of present pain and labour, being productive of future enjoyment, will apply to the whole of life; for what are the recollections of a tour without incident, or what is the feeling of pleasure to those who have never felt pain?

Rouen, Sept. 2.-Mr. Calvert, the English nurseryman here, who crossed with us to Dieppe, kindly anticipating our wishes, sent his foreman Henderson to show us the gardens of the town. This Henderson is a young Scotsman who has been upwards of two years in Rouen, has acquired the language grammatically, and by teaching in Sunday schools, good conduct, and decent manners and dress, has, though only a journeyman gardener, rendered himself respected by every body. Professionally he is an excellent propagator of roses, oranges, and green-house plants, and is duly valued by his

master.

Berquier's Market-Garden is at the head of its class, and was the first we looked into. Its proprietor is a middle-sized, toil-worn, though still a strong, man, eighty-seven years of age, with red sore eyes, a thing common in France among old men, and without teeth; he has a stout wife of thirty-five. Their clothing was very coarse, they had on sabots, and were both at work in the garden. M. Berquier told us that he had one garden, on a dry slope to the south-east, for early crops; and another on the flat ground close to the river, for main crops. The only vegetable which appeared to us grown to greater perfection in his gardens, and in others here, than we ever saw it in England, was the leek. After every enquiry we could find nothing peculiar in the mode of culture, and conclude the size and excellence of this vegetable at Rouen to arise chiefly from the climate. They are planted at different seasons to produce a succession of crops throughout the year, and their principal use is in soups. We were promised some seed by M. Berquier, but it was not sent, very probably from fear or suspicion; for he was continually wondering at, and trying to guess, the motives which could induce us to be so particular in our enquiries, and for that reason and the difficulty of comprehending his patois, we derived no great benefit from our visit. The crops on the ground were, cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, carrots, parsneps, leeks, peas, running kidney beans in different stages of progress, artichokes, asparagus; mammoth gourd in large quantities, for soups; celery in beds, not blanched, but intended to have a little earth put about it; endive, broad and curled, in large quantities tied up for blanching; Cos lettuce, a good deal of sorrel, a bad sort of parsley; melons, not in the Honfleur manner, but on ridges under bell glasses as in England, and the surface of the ridges

covered with rye straw; and cucumbers in the open garden, without dung under them.

We are not aware, indeed, that there is any culinary vegetable in general culture about London that is not grown here, unless we except sea-kale and tart rhubarb. Tarts enter but little into French cookery, but sea-kale is a valuable adjunct to asparagus. We wrote home for some seeds of it, and also of an excellent variety of curled parsley, both given gratis by Mr. Malcolm, which we have since learned was duly received by Mr. Henderson, and distributed among the principal gardeners. Had we waited till our arrival in Paris this trouble would have been unnecessary, because we found abundance of sea-kale seed, and as fine a variety of parsley as any in the world at M. Vilmorin's.

Standard apples, pears, plums, and cherries, were for the most part planted in quarters by themselves; vines and figs, chiefly against houses. There were very few currants and raspberries, still fewer gooseberries, and only the alpine strawberry. M. Berquier had scarcely any flowers, but we observed a few good Brompton stocks, double white rockets, and violets. This garden had scarcely any thing that could be called a walk or a fruit wall; it was, however, richly manured, well tilled, and the weeds, we think we may venture to state, were not suffered to grow beyond the economic point. By the economic point we mean when they are not suffered to become so numerous, or to attain so large a size, as that the injury they do the crop will exceed in value the expense of weeding. In the gardens of private individuals, or wherever neatness and order are primary considerations, no weeds should ever be allowed to appear; but it must be obvious that to attain this degree of perfection, the ground must often be searched when the expense of doing so will exceed in value the amount of the injury done by the weeds. This we intend in future to call weeding under the economic point; as weeding, when the weeds left in the ground do more harm than the expense of eradication, we intend to call weeding above it. In forming the estimate for this nomenclature, the future injury weeds may do by shedding their seeds, and the immediate good done by stirring the soil, must be taken into account.

Renard's Market-Garden was laid out with walks, and was in better order than any we saw in Rouen.

The Nursery of Prevost fils is the finest in Rouen. M. Prevost, whose father was proprietor of the same grounds, has had a regular college education, is a scientific botanist, member of various societies, and author of Essai sur l'Education et la Culture des Arbres fruitiers pyramidaux, vulgairement appelés

Quenouilles (Gard. Mag., vol. ii. p. 78.), and of Catalogue descriptif, méthodique, et raisonne, des Espèces Variétés, ct SousVariétés du Genre Rosièr, just published. He is an exceedingly well-informed man, and ardent in his profession; we are not aware, that there is any nurseryman who, as a cultivated man, can be compared with him in England, with the exception of George Loddiges, and we only know of M. Vilmorin in France. He showed us every thing, and, considering the comparatively limited encouragement which he receives, we were astonished at the number of rare trees and shrubs which he had collected. He has also a library, assez considerable, as he informed us, pour un planteur de choux, a herbarium, and some specimens in other departments of natural history. He has paid considerable attention to landscape-gardening, and draws plans and lays out grounds à l'Anglaise. His culture embraces every out of door department, and excels all others at Rouen for rare articles; and, judging from his catalogue now before us in which 880 sorts are described, we should add, for roses. Among the magnolias we found all the species grown about London, except Soulangeàna. Among the plants which have left an impression on our mind are Serrátula noveboracensis, 8 ft. high and very ornamental; Lìnum marítimum finely grown; Corylus Avellàna var. urticifòlia, handsome specimens; the Chinese quince; and peach of Ispahan, which ripens its fruit as a standard. Tília americàna, rùbra, and álba, Sórbus americàna and doméstica were noted, and we might have marked down a great many other things, but did not, from want of time. The nursery ground, perhaps about 10 or 12 acres on a sloping surface, was regularly laid out in parallelogram compartments, in the direction of the slope, with 2 ft. alleys between, and diagonal broader walks for ascending and descending with ease to and from the top of the slope. The whole was in excellent order; and the soil, which was a gravelly clay, was laid loosely and in rough clods, so as to benefit as much as possible from the sun and air.

