In a recent visit to this charming seat nothing struck me so vividly as the perfect success of the orchard~house culture. The orchard house under the management of Mr. Young, who has been head gardener at Audley End many years, is indeed a picture of fertility and beauty. It is one of the large span-roofed houses, with a fixed roof, glazed with 16 oz. sheet glass in pieces 20 inches by 12, the rafters being 20 inches asunder. Its dimensions are as follows: - length 90 feet, width 20 feet, height 11 feet in the centre, 5 feet at the sides. In the centre is a bed of earth 7 feet wide and 20 inches high, supported by 4-inch brick walls. The side beds are each 3 1/2 feet wide, and of the same height. The paths between the central and side beds are 3 feet wide and neatly paved. It is ventilated by side lights 2 1/2 feet by 3 feet, fixed on pivots in their centres, so that when swung open to their full extent they admit abundance of air; both ends are glazed with large glass. At each end is an aperture over the door for the exit of the heated air, and no roof or any other mode of ventilating is employed.

The trees are all in the most perfect health, and never in the course of my experience have I seen exemplified the great superiority of low side ventilation to the old-fashioned mode of pulling down sliding lights to let in and let out air.

The kitchen garden here is in a low and sheltered situation, the soil light and warm, resting on a gravelly substratum; in spite of these favorable circumstances there is literally no fruit; the walls, the standards and pyramids are alike bare. On entering the orchard house, what a charming contrast! It is, to speak poetically, overflowing with fruit; the Apricots are over, but Peaches, Nectarines and Plums are in the different stages of ripeness and ripening, and the whole house is full of beauty. Standing on the central border - for none of the pots are plunged - is a row of very fine trees, from six to eight years old, in 18-inch pots (18 inches deep and the same in diameter); among them are some most charming umbrageous trees - 5 to 6 feet high, and 4 to 5 feet in diameter - of Elruge, Violette Hative, and Murray Nectarines. The crops on these were nicely arranged in thinning the fruit, so that although each tree is bearing from seven to nine dozen they do not seem crowded or overloaded with fruit.

In this central row are some fine Peach-trees of the same age and dimensions as the Nectarines. Among these are good specimens of Early Grosse Mignonne, Grosse Miguonne, Galanole, and other kinds; these with the exception of the former variety, which is an excellent early sort, are full of fine fruit. Among the central trees Mr. Young pointed out to me three large pyramid Plums, stout trees, well furnished with branches, and 6 feet high, in 18-inch pots; these were removed from the open ground last November and potted. The Early Prolific, one of the kinds potted, had borne a plentiful crop. The Reine Claude de Bavay is now full of remarkably fine fruit; the Jefferson had shed its blossoms and is fruitless; not so however with two or three young trees of the Jefferson only two years old and 2 feet high - on these were from seven to eight dozen of very nice fruit. There is perhaps no Plum that better repays the orchard-house cultivation than the Jefferson, it bears so abundantly and gives such fine large fruit.

The late black Orleans Plum is in great favor with Mr. Young. Its deep purple bloom speckled with - with - well, perhaps amber, gives it a charming appearance; it is very late, but always rich and juicy, in fact a perfect orchard-house Plum, which does not require to be removed out of doors to ripen its fruit, as is the case with the earlier sorts of Plums, if it is desired to have them high flavored.

Among the Peach-trees placed on the side borders I noticed with much interest a tree of the Mountaineer, in an 18-inch pot, one of the sorts raised by the late T. A. Knight, and a good melting Peach, with 10 dozen good fair-sized fruit on it. From this tree Mr. Young's foreman told me he had taken from 13 to 14 dozen when thinning, and I think I learned from the foreman that 400 dozen of Peaches and Nectarines had been taken from the trees in thinning.

The Apricot-trees had not borne so large a crop this season as in 1858, but the fruit was remarkably fine; the Peach Apricots were like good-sized Oranges, so regularly and perfectly had they ripened. Some large robust bushes of this kind, in 18-inch pots, and from 7 to 8 years old, are nearly 4 feet high, the same in diameter, and owing to their having been pinched in during the summer, they are like sturdy Oaks; every spur is full of blossom buds. Some of these trees are capable of bearing a peck of fruit; I have rarely seen such robust, well-grown specimens.

Mr. Young mentioned the Alberge de Montgarnet Apricot as a most delicious early kind, not large, but rich and excellent The flavor he thought was much improved by placing the tree out of doors in the sun just as the fruit began to color. With some kinds of Apricots this is good practice, but the Peach-Apricot is so extraordinarily rich and good when ripened under glass that no further improvement can take place - in short the fruit is perfect.

Although the fruit trees of all kinds in this house are in the most luxuriant growth, and although many trees are growing in 10-inch and 12-inch pots only, scarcely any of them are rooted through; this is owing to their having been abundantly top-dressed with manure, and manure water occasionally used, so that they have had abundance of food at home. Top-dressing twice or thrice in summer is one of the great essentials to success in the pot culture of fruit trees. Some quasi-gardeners are however inclined not to use it, only because it has been written in a book, and such persons call themselves "practical," making it a point to follow the too often foolish impulses of their own noddles to the great injury of their employers. I knew one gardener of this sort who would not give his Peach-trees any water " till they asked for it," i. e., till their leaves withered. He used to grow a rare crop of red spiders, but could not manage to get any Peaches; of course he found fault with the system. Mr. Young believes that his complete escape from the effects of the frost of the 1st of last April was owing to his having shut up his house early in the day of March 31, so that the large body of warm air and the radiation from the warm borders of the earth resisted the frost.

In some of the small orchard houses near Saffron Walden, the blossoms of Peach-Nectarine, and the fruit already set of the Apricots, were all entirely killed by the frost of that night. In these houses the pan of charcoal for one night only would have saved the crop. This is mentioned as being occasionally necessary, in the 6th edition of the "Orchard House," yet how few I fear attended to it on that fatal-to-fruit night above alluded to.

The history of the Audley End orchard house has some little interest attached to it. In 1850-51, when such houses began to be talked about, written about, praised and abused, as usual under such circumstances, Mr. Young, a good sound gardener "frae the canny north," of a respectable amount of years, i. e. a little above the two-score and ten, heard about them and saw some of his neighbors building them. I think he now laughingly acknowledges to having looked at the mode of culture as childish, Chineselike, playing at fruit tree culture, boshish, unfit for a respectable garden, etc, and fit only for very poor parsons and still poorer doctors and lawyers. In the autumn of 1855 the late estimable Lord Braybrook, his employer, expressed his wish to have an orchard house, to serve not only to grow fruit in but as a promenade house in the spring and autumn months, his health being delicate.

Mr. Young immediately threw his whole heart and mind into the matter., The house was built in the course of the autumn by Mr. Dixon, the builder attached to the estate; some extra-sized trees of four or five years' growth were purchased, and in the summer of 1856 a nice crop of fruit was gathered. Every season since the success has been perfect, and at this moment no sight can be more gratifying, for not a diseased leaf exists in the house, and Mr. Young derives real pleasure from the successful results of his intelligence and perseverance. I may add that the house is remarkably well constructed, and has a light and finished appearance. If it were 12 feet high instead of 11 feet it would be an improvement.

I ought to add that Mr. Young uses his house in autumn for striking cuttings of his bedding plants in pots under the shade of the trees, and in early spring for placing the young plants to harden them off before planting them out. In winter the fruit trees alone occupy the house. - O. H.