SPALDING DISTRICT 75 



of land devoted to flowers and bulbs. The area so 

 utilized in this one locality alone has doubled in five 

 years, and quadrupled in ten. The business may, 

 indeed, be regarded as the outcome of the last decade, 

 and it has already gone so far that the consignments 

 of flowers from Spalding during the season of 1905 

 represented a total of 400 tons. To-day the tendency 

 is for the local growers to put up more and still more 

 glass-houses, so that they may be better able to com- 

 pete with those in the Scilly Isles, in Cornwall, and 

 elsewhere. One grower in the Spalding district has 

 over 100 acres under flowers; smaller men have, mostly, 

 anything from J acre to 20 acres. But the acreage 

 is constantly increasing, and the small man who has 

 got brains, business instinct, and sufficient capital, 

 shows a remarkable talent in the way of enlarging 

 his holding in the course of a few years. Postmen, 

 artisans, farm labourers, allotment holders, and others, 

 all have their patches of flowers, and help to swell the 

 bulk of the total consignments. 



The heaviest despatches of flowers from Spalding in 

 a single day or, rather, in a single evening, for the 

 railway part of the work is all done between 5 and 

 8.30 p.m. have amounted to 16 tons. An average 

 day in the busy season would yield 10 or n tons. 

 These figures are suggestive of good business for the 

 railways, but, in effect, they represent a good deal of 

 work for the railway servants. An analysis of the 

 business done in the way of flower traffic, on a day 

 when the total handled was 12 tons 7 cwt., shows 

 that this quantity was forwarded by 25 senders, in 

 1 20 different consignments, the number of 'packages' 

 included therein, and requiring separate handling, being 

 787. Three or four of the growers forward large con- 

 signments, but the majority come under the definition 



