326 



FRUIT CULTUHE: 



one tiling it cannot do better than onr own — it cannot 

 produce a better Peacb tban I bave often gathered from 

 walls both in England and Ireland. It would be thought, 

 perhaps, that with their fine climate, the French would 

 be able to dispense with protection to the trees in spring, 

 and altogether leave their trees more to nature than the 

 British gardener ; but the fact is exactly the reverse. The 

 French peach- grower takes care to have a good protecting 

 coping to his wall. With us it is not uncommon to see the 

 culture of the Peach and Nectarine attempted, and even with 

 success, without any coping at all. The French cultivator 

 frequently places iron rods eighteen inches or two feet long, 

 and furnished with a catch at the end, just under the per- 

 manent coping of his wall, which rods enable him to slip on 

 a most efficient protection in the shape of a temporary 

 coping just under the permanent one. I know one grower 

 who has 4000 yards of this temporary coping, made of tar- 

 paulin, stretched on cheap light frames. 



This is, I trust, a sufiicient commentary upon the climatic 

 advantages possessed by the two sets of gardeners ! Of 

 course we want this protection as badly as the French, if 

 not worse. Over the greater part of the country, without 

 question, the Peach may be grown to the highest degree of 

 perfection, and yet, though few Englishmen could manage, 

 as J ohnson did, seven or eight large peaches of a morning 

 before breakfast began,^-' they may well say with him that 

 getting " enough'' of them was indeed a rarity. It is stated 

 in a recently pubHshed book on fruits that for the majority 

 of the population to partake plentifully of this fruit, " the 

 only hope that can be held out involves nothing less than 

 an emigration across the Atlantic \" The jDresent state of 

 matters justifies the writer in the remark. The quality of 

 the Peaches sold at the lowest, but by no means a low price, 

 is such as to prevent anybody making a second investment 

 in them, and therefore the fruit is, as the writer remarks 

 in describing it, "a luxury confined to the wealthy.'' 

 Before it is otherwise, good fruit must be sold at a price 

 that wUl put it within tasting reach of others than those 

 provided with ai powdered footman to convey it from the 



