FRUIT CULTURE IN FRANCE. 
179 
Beinette du Canada is grown in the Limagne and Veyre valleys 
at Puy-de-D6me. The cantons of Ambert, Arlanc, Issoire, 
Saint-Dier, Montaigne, &c., derive a large income from Apples. 
The centres of the trade are Clermont, Riom, Aigueperse, and 
Saint-Amand-Tallende ; whilst a large number of the ship-loads 
of Apples which come to Paris are sent from Pont-du-Chateau. 
The lowlands are no less favourable to the Apple tree. In 
Flanders, for instance, the Aresnes district, where merchants 
from the North, Belgium, and England assemble. We have been 
told of a grower in Jolimetz who sells the entire crop of his 
orchards wholesale for as much as 10,000 francs, and of another 
at Quesnoy who has sent to England upwards of 20,000 francs' 
worth of the Bon Pommier Apple, a variety having the reputa- 
tion of realising there 1,000 francs per hectare. Landrecies is 
another central point in the North where the crops of this Apple 
are first collected, and then dispersed, almost the whole going 
towards the Seine. But surely this pretty local Apple is none 
other but the Double honne-haute grown in the Picardy orchards ? 
A proprietor at Cateau gathers annually 30,000 kilos. And, 
again, we find the same variety being brought up at Sainte- 
Menehould by waggon-loads, as many as a hundred loads at a time, 
out of which the Paris confectioners make a very large profit. 
The Liancourt valley also supplies the market and confec- 
tioners with another kind of local Apple with a reddish skin and 
hard flesh, i.e. the Buret or Cateau, the Buret salee or Cateau 
d'oignon varieties. They are bought on the spot by the basketful, 
and are also sent away in sacks to be sold under the name of 
Petite reinette.'' One village with a population of only 300 
people makes 100,000 francs by this variety alone. 
The Sarthe and Mayenne departments send consignments 
of the Beinette dorde and de Jaune or du Mans " varieties to 
Paris in the late season. The town of Nantes exports 150,000 
cases, each weighing 75 lbs., without counting the boat-loads 
which, in conjunction with Angers, it sends to Saumur, Orleans, 
and other towns in the Loire district. The boats unload in the 
large towns by means of the canals which connect the two rivers. 
Waggon-loads of Apples, as well as other things, arrive daily 
at the Ivry station. M. Husson tells us, in his interesting book on 
the provisions of Paris, that the fruit is unloaded from the boats 
on to the wharf, and then carried to the Mail market, where 
the fruiterers, pastrycooks, and costers purchase their supplies. 
