THE NEW AGRICULTURE. " 129 



marketing what fresh fruits and vegetables we can at or near 

 home, and evaporating and preserving the remainder. It is 

 equally as safe to calculate that, were a like five acres situated 

 near any of our great northern cities, the profits would be corres- 

 pondingly increased. It is 110 uncommon thing, as we note by the 

 newspapers, for strawberries to sell in the New York markets dur- 

 ing the holidays, which can be done under our hot water system, 

 for several dollars per quart. One acre of strawberries, at the rate 

 we have grown them, would bring a sum we leave to our readers, 

 to calculate. 



Before us lies a letter received some time since from Mr. F. Gr. 

 Jones, of Keuka, Putnam County, Florida, who writes : 



" If there could be found out a way to retain the water here for 

 future use to all plants, Florida would become one of the richest 

 fruit growing states in the Union. We have a rain nearly every 

 day all summer, but it sinks below the surface almost immediately, 

 and as the soil is sandy will not retain moisture like northern soils. 

 I want to set some strawberries this fall. They do well here, and 

 are gathered from January to July, and bring from twenty-five 

 cents to one dollar and twenty -five per quart." 



From all portions of the South as well as from States like New 

 Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and notably from states and 

 territories embraced in what has been denominated the Great 

 American desert, letters have been coming for months, asking all 

 sorts of questions touching our system. The burden of these is 

 always the same, " the droughts, the droughts, how shall we escape 

 the droughts." But for the ordinary farmer, one who is cultivat- 

 ing from fifty to an hundred, and thus on to thousands of acres, 

 the question again is, will it pay ? To this we answer, if any far- 

 mer doubts it, let him make experiment on a single acre of meadow 

 land. Let him try an acre of potatoes, beans, peas or corn on 



