250 JM'MJ Publicafiovf}. [April, 



people, is a matter wliicli I submit to the opinion of those whom 

 it concerns." 



The subjects which close the fourth part are vegetable and 

 meat markets, and market gardens. 



Market Gardeis. — To give our readers an idea of the great 

 amount of vegetable matter required to supply the city of Lon- 

 don, we quote the following passage: 



" The extent of the vegetable gardens in the neighborhood of 

 this great city is enormous, and the multiplied facilities of con- 

 veyance make even remote places, now, in many articles the sup- 

 pliers of London. Fifty years ago, it was calculated that there 

 were two thousand acres cultivated by the spade, and eight thou- 

 sand by the spade and plow conjointly. The extent of cultiva- 

 tion must, of course, be at present much greater. It is said of 

 one individual that he had eighty acres in asparagus, and of 

 another that he had sixty, and that the forming of the beds was 

 estimated at <£100 per acre. This undoubtedly w^as under the 

 old system of growing asparagus, when the soil was to be taken 

 out to a depth of some feet, and a bed of stones placed at the 

 bottom, and other expensive arrangements. Now, asparagus is 

 grown almost as easily as carrots or celery, it only requiring to 

 be first grown in a nursery or seed bed, and then transplanted in 

 the bottom of deep furrows or trenches, made two feet distance 

 from each other, well bedded with manure, and the bed itself 

 kept constantly clean, and annually covered with a loading of 

 manure in the autumn, which must be dug in with a fork in the 

 spring. This, in three years from the seed, gives as good and 

 abundant a plant as under the old method of trenching and bot- 

 toming with stones, and laying a foot of manure on the stones. 



" The amount of vegetables sent by some individual salesman, 

 is enormous. The principal market days are three times in a 

 week, but Saturday is the principal day; and it is confidently 

 stated — though in relating it I fear that some persons may think 

 the credulity of their too-confiding countryman has been practised 

 upon — that a single grower has been known to send, in one day, 

 more than nineteen hundred bushels of peas in the pod, and seven 

 or eight loads of cabbages, averaging eighteen hundred cabbages 

 each; and at another season, from the same farm, fourteen or fif- 

 teen hundred baskets of sprouts w^ill be sent in one day, and in 

 the course of the year from five to six thousand tons of potatoes. 

 In his account of the agriculture of Middlesex, Middleton says, 

 that in 1795, in the height of the fruit season, each acre of the 

 gardens cultivated in small fruits gave employment to thirty-five 

 persons, among whom w^ere many women, who were employed 



