THE CORDON SYSTEM OF FRUIT GROWING. 337 



Cordons are trained against walls, espaliers, and in many 

 ways, but the most popular form of all, and the best and 

 most useful, is the little line of Apple trees acting as an 

 edging to the quarters in the kitchen and fruit garden. 

 By selecting good kinds and training them in this way 

 abundance of the finest fruit may be grown without 

 having any of the large trees or those of any other 

 form in the garden to shade or occupy its surface. The 

 bilateral cordon is useful for the same purposes as the 

 simple one, and especially adapted to the bottoms of walls, 

 bare spaces between the fruit trees, the fronts of pits, or 

 any low naked wall with a warm exposure. As in many 

 cases the lower parts 



of walls in gardens are Fig. 143. 



quite naked, this form 

 of cordon offers an 

 opportunity for cover- 

 ing them with what 

 will yield a certain and 

 valuable return. It is 

 by this method that the 

 finest coloured, largest, 



and best French Apples The Cordon on low sunny wall of plant-house. 

 „„l j ■ r< j. j In this way Calville Blanc, Reinette du 



sold in Covent-garden Canadaj tl / e Lady App i e> Melon . Apple? 



and in the Paris fruit American-Mother, Newtown Pippin, and all 

 •i , , , . . the finer and tenderer French, American, and 



Snops at SUCn mgn British apples may be grown to perfection. 



prices are grown. I 



have seen them this year in Covent-garden and in Eegent- 

 street marked two and three shillings each, and M. Lepere fils, 

 of Montreuil, told me when with him last summer that they 

 have there obtained four francs each for the best fruit of the 

 Calville to send to St. Petersburg, where they are sold in win- 

 ter for as much as eight francs each ! Why should we have 

 to buy these from the French at such a high rate ? Con- 

 sidering the enormous number of walled gardens there are 

 in this country, there can be no doubt whatever that by 

 merely covering, by means of this plan, the lower parts 

 of walls now entirely naked and useless, we could supply 

 half a dozen markets like Covent-garden with the very 



