practical horticulturist, Knight, observed that the
cherry, when propagated by seed, sported more
than any other fruit with which he had tried
experiments. He concluded that cherries were
capable of acquiring a higher state of perfection
than they have yet attained. New varieties are
much wanted. He succeeded in raising a few;
but since his death, little has been done in
improving the cherry.

The ruddy tints which the leaves of certain
species of cherry assume in autumn, have
suggested their employment in landscape gardening.
Ornamental also is the tobacco-leaved cherry, a
Dutch variety, with leaves nearly a foot long and
six inches broad. It was likewise named "four
to the pound," to give an idea of the size of its
fruit, but which was far from answering to the
title. The cherry itself is bright red, a trifle
broader than long, less than an inch through,
and somewhat insipid in flavour.

A sage who probably dwells not far from
Sawbridgeworth reconciles his fondness for cherries
with his love of birds, by contriving a cherry-
orchard under glass. Some such reconciliation
is needful, unless insects are to be the lords of
creation. It is sad that ignorant people, some of
them belonging to the gentler sex, should cause
all the small birds around them to be poisoned,
because they eat a few seeds and taste a little
fruit; although nothing is more conceivable than
the increase of insect life to such an extent as to
render human lite impossible. In Gloucestershire,
the cherry-trees (and damson-trees also)
are seriously injured by caterpillars, because the
devourers of caterpillars, and of the fathers and
mothers of caterpillars, are reduced to too small
a minority to fulfil their natural office. The
Moniteur warns the people of certain districts to
wash their cherries before eating them, because
they have been crawled over or touched by
creatures which have left a poisonous slime or
secretion.

The cherry-house, instituted (shall we say?)
by Mr. Rivers, must be a pleasant edifice to
visit, either when in blossom or in ripened fruit.
It is a small span-roofed house, twenty-five feet
by fourteen, nine feet high to the ridge, and
five feet high at the sides. For economy, the
sides and ends are made of boards, with a shutter
on hinges a foot wide on each side. A path,
three feet wide, along the centre, is planted on
each side with a variety of pyramidal trees of
compact growing sorts. Behind them, next the
sides, are low pyramids and bushes of the
bigarrean and heart cherries. These, being
vigorous growers when planted out, are kept, to
check them, in thirteen-inch pots, with plenty
of manure on the top. Last summer, the
success was quite refreshing. As soon as the
cherries began to colour, i.e. when boys and
blackbirds declare they are ripe, the shutters
were opened to admit air, and some iron-wire
netting, firmly nailed inside, was placed over the
apertures occupied by the shutters when closed.
Cherries, while ripening, delight in a dry warm
atmosphere, such as they rarely have out-doors in
England, but which in an orchard-house exists
in perfection. They are also recommended to be
grown in small houses appropriated to them
alone, for the facility of destroying, by
fumigation, the black aphides with which cherry-
trees are apt to be infested.

Cherries under glass, whether planted out or
in pots, must be subjected to one system of
pruning, or rather of pinching. As soon as a
young shoot has made five or six leaves, its top
should be pinched off to three full-sized leaves,
not counting two or three at the base, which are
generally small and without buds in their axils.
The pinching must be continued all summer
long, until the trees cease to make young
shoots.

A cherry-house is safe and certain; the fruit
is secure from early frosts and late marauders.
With a lock on the door and the key in your
pocket, you have some hope of gathering the
produce of what you planted. You ensure the
gratification of the eye, as well as that of the
taste and the social pleasures of dessert. For, a
pair of small cherry-trees in pots, in full fruit,
are ornaments at even a princely banquet. A
morell cherry-tree, with its flexible branches
weighed down by fruit of various deepening
shades of red, is a most graceful and luxuriant
object, bearing comparison even with an orange,
and not half so costly nor so slow to obtain.
Out-doors the morello has the unusual merit of
flourishing and bearing abundantly when trained
against a north wall; but to see it in all its
beauty and richness, it should be grown as a
standard in a sheltered situation.

RUSSIAN TRAVEL
HOUSEKEEPING IN THE INTERIOR

Although Count Pomerin* desired to entertain
me for an indefinite time as his guest, the
proposed length of my stay in his neighbourhood
made it desirable that I and my family should
rather establish ourselves as his neighbours in a
house of our own. A sufficient dwelling-place
we found close to the count's residence, and
looking into a large sloping court-yard, at the
bottom of which was the cotton mill, with other
factory buildings. Pins's house and the steward's
office flanked this yard, which was large enough
for the exercising of some thousand soldiers. On
the left of the factory, in the hollow, was an old
primitive corn-mill, driven by a couple of
waterwheels. More to the left lay the lake, and
the road passing between the end of the lake
and the corn mill ran northward, to join at the
distance of thirty or forty miles the main highway.

My house was of brick, and originally built as
a dwelling for the steward. It was of two stories,
the under one being used as a general store
or "econom" for the estate, a sort of "tommy-
shop." No other store or shop was within many
miles, and of this one the steward had entire
control, buying, selling, and charging as he
chose; an arrangement anything but profitable
to the peasantry. A gateway led from the
road to the court, and a broad flight of steps,

*See page 299 of No. 63.