ISSd.] 



ENGLAyn AS A MARKET GARDEN. 



31 



quarter of our vast Empire alone, and that, too, at every season 

 of the year. In an interesting eight-page tract, just issued by 

 Government, it is shown that in 1882 no less than over thirty- 

 eight million pounds sterling of articles of food for man and beast 

 were imported wliicli might have been grown in this country ; and 

 so, on an average, £1 per acre miglit have been added to the total 

 acreage of the cultivated land of England. 



The return alluded to, entitled Customs Statistics for 1882, 

 the following details of imported articles just alluded to : — 

 Animal Fvod : — 



gives 



All this is in face of the judgment on our home apples as being 

 more numerous in sorts and of superior quality at the late Inter- 

 national Apple Congress. 



Of course there is an obverse view of the pecuniary plenty con- 

 sequent on such extended market-gardening. Practical fruit-growers 

 have called attention to their seasons of disappointment and low 

 prices, as well as their years of plenty. The strawberiy-growers 

 of Blairgowrie, whose achievements have won notice from Mr. 

 Gladstone, complain this season that the price of their staple has 

 been such that it does not yield a profit. Jam-making appears to 

 have been over-pushed. The colony of forty industrious proprietors 

 on land that previously was only capable of pasturing travelling 

 flocks going or returning from the Falkirk Tryst appeared to us on a 

 recent visit one of the social features of the time. But the colonists 

 are giievously handicapped by the proprietor, owing to a heavy feu 

 rising to £5 per acre of their two to four acre lots, and the necessity 

 of immediately erecting a house to the value of .£'300 or so on 

 the same. 



