452 Recollections of a Tour made in Mot/, 1839, 



months' tour with his noble employer, of visiting all the finest gardens of 

 France and Italy (an advantage which we question whether any other gardener 

 ever enjoyed), will doubtless devise some plan for giving meaning, not only to 

 the termination of the line of cascades, but to the two ends of the oblong canal 

 on the south front of the house. 



In the kitchen-garden there is much to be learned by the young gardener ; 

 and, indeed, we do not know a better school for young gardeners in the 

 kingdom. The forcing and cropping are, as is usual, chiefly carried on with 

 a view to those months in the latter end of the year when the duke resides at 

 Chatsworth ; but, notwithstanding this, we saw ripe grapes, peaches, and cher- 

 ries in pots. The latter are kept by most gardeners in a low temperature while 

 the blossom is setting, but Mr. Paxton has found a high temperature, even to 

 70°, greatly preferable. There is less early forcing this season than usual, on 

 account of the Duke of Devonshire being on the Continent ; but Mr. Paxton 

 informed us that, in other seasons, there is a considerable quantity of early 

 forcing, both of vegetables and fruits, grapes being required at table all the 

 year round, and in winter and spring 3000 pots of strawberries are forced 

 annually. Washing peach trees over with a mixture of lime and water in 

 autumn has been recommended by Mr. Knight, for the purpose of destroying 

 insects ; and Mr. Paxton has found it not only useful for destroying insects, 

 but that it helps to ripen the wood, or at least to fit it for standing the frost of 

 winter, by extracting part of the moisture from it. After a wet season, this 

 advantage is strikingly apparent. In arranging the vines in the vineries, and 

 the fruit trees on the walls, Mr. Paxton has, as far as it is practicable, classed 

 each kind of fruit by itself, and trained each tree or plant of the same kind 

 into nearly the same size and shape. Thus we have one house entirely filled 

 with the Canon Hall muscat, a favourite grape with Mr. Paxton, another with 

 Hamburgh grapes, others with the common muscat, and with Frontignan, and 

 so on. 



All the green gage plums are brought together on the wall, and all the 

 Flemish pears, &c. These arrangements are for the purpose of simplifying 

 the management, and this is carried so far, that even the number of bunches 

 of grapes that each vine is to bear, or dozens of fruit that are to be allowed 

 to remain on each wall tree after thinning, are predetermined by Mr. Paxton 

 the preceding autumn or winter, according to the strength of the tree and 

 the ripeness of the wood ; and instructions are given accordingly to the 

 foremen of that department. A certain number of currant and gooseberry 

 bushes are trained with single stems of 3 ft. or 4 ft. in height, in open airy 

 parts of the garden, in order to raise the fruit from the ground, and allow the 

 sun and air to be freely admitted to it, and to render it more easily preserved 

 by matting during autumn. 



Perhaps the most important improvement which Mr. Paxton has introduced 

 at Chatsworth is, the mode of ridge and furrow roofing which he has adopted 

 in hot-house building. Some idea may be formed of this from two sashes 

 figured in the first edition of our Encyclopaedia of Gardening, p. 343., and also 

 from the description of the ridge and furrow roof given in the same volume, 

 p. 358. ; and in our Remarks on Hothouses, 4to, published in 1816. The ad- 

 vantages of the plan are: 1. That the roof does not require to be raised so 

 high behind ; because the descent of the water does not depend upon the 

 general slope of the roof, but on the slope of the ridges towards the furrows; 

 and the water in these furrows, being in a larger body than ever it can be on 

 the glass, passes along with proportionate rapidity. 2. That the morning and 

 afternoon sun, by passing through the glass at right angles, produces more light 

 and heat at these times of the day, when they are of course more wanted than 

 at midday. (See our Remarks on Hothouses, p. 23.) 3. The rays of the sun 

 striking on the house at an oblique angle at midday, the heat produced in the 

 house at that time is less intense than in houses of the ordinary kind ; for the 

 reasons given above, and also for the general reason that a greater surface is 

 presented for the light to pass through. 4. More light is admitted at all 



