374 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



teen or fifteen hundred baskets of sprouts will be sent in one 

 day, and in the course of the year from five to six thousand tons 

 of potatoes. In his account of the agriculture of Middlesex, 

 Middleton says, that in 1795, in the height of the fruit season, 

 each acre of the gardens cultivated in small fruits gave employ 

 ment to thirty-five persons, among whom were many women, 

 who were employed in carrying the fruit to market on their 

 heads ; and that the gathering of a crop of peas required forty 

 persons for every ten acres. The account given of the sum of 

 money received from the produce of a single acre is quite 

 worthy of remark, it being the statement of a market-gardener. 

 Radishes, 10; cauliflower, 60; cabbages, 30; celery, first 

 crop, 50 ; second crop, 40 ; endive, 30, making a total of 

 220, or 1100 dollars, for the gross produce of an acre in twelve 

 months.* 



Besides the market which London presents for the disposal of 

 the products of these immense gardens, it is to be remembered 

 that labor may be procured at an hour s notice, at any season and 

 for any term, and at a low rate of wages. The farmer or gar 

 dener is therefore saved the burden of keeping up an expensive 

 establishment for any longer time than their services are needed ; 

 with this addition, that he makes no provision whatever, at any 

 time, for housing or feeding them. Any person, who has had 

 the management of a large farm in the United States, knows 

 quite well, that the sum of all its difficulties is in the feeding 



* What some persons may deem the intrinsic improbability of such accounts, 

 will disappear, when one considers that, in London, every thing, and any thing, may 

 be sold, and may find purchasers, excepting only, I believe, children. These are 

 to be given away ; for it is a sober truth, that in the streets of London I have been 

 repeatedly offered the present of children, and that from the breast too, though 

 none the better for that, if I would take them. Whether it is, by a sort of natural 

 phrenological skill, they discover my philoprogenitiveness to be large, or from a 

 destitution, the bitterness of which extinguishes the maternal affections, or from 

 a profligacy even more bitter, and more deeply to be deplored, (in too many cases 

 the pitiable consequence of this destitution,) this is not the place for me to con 

 sider. But it is for my own countrymen to consider, with the deepest religious 

 gratitude, the difference between a condition of things in which children are felt 

 to be a burden, and almost a curse, and that in which a healthy and perfect child 

 may be looked upon always as a choice blessing from Heaven ; and the more 

 hungry mouths, and sparkling eyes, gather round the well-filled board of the 

 humblest cottager, morning, noon, and night, so much the more, in fact, are the 

 means of supply increased, and the parental heart filled to overflowing with joy 

 and love 



