incessantly, their growth will be so much arrested
that they will not require annual lifting, and they
will bear abundantly. Covent-garden will then
sell cheaply such apricots as have rarely been
seen there, and yet yield a fortune to the grower.

What most recommends the Orchard House
plan to small market-gardeners is not so much
the moderate capital it absorbs, nor the small
room it occupies, as the certainty of its results.
Apricots will come in nearly at the same season
as those on walls, for it must be understood that
fruits in thoroughly-ventilated Orchard Houses
are not much forwarded, unless the season
happens to be very sunny. It is not an early
but a certain crop that must be expected.
Peaches and apricots, as at present grown on
walls, are a lottery, a speculation, a gambling
transaction, in which the grower often draws a
blank, and loses his stake. It is rouge et noir,
depending, not on the colour of a card, but on
a degree of the thermometer. If the mercury
descend below the mark, and every blossom is
blighted, the gardener's rent must be paid all
the same, as well as the wages of his pruners
and nailers. The very small market-gardener—
he who is just raising himself above the condition
of a cottager, whom a reverse might throw
back on the Union, to join the rest of the county
poor—dares not run the risk of growing
nectarines and apricots on walls (even if he had the
means of building walls), to have a glut of fruit
one year, and not a single kernel for two or three
years following. And yet that hard-working,
steady, frugal class of men are most deserving
of encouragement. It is not enough to tell
them what may be done with Orchard Houses;
they must be shown what is done. In Belgium
the government not only maintains a horticultural
establishment for the instruction of small
gardeners; it helps distant gardeners in their
railway expenses to reach it. A few trips to
Sawbridgeworth—or mere visits to any
neighbouring gentleman's Orchard Houses—for the
instruction of small gardeners only, would not
be more difficult to arrange, than pleasure-trains
were to the Great Exhibition. Amongst these
professional visitors, a few of the most
enterprising could hardly fail to be inspired with the
desire to put together, say a rude sort of sentry-
box, with a glass top and two or three glass
sides half way down it, the rest of boards, for
the reception of from four to half a dozen
pyramidal fruit-trees in pots. When the grand
wall-fruit gardener had lost his whole crop from
some sharp spell of April frost, the prices that
his neighbour, the proprietor of the small glass
sentry-box, would realise from the fruit of his
half-dozen pyramids would, of all arguments,
prove the most eloquent.

The good qualities of the plum are not yet half
appreciated. Now for those who wish to grow
a regular and certain crop of plums without
incurring a heavy expense, Mr. Rivers proposes
that rough-built Lean-to Orchard Houses should
be erected in some out-of-the-way corner of the
premises, consisting of larch poles, rough half-
inch boards, with two or three sliding shutters
for ventilation,—in fact, merely a glass-roof shed,
on purpose for protecting plum-trees in pots,
while in blossom and setting their fruit. It is
surprising with what vigour and beauty plum-
trees blossom, even in the rudest glass structure;
and, as the trees need not remain in the house
longer than the end of the first week in June—
for then all danger of severe spring frosts is
over—they may be placed so close together that
a house, twenty feet by twelve, with a path in
its centre, will hold ninety-six trees, forty-eight
on each border. As a matter of course, the very
late plums must be ripened under glass; but all
those varieties that ripen in the open air, before
the end of September, may be thus grown to
great perfection, and regular annual crops
insured, if care be taken to thin the fruit properly.
It is quite astonishing how prolific these bushes
become in a few years, and, by merely pinching
off the ends of exuberant shoots—which should
be done about the end of June—to within three
or four inches of their bases, they soon form
themselves into compact round-headed trees,
quite as ornamental as orange-trees in pots
and tubs, and far more useful.

The service which Orchard Houses are capable
of rendering to small market-gardeners, is a point
that deserves to be strongly insisted on. To
horticulturists at all raised above the middle class,
whether professionally or by their own private
means, their utility is as clear as the utility of rain
and sunshine. Unfortunately, the cottage
gardener has no capital to invest in building or in
buying fancy trees; but, fortunately, he can help
himself in this matter. A smart, symmetrical show
house is not what he wants, but a gardening
workshop, a rough outhouse for the manufacture
of flowers, leaves, and fruit. At sales of old
materials he will meet with boards and glass for
a trifle; and if he cannot scrape a few shillings
together for the purchase of maiden trees, why
then he must bud them himself. It is only a
question of time, and in other walks of life
people are obliged to exercise patience to attain
their ends. The cottager who can make a profit
by the careful management of bees is just the
sort of person to derive the same benefit from a
homely Orchard House; and he is likely to make
as much by the sale of trained trees as of fruit, because
the demand for such trees must be steadily
on the increase, and they cannot be created
suddenly at word of command, like so many
thousand sovereigns ordered at the Mint. The grand
thing, now, is to show the cottager good samples
of the article he has to produce. It is a pity
that handsome pot trees in full fruit would suffer
too much from the shaking of a cart to be sent as
models to village horticultural exhibitions. To
remedy the difficulty, the possessors of Orchard
Houses must invite inspection as much as
possible. Perhaps, too, Mr. Rivers will publish a
cheaper edition of his useful book.

It will be seen that, as yet, Orchard House
culture is only in its infancy. We may
predict that it will carry into high northern
latitudes, fresh fruits which will not bear
carriage, now rarely brought to table there. The