ii4 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



Switzerland in October. In the nature of things, 

 grapes from Manchester or South Wales should be 

 cheaper than grapes from Italy, though, no doubt, 

 the second-hand sunshine does not ripen them with 

 the same aroma as the direct rays. But now we 

 have a purer form of derived sunshine than hot 

 water or the direct heat of a coke fire. The electric 

 discharge as a stimulant of vegetable growth has been 

 proved economical even on a field scale, and for more 

 than ten years they have been growing lettuces for 

 Chicago under the artificial sun of an arc lamp. Only 

 the heavy guerdon of the rich could have paid at first 

 for these costly attempts to get earlier and earlier 

 vegetables, fruits, and flowers ; but the day seems 

 even now close at hand when the products of hot- 

 house culture may be had at a democratic price at all 

 times of the year. 



It might be thought that the purely gardening 

 craft was losing dignity and importance by compari- 

 son with those of the engineer, chemist, and electrician. 

 But the world still looks to the plant-breeder and 

 evolutionist to solve many of its difficulties. He has 

 kept his comparatively unobserved step in the march 

 of progress by producing earlier and more prolific 

 tomatoes, logan-berries and other fruits, straw- 

 berries that bear all the year round, and other less 

 notorious, though no less important, improvements. 

 Some day, perhaps, he will tame some poisonous but 

 precocious wildling, like the arum, and give us a new 

 form of food that shall supersede many. We could 

 do a great deal more with that wholesome plant, the 

 lettuce, if it grew on a perennial root-stock, like the 

 rhubarb or the seakale. When we note the vigour 



