 

 various new sorts into England, (p. 205.) The stocks are 

 planted very thick, perhaps two in a square foot, in beds 4 ft. 

 wide with alleys 1 ft. 6 in. wide, so that they are most con- 

 veniently pruned and budded from the alleys, and the effect 

 when they are in blossom is remarkably good. This gentle- 

 man is rather a keeper of orange trees, than a cultivator of 

 them. He has a hundred trees, several centuries old, in large 



