328 
BRITISH GARDEN FRUITS. 
exclude damp,orin any damp weather counteract 
its effects. It is not enough to open every front 
window, it would be far better to open only 
one and let down a top light a little. In all 
cases there should be an outlet as well as an 
inlet, and for lack of this many houses do not 
answer well for plants; a circulation of air 
causes a more rapid evaporation; and it is a 
common thing among good gardeners to open 
a lower window even in wet cloudy weather, 
let down one of the top lights a little, and light 
a fire. By this a free circulation is created and 
the house dried, although it were in the midst 
of rains and cloudy weather. It is too com- 
mon a thing to see the top lights let down to 
give air to a house and no other part opened; 
this is all wrong, for (here should be a draught; 
on the other hand we see all the front windows 
and no top lights down. Many persons build 
pits three or four feet high at the back, and 
half the height in front, and no air but what 
can be obtained at the top; we would always 
provide air-holes at the bottom, as without 
such there can be no draught, no free circulation, 
unless indeed Mr. Penn's principle be adopted 
for causing circulation ; but even in that pro- 
vision should be made for the admission of air 
at the bottom. When pits are built without 
this provision, the best mode of giving air is 
to pull up one light to let in air at the foot of 
it, and push down the next to open at top, and 
so on alternately through the whole range of 
lights, however long the pit may be. It is 
the same in giving air to a hot-bed, only that 
when the air is rarefied as it is inside, tilting 
the light a little lets out the steam, and the 
cool air will get in somewhere ; but sometimes 
when a frame is made too close and the glass 
is puttied at the joints, things fog off in spite 
of tilting, because there is no circulation. 
BRITISH GARDEN FRUITS.* 
Notwithstanding the interest which has 
been taken in the cultivation of fruits in 
England, very little has been done by way of 
illustrating the immense variety, except in 
works far beyond the reach of ordinary people; 
and even in such as have been provided much 
more attention has been paid to the making 
of a picture, than to the production of true, 
unmistakable likenesses. Without, however, 
disparaging any previous efforts, let us deal 
as we find with the work before us — the pro- 
duction of a clever, pains-taking artist, who 
seems to have studied that which all artists 
ought to study, the selection of subjects of 
every-day quality that can be recognised by the 
million, instead of extraordinary specimens 
* Coloured Illustrations of British Garden Fruit, 
with Descriptive Letter-press. ByH. L.Meyer. Lon- 
don: Longmans, Paternoster-row-; Hatchard, Piccadilly. 
not often seen, and scarcely to be known at 
all. Again, a more essential point has not 
been overlooked, the necessity of making 
accurate portraits, instead of highly colouring 
and exaggerating the beauty of the subject. 
In the first part of this work we have really 
true portraits of the Royal George Peach and 
the Jargonelle Pear, such as the veriest tyro 
would recognise. There is no mistaking them 
for an instant. They are average, and not 
even handsome, specimens of the fruit. There 
is no high colouring, no effort to make a show; 
they are as homely and as accurate as if they 
were intended for use and not for ornament. 
Compared with the brilliant colours, the studied 
beauty, and the elaborate finish of those in 
the. Horticultural Transactions, and the more 
showy and expensive works, these drawings 
are tame ; but they are like the thing they 
are intended to represent, and not mere pic- 
tures that are to embellish a book. Such 
plates are scarce. The garden literature of 
the present and former days out-herods Herod 
in brilliant colouring. Those who afterwards 
possess the reality deplore the falling off, as 
compared with the pictures they have admired, 
and which, perhaps, induced them to buy the 
reality. We cannot but congratulate the 
lovers of fruit on the fidelity of the " Coloured 
Illustrations of British Garden Fruits." It 
is so rare that we find artists content with 
ordinary specimens, such as we see every day; 
and so much more rare to find them keeping 
down their pencil to the point-blank matter- 
of-fact portrait, that the work is quite refresh- 
ing ; and we only hope it may proceed as it 
has begun, for we desire no better guide, even 
for those unacquainted with the subject, to 
enable a man to recognise the distinguishing 
characteristic of all the really distinct vari- 
eties of the various families. Of the letter- 
press we need say but little, it is brief, and to 
the point ; ex. gr. — 
PEACHES. 
" The Peach, which is one of our most 
desirable wall-fruit trees, requires but little 
care in its cultivation, in comparison with the 
delicious flavour and beauty of its fruit. 
"The soil required by the Peach is easily 
obtained : after the hole is dug along the wall 
intended to shelter the tree, the following 
proportions should be thrown in : — three bar- 
rows-full of fresh dug turf, and one barrow- 
full of road scrapings ; the whole must be 
enriched with garden or vegetable mould. We 
must here observe that, very frequently, wall- 
fruit trees are ill treated from false economy 
of the ground in a kitchen garden. The roots 
of fruit trees ought never to be disturbed by 
digging about them, on account of the finer 
fibres, which get injured by the spade ; and, 
as a general rule, we would advise to have 
