THE BUSINESS OF FLOWER-GROWING 71 



were the people to buy. In this way a business that was 

 of small proportions even thirty years ago has attained 

 to very considerable magnitude. It is no longer a 

 question of cultivating for sale a comparatively few 

 flowers in market-gardens on the immediate outskirts of 

 large towns, to supplement the receipts from cabbages 

 and cauliflowers. This is still extensively done, of 

 course ; but what one finds, in addition, is that flower 

 production is being carried on as a separate business in 

 certain districts, where the output is often really 

 prodigious. Particular flowers, or even special varieties 

 thereof, are grown by the field, and, in place of acres of 

 yellow corn, swaying with the wind, one now sees acres 

 and acres of beautiful bloom. One grower I have met 

 has on his flower farm a field of 16 acres which he devotes 

 exclusively to just one particular kind of daffodil ; and 

 a single wholesale dealer, I may add, takes his entire 

 supply. Chrysanthemums, again, are sown by the acre. 

 At Worthing I saw in one nursery garden a collection of 

 190,000 chrysanthemums which had been transferred to 

 flowerpots, and were awaiting removal to the glass- 

 houses at the end of the fruit season ; and elsewhere 

 I have seen an acre of thickly-planted chrysanthemums, 

 in full bloom, all growing under cover, while they still 

 remained in the ground. Then, I have heard of fields 

 of 120,000 rose-trees, or of 10,000 clumps of lilies of the 

 valley ; of lo-acre lots of violets, 7-acre lots of dahlias, 

 5-acre lots of peonies, 4-acre lots of cornflowers, and so 

 on, almost ad infinitum. 



The growing of flowers in the open has been very 

 largely supplemented of late years by the use of glass- 

 houses, either as an adjunct to the production of fruit 

 in the otherwise ' off season ' (as indicated above), or as 

 a distinctive branch of business. Still more remarkable 

 phases, however, of the revolutionary changes which 



