THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. IO; 



of fruit per acre, such crop being sold at from 50 to 

 60. Nay, at Angers, on the Loire, where pears are 

 eight days in advance of the suburbs of Paris, Baltet 

 knows an orchard of five acres, covered with pears (low 

 trees), which brings in 400 every year; and at a dis- 

 tance of thirty-three miles from Paris one pear planta- 

 tion brings in 24 per acre the costs of package, 

 transport and selling being deducted Likewise, the 

 plantations of plums, of which 80,000 cwts. are con- 

 sumed every year at Paris alone, give an annual money 

 income of from 29 to 48 per acre every year ; and yet, 

 pears, plums and cherries are sold at Paris, fresh and 

 juicy, at such a price that the poor, too, can eat fresh 

 home-grown fruit. 



In the province of Anjou one may see how a heavy 

 clay, improved with sand taken from the Loire and with 

 manure, has been turned, in the neighbourhoods of 

 Angers, and especially at Saint Laud, into a soil which 

 is rented at from 2 los. to $ the acre, and upon that 

 soil fruit is grown which a few years ago was exported 

 to America.* At Bennecour, a quite small village of 

 850 inhabitants, near Paris, one sees what man can make 

 out of the most unproductive soil. Quite recently the 

 steep slopes of its hills were only mergers from which 

 stone was extracted for the pavements of Paris. Now 

 these slopes are entirely covered with apricot and cherry 

 trees, black-currant shrubs, and plantations of asparagus, 

 green peas and the like. In 1881, 5600 worth of 

 apricots alone was sold out of this village, and it must 

 be borne in mind that competition is so acute in the 

 neighbourhoods of Paris that a delay of twenty-four 

 hours in the sending of apricots to the market will often 

 mean a loss of 8s. one-seventh of the sale price on 

 each hundredweightt 



* Baudrillart, Les Populations agricoles de la France : Anjou, pp. 70-71. 



f The total production of dessert fruit as well as dried or preserved 



fruit in France was estimated, in 1876, at 84,000 tons, and its value was 



