11 



according to the Montreuil method, at the age of ten 

 years, paid a hundred times their cost, and a hundred 

 times the rent of the land they occupied. 



It is not a little remarkable, that the pruning of 

 peach trees was brought almost to perfection at Mon- 

 treuil about the time of Louis XIV., people do not 

 know very wxU how, and that it has remained in the 

 same state till within the last dozen years. During 

 that short period, it has been brought to perfection, 

 as M. Lelieur has demonstrated in his Pomone Fran- 

 caise. The pruning of peach trees in France has 

 been reduced to three schools, viz. : — The school of 

 Quintinie, of which the principle was to cut short, 

 and to retard the production of fruit, and to lengthen 

 the lives of the trees. Second, the school of Mon- 

 treuil, of which the principle is to cut long, and the end 

 to obtain abundance of fruit. Rogers Schabol is the 

 most ardent of the numerous panegyrists of this mode. 

 Third, the modern school, of which the principle 

 is the same as that of the school of Montreuil, and 

 the end to obtain trees full and regular in their 

 branches, without these being confused or crossing 

 each other, and well furnished with fruit. M. le 

 Count Lelieur was the founder of the school in 1817, 

 in collecting its scattered elements, w^hich already ex- 

 isted in the practice of many cultivators, and in join- 

 ing thereto the results of his own experience. The 

 addition which Count Lelieur may be said to have 



