202 Gardening Visit to Paris, 



Versailles, though not broken or cracked, was obliged to be re- 

 newed solely on that account. 



The earliest grapes are forced in pits or in narrow frames of 

 unpainted boards nailed to stakes, with the joints caulked with 

 moss ; and on these sashes are laid, and also made air-tight with 

 moss. Heat is supplied by linings of stable-dung, or by hot- 

 water pipes, or by earthenware tubes of smoke or heated air. 

 Where hot water is employed for heating upon the level system, 

 tubes of earthenware are used instead of metal, which are found 

 to answer perfectly, and to be a very great saving. 



Floriculture. The passion for dahlias is as great about Paris as 

 it is about London, and we observed that whenever two stranger 

 gardeners met, their dahlias formed the engrossing subject. 

 Proprietors, as well as their gardeners, enter into competition, 

 not excepting the royal dukes. The quantity of showy flowers in 

 pots brought to the flower-markets, and displayed in the windows 

 and on the side-tables of the coffeehouses, far exceeds anything 

 of the kind to be seen in London, partly owing to the greater 

 demand for flowers in Paris, and partly owing to the greater 

 abundance of solar light. No pelargoniums are to be seen 

 grown rapidly to a large size like those of Mr. Cock of Chis- 

 wick, or Mr. Green, gardener to Lady Antrobus. Carnations 

 are grown to great perfection by Mon. Tripet Le Blanc in a 

 garden near the Invalids ; and the best collection of tulips in 

 France is cultivated by the same highly respectable house. 

 Camellias are grown in large quantities for exportation to 

 America ; and the Abbe Berleze, a distinguished amateur, has 

 a collection of upwards of 600 sorts, which, when we saw them 

 in July, were in excellent health, and very handsome plants. 

 As there is a great demand for plants in pots to decorate rooms 

 in the winter season, heliotropes, lechenaultia, Phylica a'i- 

 cciides, common mignonette, and other plants that flower for a 

 long period together and are not difficult of culture, are trained 

 with single stems and round heads like miniature orange trees, 

 and for these there is a great demand, both in the royal palaces 

 and in the ca/es, and in the private houses of the more wealthy. 



Arboriculture, as compared with floriculture and horticulture, 

 is in a great measure stationary ; but, in stating this, we must 

 not be understood to include the management of forests. The 

 fuel in universal use in France being wood, forest land is of far 

 greater value, proportionately to corn land or grass land, than it 

 is in Britain ; and the management of the forests of the crown 

 being in the hands of scientific men regularly brought up to the 

 profession of forest-surveyors, the art may be considex'ed as 

 undergoing constant improvements; Arboriculture as an art of 

 luxury, by which we mean the introduction of new kinds of 

 hardy trees and shrubs, or the employment of the more rare 



i 



