IIO FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



so on, are opened by the communes, the private societies, 

 and the State, in order to promote horticulture, and 

 hundreds of acres of land are covered with thousands 

 of greenhouses. Here we see one small commune ex- 

 porting 5500 tons of potatoes and 4000 worth of pears, 

 to Stratford and Scotland, and keeping for that purpose 

 its own line of steamers. Another commune supplies 

 the north of France and the Rhenish provinces with 

 strawberries, and occasionally sends some of them to 

 Covent Garden as well. Elsewhere early carrots, which 

 are grown amidst flax, barley and white poppies, give 

 a considerable addition to the farmer's income. In 

 another place we learn that land is rented at 24. and 

 27 the acre, not for grapes or melon-growing but for 

 the modest culture of onions; or that the gardeners 

 have done away with such a nuisance as natural soil in 

 their frames, and prefer to make their loam out of wood 

 sawings, tannery refuse and hemp dust, " animalised " 

 by various composts.* In short, Belgium, which is 

 one of the chief manufacturing countries of Europe, is 

 now becoming one of the chief centres of horticulture. 

 (See Appendix N.) 



The other country which must especially be recom- 

 mended to the attention of horticulturists is America. 

 When we see the mountains of fruit imported from 

 America we are inclined to think that fruit in that 

 country grows by itself. " Beautiful climate," " virgin 

 soil," " immeasurable spaces " these words continually 

 recur in the papers. The reality, however, is that horti- 

 culture i.e., both market-gardening and fruit culture 

 has been brought in America to a high degree of per- 

 fection. Prof. Baltet, a practical gardener himself, 

 originally from the classical marais (market-gardens) of 

 Troyes, describes the " truck farms " of Norfolk in Vir- 



* Charles Baltet, L' Horticulture, etc. 



