DIJON. 609 



Dahlia in the garden of a careful amateur of that flower. 

 There is a rather well-kept sort of botanical garden here, 

 for the purpose of showing native, useful, culinary and 

 other herbs, and when passing through this the superinten- 

 dent said, pointing at a solitary plant of Ehubarb, " You 

 eat that in England \" What a difference a few miles or 

 mere accident sometimes makes ! Here is a vegetable 

 second to no other, and which a race so distinguished in 

 the kitchen should best know how to appreciate, and yet 

 it is almost unknown to them ; and what a loss that is, we 

 only can understand. There is a School of Dendrology 

 here, with the trees planted in their natural orders, and, 

 generally speaking, good facilities for teaching young men 

 with a taste for rural pursuits. 



Dijon. — The home nursery of Leconte was the only one 

 I visited, and a very neat and well-kept one it is. It is an 

 oblong piece of ground, about four acres in extent, and 

 well walled in on every side, the walls being well coped 

 with overlapping tiles. All the space on both sides of the 

 walls was planted with oblique cordon Pear trees, trained 

 on single galvanized wires, attached to two strong nails in 

 the walls. They were young trees, but the walls were very 

 nearly covered; the crop was nothing to speak of. The 

 trees, however, are too young to judge much by at present. 

 A wall about fifteen feet high was nearly covered with oblique 

 cordon Pears, and as they had so much room to rise, the 

 position seemed particularly suited to them. Near at hand 

 they were grown to the same height by projecting a trellis 

 above the garden wall, so as to form a very high screen of 

 cordon Pears above it. This was done by erecting strong 

 uprights of iron to the required height above the wall, and 

 then running galvanized wires from the bottom of the wall 

 to a strong horizontal wire or rod passing from upright to 

 upright at the top. Looking along the long side or middle 

 walks, cordon Apples could be seen stretching without in- 

 terruption from one end of the garden to the other, the 

 effect being very pretty indeed. They were planted a few 

 inches inside the box edging, and between it and lines of 

 handsome pyramidal Pears, conifers, &c, and, as usual, chiefly 



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