The first things that strike observers in visiting Egyptian gardens are the overcrowding of the trees, the neglect of precautions to keep them free from weeds, and in many cases the marked absence of pruning dealt out judiciously by one who knows a fruit tree and its needs--plenty of light and air, the removal of cross growth, and the fostering of bearing wood, here frequently injured by rank growth.
Then, again, the Egyptian gardener is as obstinate and conservative as his prototype in the western counties of England, who leaves his ancient apple-trees of the orchard to grow one into the other and become covered with grey lichen, while he religiously avoids the replacing of old and unprofitable trees by young ones.
The result of experience is--and the knowledge of what the land will do makes it certain--that in the following out of this defective system may be traced the want of quality, flavour, and quantity of some Egyptian fruits.
Of these it must be remembered that the settler and commencer of their cultivation would have to deal with several that are new to him in the way of growing, as well as those of the cooler parts of Europe.
Egypt suggests to the reader the ancient civilisation, with its pyramids, temples, and other monuments of its old-time grandeur, the great river, and, above all, the desert; but to come back from these to the simple and ordinary pursuit of gardening, the settler would be able to surround himself, as in California and Florida, but without the bitter disappointments produced by frosts, with several varieties of the golden apples of the Hesperides--oranges, to wit--the sweet, the bitter, the deeply tinted blood orange, and the mandarin. All of them grow well in Lower Egypt, and produce beautiful and profitable crops of fruit, as may be judged by the following. The sweet and mandarin trees will bear, upon a good average tree, from three hundred to four hundred oranges each--that is to say, good, sweet, juicy fruit, and these will sell readily wholesale at about two shillings per hundred; while, in the way of drawbacks for one who expects to make an income from his sales, it will be found here that, just as at home, the tree that in one season bears an exceptionally heavy crop is rather shy in its production in the next.