HOW ARE WE TO IMPROVE? 325 



the cordon system if he employs what is called the " English 

 Paradise" stock. 



And now a few words about the Peach. This fruit 

 attains the finest possible condition when well grown against 

 walls in England. In other countries it may be grown 

 freely as a standard tree ; in none can they produce finer 

 or better fruit than may be gathered from walls in England 

 and Ireland. France has very diverse climates — some in 

 which the Peach grows well as a standard — but the best 

 Peaches grown in Prance are gathered from walls in those 

 parts where the climate is most like our own. ! In the 

 middle of September, 1867, I ate capital specimens of 

 Crawford's Early Peach, gathered from pyramid trees stand- 

 ing in the open quarters of the Rev. Mr. Benyon's garden 

 in Suffolk. I by no means mention this as an example to 

 be followed, but simply to prove that in the midland and 

 southern parts of the British Isles the Peach may be grown 

 against walls to the highest degree of perfection ; and in 

 favourable parts of the south, the Early York Peach may be 

 grown with success as a standard or bush tree, away from 

 all protection. 



There can be no doubt whatever about the fact, that if 

 we pay as much attention to the Peach as the cultivators of 

 Montreuil do, we can attain quite as good a result. The 

 fact cannot be too widely known that no fruit tree nailed 

 against walls furnishes a more certain and regular crop than 

 the Peach tree when well treated ; and yet it is hardly possible 

 to buy a good Peach in London. In Covent-garden, it is 

 true, excellent Peaches may be bought at 8d. and Is. each, 

 but those sold by most fruiterers at 3c?. and 4<d. are worse 

 than those procurable in Paris for a sou, and are only fit 

 for pig-feeding. And in numbers of private gardens the fruit 

 is by no means common. Our good gardeners understand its 

 culture well enough ; but of late years public attention has, 

 by various means which I will not detail here, been called 

 away from the fact that, with walls, we can produce the 

 finest fruit in the world, and without them do little or 

 nothing with the choicer fruits. The " power of the climate" 

 in Paris may be very wonderful to some people, but there is 



