42 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



The buisness has expanded until some 

 Chinaman now come in daily with 

 several wagons or droves of pack don- i 

 keys ; but the majority of them con- 

 tinue to do business on a moderate scale 

 because lacking the means to amplify it. 



The Chinaman farmer lives on the 

 most economical l)asis, and does his cul- 

 tivating on strips of waste land, by road- 

 sides, and on hillsides so abrupt and 

 naturally sterile that the white man 

 never dreams of ultilizing them ; also 

 down in ravines and gullies which he 

 had to reclaim from the original wild- 

 erness. We remember one Chinese 

 farm in a deep and once savage gully, 

 which used to be the bed of a creek 

 that the spring floods transformed into 

 a fui-ious torrent. On one side, the rail- 

 road passes over a steep embankment ; 

 on the other is an abrupt and rocky bluff. 

 By damming the creek at the head of the 

 gully and diverting the water down the 

 hill range of which the bluff is a part, 

 the ingenious Mongolian has tui'ned the 

 bed of the ancient torrent into a pro- 

 ductive farm, and so fertilized the bar- 

 I'en slope that he can raise a crop upon 

 it also. He utilizes every available foot 

 of ground. He will even build his 

 house on piles over a creek, or on stilts 

 beside an embankment, in order to save 

 surface soil he finds so precious. 



All his farm work is done by hand, 

 usually on the methods of his native 

 country. His vegetal)le farms are as 

 neat and trim as tlie great flowerstud- 

 ded gardens of the millionaires whose 

 tables he helps to supply. He has, 

 appai-ently, measured the productive 

 capacity of the earth to an inch, and 

 crams more into a given space of soil 

 than would seem credible but for the 

 fact itself. 



His sy.stein of cultivation seems to be 

 as mathematical as liis calculation of the 

 resources of liisplot. He measures the 

 ground in feet and inches instead of by 



acres and roods, and allots spaces to his 

 beans, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, cab- 

 bages, etc., in porportion to the demand 

 for them ; and he never cultivates any- 

 thing for which there is not immediate 

 call. Wheat, grapes, and fruit do not 

 seduce him, they require too much space 

 and care ; the competition in them is 

 too great, and the market too fluctuat- 

 ing. He works not for the whole 

 world, like the farmers who have made 

 the State famous, but for a single city 

 whose denizens must have a certain a- 

 mount to eat each day. So his venture 

 is a sure one, and only a rare convul- 

 sion of nature can impair his prosper- 

 ity. An earthquake, or a landslide, or 

 a season of heavy rains, may cut into 

 his profits, but the climate is so friendly 

 that it soon repairs the ravages. His 

 crops are perennial, too. When one })ro- 

 duct is not flourishing, he manages to 

 have another that is in season, and he 

 thus keeps busy all the year round. — 

 A. Trumble, American Agriculturist. 



THE CABBAGE MAGGOT. 



One of the first things that the newly- 

 fledged market gardener invests in is 

 an early cabbage j>atch, and the less his 

 experience, the larger is his plantation. 

 Two of my horticultural fric^uls have 

 planted largely this spring, and the 

 other day (the only sunny afternoon in 

 two weeks) one of them came to me 

 with a very sober and lengthened visage 

 to inquire what ailed his cabbage ; 

 some small white grubs, or properly 

 speaking maggots, were at work at the 

 roots of his cabbages, giving no hint of 

 their ravages until the drooping and 

 withering of the })lant gave evidence 

 too late of the mischiof that was being 

 wrought. To see whole rows of cab- 

 bages that had readied their second 

 hoeing, succumb to an unseen and ap- 

 parently invincible foe was certainly 

 discouraging, and I did not blame my 



