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NOTES OF A HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



In many of tlie well-planted and shady promenades of 

 Lyons white stone seats are adopted instead of wooden ones, 

 and very well they look — simple stone slabs, with stone 

 supports of course. 



Towards the close of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, a 

 noble Peach tree was shown by M. Morel, trained as a 

 Palmetto Verrier, and so well trained as to excite the admi- 

 ration of all who saw it. M. Morel lives at Vaise, a 

 suburb of Lyons, and to visit him was one of the chief 

 objects of my journey to this city. He is not a grower for 

 the market, or a person who devotes himself exclusively to 

 the culture of the Peach, but a general nurseryman. The 

 wall on which his Peaches are grown is on an average 

 thirteen feet high, and it is made of very cheap material — 

 the common earth of the garden. First of all a foundation 

 is made, and the wall raised a little above the surface of the 

 ground with stone, so as to guard the chief material from 

 injury by frost and wet. Then the earth is laid in and well 

 battered down between boards, and on every layer of earth 

 there is deposited about an inch and a half of mortar. The 

 layers in one wall were about one foot deep; in another — 

 the better wall of the two — they were about two feet deep ; 

 and between each layer the thin seam of mortar could be 

 distinctly seen. The walls are about eighteen inches thick, 

 and capped with a coping of tiles, under which are inserted 

 iron supports for protection in spring. Wires are run along 

 these, so that the mats may be conveniently supported. 



It is worthy of particular notice that while the Peach does 

 very well about here as a standard tree, good cultivators find 

 distinct advantages not alone in growing it against a wall, 

 but also in well protecting it when in flower. M. Morel 

 considered that it is of decided advantage in three ways — 

 firstly, in securing a crop by preserving the flowers from 

 destruction by frost ; secondly, by saving the trees from the 

 malady caused by frosts and sleety rains falling on the 

 young leaves and budding shoots ; and thirdly, by the ten- 

 dency which a wide temporary coping has in making the 

 tree push more vigorously in its lower than in its upper 

 parts. A wide mat at the top of the wall in spring 



