APPENDIX. 451 



where they cultivate, with or without heating, grapes, 

 .peaches, northern cherries, haricot beans, tomatoes, 

 and other fruit and vegetables. These cultures have 

 reached a very high degree of perfection. The gar- 

 deners take the greatest care to fight various plant 

 diseases. They also cultivate ordinary fruit apples, 

 pears, gooseberries, strawberries, and so on and 

 vegetables in the open air. Westland being very 

 much exposed to strong winds, they have built 

 numerous walls, which break the wind, and serve at 

 the same time for the culture of fruit upon the walls. 



" All the region feels the favourable influence of the 

 agricultural school of Naaldwijk, which is situated 

 almost in the centre of the Westland." 



3. PRICES OBTAINED IN LONDON FOR DES- 

 SERT GRAPES CULTIVATED UNDER GLASS. 



The Fruit, and Market-Gardener gives every week the 

 prices realised by horticultural and intensive garden- 

 ing produce, as well as by flowers, at the great market 

 of Covent Garden. The prices obtained for dessert 

 grapes Colmar and ^Hamburg are very instructive. 

 I took two years 1907-1908 which differ from 

 ordinary years by the winters having been foggy, 

 which made the garden produce to be somewhat late. 



In the first days of January the Colmar grapes 

 arriving from the Belgian hothouses were still sold 

 at relatively low prices from 6d. to lOd. the pound. 

 But the prices slowly rose in January and February ; 

 the Hamburg grapes were late that year, and there- 

 fore in the middle of March and later on in April 

 the Colmars fetched from Is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. 



The English grapes, coming from Worthing and so 



