48 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY 



acres; 10 per cent, have from 3 to 10 acres; and the 

 remainder have over 10 acres. The small growers 

 consign principally to Manchester and Liverpool ; the 

 larger ones send to markets as far away as Scotland 

 and Ireland. In the fruit-picking season employment 

 is found for 1,000 or 1,500 pickers, chiefly discharged 

 soldiers or army reserve men and their families, from 

 various Lancashire towns. Such is the transformation 

 going on in the district that, as one local witness told 

 the Committee : 



Persons who were solely engaged in agricultural and dairy 

 farming a few years ago are gradually relinquishing the cultivation 

 of cereal crops, or of cheese-making, and are devoting themselves 

 more and more to strawberry cultivation ; and probably in a few 

 years' time the former occupation will have passed away entirely 

 from the parish of Holt. 



It is, further, interesting to know that not only is the 

 land used for the cultivation of strawberries in and 

 around the Holt district being extended every year, 

 but the large growers are planting all the hedges of 

 the fields with damson-trees, with the double object 

 of protecting the strawberries from the weather and 

 of increasing the production of damsons. 



With all these newer districts coming to the front, it 

 is not surprising to learn, on the authority of Mr. W. W. 

 Berry, who has 130 acres under fruit at Faversham, 

 that the fruit area in Kent is not very largely on the 

 increase now. But Kent, long famed as * the garden 

 of England,' gained a leading position years ago, and 

 her capacity as a fruit-producer is well brought out by 

 some figures given to the Departmental Committee by 

 Mr. Vincent W. Hill, General Manager of the South- 

 Eastern and Chatham Railway, in respect to the fruit 

 traffic on that line. Taking 1901 as ' a very fair fruit- 

 year,' Mr. Hill adduced statistics which may be 

 tabulated thus : 



