618 



NOTES OF A HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



form abound. The only noticeable feature was a trifling one 

 — placing willow wands in the exact bend and direction in 

 which it is desired to conduct the chief branches. That once 

 done,, little remains but to tie the young shoots in the desired 

 direction. A great deal of the fruit had fallen^ in consequence 

 of the extreme heat^ and of the soil being sandy. There 

 was one pretty good specimen of a winged pyramid — i.e., a 

 pyramid having the branches trained in five vertical lines, 

 and with the points united by grafting, as in Fig. 356.- 



Wide edgings of Iyj are used as a margin to the Bose 

 beds, and with a very good effect. The rustic iron edgings, 

 so much used about Paris, are also employed here. Native 

 Orchids are grown in the botanical division, among them 

 the Lizard and others that are rare with us. The common 

 and the Irish forms of the Ivy are placed 

 YiG. 357. nnder exactly similar circumstances, a por- 

 tion of each lying flat upon the ground, and 

 another being conducted up a stake. The 

 decided superiority of the Irish kind can 

 be seen at a glance. It is not without 

 reason they have selected it for the public 

 ^ gardens of Paris. The better kinds of 



figure. ^ herbaceous Pseonies were planted in the 

 grass at about a yard or so from the 

 margin of the shrubberies — a good position for them, 

 and when they decay no blank space is left. The hardy 

 Irises are grown in vases — a plan worth pursuing where 

 early summer gardening is practised, but they should 

 be in all cases associated with and springing from dwarfer 

 plants. The contents of the houses here were perfect^ 

 miserable. The ground was almost covered in some parts 

 with the dead bodies of cockchafers, and along one part 

 of the railroad near Rouen I noticed a wood nearly a mile 

 long quite stripped of leaves by this pest. Not long before, 

 I had thought, in passing through a rich, green, and well- 

 wooded valley, what a transformation it would be if we 

 could see the trees suddenly stripped of their summer robes 

 and made to stand bare as in winter ; and here it was with 

 a vengeance. It is no exaggeration to state that many 



