THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. Ill 



gima as real " model farms ". A highly complimentary 

 appreciation from the lips of a practical maraicher who 

 has learned from his infancy that only in fairyland do 

 the golden apples grow by the fairies' magic wand. As 

 to the perfection to which apple-growing has been 

 brought in Canada, the aid which the apple-growers 

 receive from the Canadian experimental farms, and the 

 means which are resorted to, on a truly American scale, 

 to spread information amongst the farmers and to supply 

 them with new varieties of fruit trees all this ought to 

 be carefully studied in this country, instead of inducing 

 Englishmen to believe that the American supremacy is 

 due to the golden fairies' hands. If one-tenth part of 

 what is done in the States and in Canada for favouring 

 agriculture and horticulture were done in this country, 

 English fruit would not have been so shamefully driven 

 out of the market as it is at the present time. 



The extension given to horticulture in America is 

 immense. The " truck farms " alone i.e., the farms 

 which work for export by rail or steam covered in the 

 States in 1892 no less than 400,000 acres. At the very 

 doors of Chicago one single market-gardening farm 

 covers 500 acres, and out of these, 150 acres are given 

 to cucumbers, 50 acres to early peas, and so on. During 

 the Chicago Exhibition a special " strawberry express," 

 composed of thirty waggons, brought in every day 

 324,000 quarts of the freshly gathered fruit, and there 

 are days that over 10,000 bushels of strawberries 

 are imported in New York three-fourths of that 

 amount coming from the " truck farms " of Virginia by 

 steamer.* 



This is what can be achieved by an intelligent com- 

 bination of agriculture with industry, and undoubtedly 

 will be applied on a still larger scale in the future. 



However, a further advance is being made in order 



* Ch. Baltet, V 'Horticulture, etc. 



