68 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[MAT, 
ance. Owing to the more elongated outline of 
the leaves, too, the foliage appears less heavy 
than in some other sorts, while it is sufficiently 
large to assume a bold and ornamental char¬ 
acter.—T. Moore. 
FRUIT-CULTURE. 
Site as affecting Fertility. 
OUBTLESS a good many fruit failures 
originate in the unnatural divorce 
between site and fertility. Nature has 
obviously bound these two together to a great 
extent, but they have been put asunder through 
the mere convenience, ignorance, or caprice of 
planters and planners. There are fashions in 
such matters, as well as in ploughing—and in 
bonnets. The fashion of late years has been 
as far as possible to hide kitchen-gardens and 
orchards, as much as may be, out of sight. 
Hard-and-fast lines have been too often set up 
between the domains of utility and ornament, 
in the disposing of the demesne, which have 
practically limited the selection of sites for 
fruits to the narrowest limits. Such lines of 
demarcation are as far removed from good- 
taste as they are inconvenient in practice. 
Everything useful or necessary about a demesne 
is also or may be made ornamental. True 
art is an exhibitor, not a hoarder, nor a hider 
of beauty ; and this rule is especially applicable 
to fruit-gardens and orchards. The old land¬ 
scape gardeners knew nothing and cared less of 
the modern canon of beauty, that requires the 
concealment of every utilitarian object, and is too 
fastidious to endure the sight of a brick, unless 
it is dabbed over with stucco ; or of a kitchen 
garden or orchard, unless hidden in a hole, and 
furthur emasculated and enfeebled by an im¬ 
penetrable blind of trees or shrubs. Who shall 
calculate the fruit-failures that have thus arisen 
from the false taste that demanded the con¬ 
cealment of utilitarianism from the window of 
the mansion ? The lowest ground has often 
been chosen to assist in hiding or planting out 
fruit-gardens. The consequence has been that 
the cold air has rolled down to the lowest sites 
with as much certainty as water finds its level, 
and the frosts have blasted the blossoms as 
surely as the butterfly finds the flower, or the 
bee the honey. 
Next to this mischievous mania for conceal¬ 
ment, the desire for shelter has proved the 
greatest obstacle to the selection of the most 
fertile sites for fruit-trees. Shelter in modera¬ 
tion, of the proper sort, at the right place, is a 
good thing, but an excess of shelter means 
simply weakness, and that renders destruction 
more easy. Low-lying valleys, especially if 
carefully sheltered with living screens of 
considerable density, also expose fruit-tree 
blossoms to a new danger—that is, a still 
atmosphere. The more placid the air during 
frost, the sooner and the more completely are 
the plants or trees emptied of their heat. Just 
as a breeze hinders the surface of water from 
freezing, by intermixing the warmer water of a 
lower level with the colder directly in contact 
with the air, so a gentle breeze in the atmos¬ 
phere intermixes the warmer with the colder 
strata, and thus conserves the heat of the trees, 
and saves their blossoms from destruction by 
frost. Hence the importance of securing an 
elevated site agitated by any passing zephyr, 
rather than a sheltered valley—stagnant as 
sheltered—in which the frost is intensified by 
the stillness. 
From this it is obvious that a certain 
measure of elevation and exposure in fruit-tree 
sites is favourable to fertility, and this is 
abundantly proved by experience. Of course it 
is easy to go to excess in either. No one would 
advocate the cultivation of superior fruit on a 
high mountain-top, nor in the teeth of the east 
or north wind, but by “ elevation ” is meant a 
moderate altitude, ranging from fifty to two or 
three hundred feet above the water-line in the 
immediate neighbourhood. In such positions, 
with the force of prevailing winds shut out by 
yet higher grounds or lining-screens, fruit-trees 
will generally prove more constantly fertile than 
on lower grounds. Here, too, the local site 
is of much moment. A northern outlook, 
unless for the hardiest fruits or in the warmest 
localities, should never be selected. I know 
kitchen gardens that have many crops, and 
have their fruits annually much lowered in 
quality, and their whole produce retarded for 
a month or six weeks every year, by inclining to 
the north. Neither is an eastern incline of 
the ground or site to be preferred. The old 
horticulturists were fond of eastern sites for 
their orchards. It is one of the most delight¬ 
ful sights in nature, an orchard in full bloom, 
lightened up into a glow of beauty by the 