Fremont le Jeune's Nursery contains a good collection of fruit trees and roses, and the common sorts of forest trees and ornamental shrubs; a part of his signboard announces toutes espèces d'arbustes pour les jardins Anglaises, but we saw very few. He transplants all his evergreens and fruit trees every three years, in order that they may rise with fibrous roots. Plums, it seems, cannot be successfully propagated about Rouen, for what reason we could not discover; they are purchased from the nurserymen at Orleans and Vitry. In speaking with M. Fremont respecting the training of fruit trees en pyramide, he observed that all trees whatever with high

stems should be trained in that way for a few years at first, otherwise the stem and roots could not acquire strength in due proportion to the head, the consequences of which were that the trees were frequently blown over or to one side, or became crooked. We certainly have seen this effect in some orchards in England, but nurserymen could not afford to lose a year in producing saleable trees, in order to avoid this evil, unless they were paid a higher price by the purchaser than they are at present. For clay and loamy soils, trees to be trained in the pyramidal form should be grafted on dwarfing stocks; for sandy and poor soils, on free stocks. M. Fremont does not consider this mode of training fruit trees favourable or producing fruit, except when they are on dwarfing stocks, and for a few years while they are young. We were rather surprised to hear this opinion, having formed a contrary one from the row of trees in the Horticultural Society's garden (Vol. IV. p. 168.); but what we saw and heard subsequently, both in France and Germany, has convinced us that, however favourable this mode of training standard pear trees may be for the crop of vegetables grown below or around them, and for producing straight timber, it is a very bad method, if not the very worst, for the production of fruit. Let any one who doubts this observe such trees in the gardens about Paris, and in the Royal Gardens at Stuttgard, Carlsruhe, and at other places in Germany. No mode of training a standard tree is worth any thing, that requires the continual use of the knife. Leaving the tree to take its natural form is the only means of insuring abundance of blossom; all that art has to do, care being previously taken that the roots cannot get down into bad soil, is to thin out crossing shoots. The fruitfulness of orchards, and indeed of wall trees and garden dwarfs, climate being equal, depends much more on the nature of the soil than on the mode of pruning. In budding here and in other gardens about Rouen, worsted threads are used instead of ribands of bass, and the advantage, we were told, is, that the worsted expands as the bud swells.

M. Fremont has about the same quantity of ground as M. Prevost, but, being in three separate places, it is not so well laid out, and does not produce the same effect: it was, however, in very good order. He has a promising young son, whose education, we fear, will not be what the present day requires, unless he be sent to Paris or London.

The Trianon Nursery, Mr. Calvert from London, is limited to the culture of roses, georginas, and green-house plants. It contains about 10 acres, and includes the mansion and part of the grounds of an ancient domain forfeited to the state at the

period of the revolution, and destined for the residence of one of the 100 senators during the consulate. Since the restoration it was sold to Mr. Calvert, who has built in the walled garden a range of sloping glass green-houses after the manner of English nurseries. Mr. Calvert has raised a great many roses from seed, especially varieties of the Noisette and of semperflorens and sanguínea; these he propagates by cuttings of the young wood taken off at two or three times between June and September. The plants are sold as dwarfs for flower borders, of which they are very great ornaments in June and July, and from October till they are destroyed by frost. In the opinion of some these varieties are much handsomer in this dwarf state on their own roots, than when budded standard high; and it is certain they are much more durable, for there are not above twenty or thirty sorts of roses that will live ten years, budded as standards. It is good, however, to have both standards and dwarfs; and ten years is a long enough life for a rose. We were surprised to find that Ròsa semperflòrens, and one or two other varieties, raised from seeds sown in January and February, flower in the August and September of the same year; the continual succession of new sorts, therefore, need not be wondered at, though it is perhaps to be regretted as puzzling to purchasers. In a bed of seedlings we found the shoots from 2 to 4 ft. in length, and most of the plants with one flower or more near their extremities. These flowers are much less double in the first and second years than they are in the third and fourth. Mr. Calvert has suffered extensively from the ravages of the ver blanc or cockchaffer (Vol. III. p. 295.), and therefore no longer stirs the soil in the months of May, June, and July, among his roses, but pulls out the weeds by hand, leaving the surface as hard as a gravel walk, in order to prevent the insect from depositing its eggs there. This mode is found successful, as is that of covering the surface with wheat-straw at Vibert's rose garden at St. Denis, and other places where the soil is too loose to become hard. The circumstance of either of these modes having been resorted to, shows the great benefit which cultivators must derive from a knowledge of the natural history of insects, birds, and other animals with which they come in contact.

Mr. Calvert is very successful in the propagation of orange trees. The seeds are sown broadcast on a hot-bed early in spring; they make strong plants by August, are then taken up and potted, set on heat, by the middle of September grafted, and by the middle of November they have ripened a shoot of from 6 inches to a foot. This rapid progress is attained by the use of moist or dung heat, and judicious