THE EARLY MARKET in 



Others, again, lie in a valley in the neighbourhood 

 of Hyeres, where the landlords reap a rich harvest 

 of rents, and the tenants, we hope, get a little back. 

 The clever prospector could, if our land laws allowed, 

 find many a streak of early soil that would make 

 these bundles of very early vegetables a good deal 

 less exiguous than they are. 



Any one who knows the fields and woods among 

 which he lives can tell where, with great regularity, 

 the first snowdrop comes up, the ferns first unfold, the 

 sap first runs into beech or ash. Perhaps he can give 

 reasons, more or less satisfactory, for the apparent 

 bending of the isothermal line. Can he say, for 

 example, why it is that the nettles present us so 

 early with the young shoots, greatly valued by our 

 ancestors before the cabbage was discovered ? Is it 

 because the nettle has an early habit, because its 

 acid, like formic acid, is a forcer of growth, or because 

 the nettle seizes the well-drained spots where the 

 bacterial life wakes soon, after the drowning influence 

 of winter ? Possibly all three are important factors, 

 but, since the nettle has gone out of favour as a table 

 vegetable, the gardener has only as yet applied the 

 last of them. The hedge-bank supplies us with an 

 object-lesson in precocity that embraces many species 

 and natural orders. Added to the drainage that 

 belongs to a mound pierced with roots and the 

 burrows of animals are the protection of a slight wall, 

 the warming of the air by the chemical action of 

 the boughs, never entirely at rest, and the holding of 

 warmth in the interstices of the twigs. Given the 

 same downpouring of sunshine by day, the hedge 

 and the near neighbourhood of the hedge will hold 



