276 Construction of Fruit Corridors. 



wood, and all in vain; for the trees must have their native warm 

 earth and mild air better imitated than it is now, before they 

 produce fruits as their ancestors did in the better country. As 

 bottom heat is so very favourable to exotics of all kinds when 

 properly applied, surely it needs little logic to show that bottom 

 cold must, on the contrary, be highly injurious; and the first 

 grand stride in making our climate milder is, to endeavour, if 

 possible, to get the elements under our control, by shutting 

 out the foul weather and concentrating the fair. When it is 

 taken into consideration that a fruit corridor with pillars of 

 oak or even iron, and a roof of tile or slate, may be erected for 

 the cost of a common south wall, and, in many instances for 

 less ; that it will yield a delightful promenade when the trees are 

 in blossom or in fruit; and that it will afford superior facility for 

 keeping fruits late, by having blinds in front for netting them 

 from birds, and, if necessary, by latticework shutters for pro- 

 tecting them from thieves ; I flatter myself that this system will 

 be found to benefit the fruit-grower greatly. 



Let no one imagine that this is some airy flight of fancy which 

 never has been, and never may be, realised, for I must be al- 

 lowed to state that there have been corridors here for half-hardy 

 shrubs these twenty years ; and it is because their uses and 

 capabilities for culture are not sufficiently known by either gen- 

 tlemen or gardeners that I have troubled your readers with this 

 paper on the subject. I must confess that I had no idea how much 

 the south sunshine alone, and the shelter from the north storms, 

 would accomplish in the way of flowers, before I experienced it 

 here. 



I have known many a crop of melons lost by their running 

 to leaf and not to flower-bud, from their roots being left at 

 large to wander where they pleased, and from getting too much 

 water; whilst plants from the same sowing, but confined and 

 stunted in the nursing-pot, showed flower freely. The pine- 

 apple is kept in a high temperature, and the soil is allowed 

 to get very dry, to induce the plants to show fruit ; and 

 what does this amount to, but that they elaborate more 

 highly the sap in their half-succulent stems till it becomes 

 rich enough to secrete the rudiments of a bud for the repro- 

 duction of its kind ? From the humble vine of the melon up 

 to the wall tree, the same principle holds good, and though the 

 failure is often laid to other causes, I think, in a great many 

 instances, I can show the source of the evil. Our heavy rains 

 at such low temperatures as to be little better than snow water, 

 and our want of sunshine, produce in trees and other plants 

 what are very properly termed " watery shoots," that is, long- 

 jointed soft green wood, which seems to me to bear the same 

 relation to the true wood of the tree as the milky fluid in green 

 barley bears to the hard grain ; and, as we cannot create sun- 



