120 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



glass by this time.* In the village of Hoeilaert, which 

 is perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under 

 glass, given up to grape-growing. One single estab- 

 lishment, Baltet remarks, has 200 greenhouses and con- 

 sumes 1 500 tons of coal for the vineries, t " Cheap 

 coals cheap grapes," as the editor of the Journal of 

 Horticulture wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly 

 not dearer in the beginning of the summer than they 

 are in Switzerland in October. Even in March, Belgian 

 grapes are sold in Covent Garden at from 4d. and 6d. the 

 poundt This price alone shows sufficiently how small 

 are the amounts of labour which are required to grow 

 grapes in our latitudes with the aid of glass. // certainly 

 costs less labour to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow 

 them on the coasts of Lake Leman. 



The various data which have been brought together 

 on the preceding pages make short work of the over- 

 population fallacy. It is precisely in the most densely 

 populated parts of the world that agriculture has lately 

 made such strides as hardly could have been guessed 

 twenty years ago. A dense population, a high develop- 

 ment of industry, and a high development of agriculture 

 and horticulture, go hand in hand : they are inseparable. 

 As to the future, the possibilities of agriculture are such 

 that, in truth, we cannpt yet foretell what would be the 

 limit of the population which could live from the produce 

 of a given area. Recent progress, already tested on a 

 great scale, has widened the limits of agricultural pro- 



* I take these figures from the notes which a Belgium professor of 

 agriculture was kind enough to send me. The greenhouses in Belgium 

 are mostly with iron frames. 



fA friend, who has studied practical horticulture in the Channel 

 Islands, writes me of the vineries about Brussels : " You have no idea to 

 what an extent it is done there. Bashford is nothing against it." 



\ A quotation which I took at random, in 1895, from a London daily, 

 was : " Covent Garden, igth March, 1895. Quotations : Belgian grapes, 

 4d. to 6d. ; Jersey ditto, 6d. to lod. ; Muscats, is. 6d. to as., and tomatoes, 

 3d. to sd. per Ib." 



