THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 69 



training of most cultural plants during the earlier stages 

 of their life. 



Home-grown fruit is always preferable to the half- 

 ripe produce which is imported from abroad, and the 

 additional work required for keeping a young plant 

 under glass is largely repaid by the incomparable 

 superiority of the crops. As to the question of labour, 

 when we remember the really incredible amount of 

 labour which has been spent on the Rhine and in 

 Switzerland for making the vineyards, their terraces, 

 and stone walls, and for carrying the soil up the stony 

 crags, as also the amount of labour which is spent every 

 year for the culture of those vineyards and fruit gardens, 

 we are inclined to ask, which of the two, all taken, re- 

 quires less of human labour a vinery (I mean the cold 

 vinery) in a London suburb, or a vineyard on the 

 Rhine, or on Lake Leman ? And when we compare the 

 prices realised by the grower of grapes round London 

 (not those which are paid in the West-end fruit shops, 

 but those received by the grower for his grapes in 

 September and October) with those current in Switzer- 

 land or on the Rhine during the same months, we are 

 inclined to maintain that nowhere in Europe, beyond 

 the forty-fifth degree of latitude, are grapes grown at 

 less expense of human labour, both for capital outlay 

 and yearly work, than in the vineries of the London 

 and Brussels suburbs. As to the always overrated pro- 

 ductivity of the exporting countries, let us remember 

 that the vine-growers of Southern Europe drink them- 

 selves an abominable piquette ; that Marseilles fabricates 

 wine for home use out of dry raisins brought from 

 Asia; and that the Normandy peasant who sends his 

 apples to London, drinks real cider only on great 

 festivities. Such a state of things will not last for ever ; 

 and the day is not far when we shall be compelled to 

 look to our own resources to provide many of the things 

 which we now import. And we shall not be the worse 



