FRUIT AND KITCHEN GARDENS NEAR PARIS. 



239 



yard system. The shoots are trained to stakes in summer ; and 

 at the winter-pruning all the shoots are cut down to two eyes. 

 The plant then resembles a stumped willow- stool. The stakes 

 here employed measured 4 feet 3 inches in length. 



The variety of grape cultivated almost exclusively at Thomery 

 on walls, espaliers, and in the open ground, is the Chasselas de 

 Fontainebleau, which is the same as the Royal Muscadine. The 

 cultivators are particular in propagating only from such vines as 

 are the most healthy, and which produce the finest fruit. They 

 do not say that such are varieties absolutely distinct from the 

 Chasselas de Fontainebleau ; but they do maintain that there is 

 decidedly a constitutional difference amongst the plants. M. 

 Larpenteur had the kindness to cut some shoots for the Society 

 from vines recently planted against a wall, and which had been 

 propagated from vines producing the finest fruit growing at 

 Thomery. 



We tasted some of last year's crop of grapes, still fresh. They 

 keep them on broad stages, occupying the middle of an upper 

 story, leaving a passage all round between the stage and the 

 walls. A board along the edges gives the stages the form of a 

 shallow box, in the bottom of which is placed a layer of well-dried 

 fern, upon which the bunches are laid. M. Larpenteur was of 

 opinion that very dry straw would answer as well as the fern. 



Having seen the mode of training the vine at Thomery, and 

 received, through the kindness of M. Larpenteur, full informa- 

 tion respecting its cultivation, we retraced our steps through the 

 forest, and reached Fontainebleau at dusk. 



Corbeil. — From Fontainebleau we proceeded by diligence to 

 the rail-road station at Corbeil. Near this some Pear-trees have 

 been managed in a peculiar way by M. Fourke. In order to see 

 these trees, and get back in time for the train, there was not a 

 second to be lost, for the probability was very doubtful. How- 

 ever, we did see them with astonishment, without which, I 

 think, no gardener in England could. They were fine trees, 

 covering a wall, and trained horizontally. But they were not 

 planted when young, and trained progressively in order to pro- 

 duce this regularity. On the contrary, they were planted when 

 large and irregularly grown^ having in some places a redundancy, 

 in others a deficiency, of branches. Various means are fre- 

 quently resorted to with the view of supplying branches where 

 wanting ; such as notching, budding, or side-grafting the stem ; 

 but here the desiderata were obtained by in-arching the growing 

 extremities of adjoining shoots to the parts of the stem whence 

 the horizontals should proceed. 



Supposing the branches of a tree are trained horizontally a foot 



