138 On Planting the Moist alluvial Banks of Rivers, fyc. 



roots in every direction ; they have since rarely failed to 

 produce heavy crops, and are at this moment bending under 

 their fruit. 



Security from inundation, and the advantage of a deep rich 

 soil, are not the only benefits that Fruit Trees derive from 

 planting them on such sloping banks ; the form of these 

 banks also contributes mainly to insure success, as the roots 

 of trees so planted, are always necessarily protruding to the 

 surface, where they receive more immediately the direct 

 influence of the air, rain, sun, and other agents conducive to 

 vegetation, and are thereby the more perfectly enabled to 

 form from the simple elements they absorb, those combina- 

 tions which exhibit themselves to us, in such a wonderful 

 variety of products. 



Our industrious neighbours, the Dutch, have been long 

 aware of the advantages such banks afford, and wherever the 

 situation will admit, have planted the sloping sides of their 

 dykes with Fruit Trees: this, the Scotch Horticultural Tourists 

 notice* remarking " That the Dutch have carefully planted 

 Fruit-trees, especially Apples and Pears, on the western slope 

 of their dykes, where they have become exuberant and fruitful 

 trees ; affording at this time both the most abundant crops 

 and fruitful trees we have seen in Holland. The trees we 

 pronounced to be the largest and finest in their kind we had 

 yet seen in our journey, their horizontal branches extending 

 gradually both up and down the declivity." 



I have long observed that the most fruitful Orchards, and 

 the most fertile, are those planted on a declivity, and the 



* Journal of a Horticultural Tour through Flanders, Holland, &c. 1817, 

 page 260. 



