Littell's Living Age/Volume 127/Issue 1638/Miscellany

16,000 Miles of Apple-trees. — We are not such great growers of fruit as we might be, and as we really ought to be, considering the health-giving properties belonging to this branch of the vegetable kingdom. One who has the welfare of the human race at heart, has lately cast eyes on our neglected railway sidings, and it has occurred to him that they might be utilized by the growing of apple-trees. This is largely done in Belgium and Holland. Anywhere between Maestricht and Mechlin, for instance, you may see the espaliers kept low and neatly trained on wires. "Ask the station-master," says our philanthropist, "if the fruit ever gets stolen. He'll smile and say, 'Some does, perhaps; but there's enough left to pay the orchard company a good dividend.'" Surely we, too, might have limited liability railroad-orchard companies. There are, by the statistical tables of 1873, over sixteen thousand miles of railways in the United Kingdom, and any one caring for such questions may set to work to calculate how many trees could be grown, and how many apples there would probably be, in a good season, for each of us.

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