No. 4.] MARKET GARDENING. 11 



to a barren condition, which some modern writer has delicately 

 dnbbed " abandoned farms." 



After having bronght the land of his birth into a rnn-down, 

 hnmiis-denuded condition, it is nnfortnnately the American 

 method of procednre to move westward, and repeat this 

 performance with other fertile, hnmns-laden lands. In 

 this way we leave great cities, the readily accessible markets of 

 the east, with thonsands of acres of undeveloped land, land 

 just as full of mineral fertility as it ever was, and settle in 

 regions far remote from the market to which our produce will 

 be sent, far remote from transportation facilities, subjected to 

 climatic conditions absolutely new and even atrocious. We 

 are forced to pay as high as $30 an acre annually for the privi- 

 lege of using the irrigation canal without which many much- 

 boomed western territories would remain deserts for all time. 

 The man who remains in the east, in New England, for exam- 

 ple, can purchase, at a far lower figure than he can in the west, 

 acreage capable of producing far finer fruit than the far west, 

 on land which is absolutely unsuitable for market gardening. 

 He can produce grapes or berries, and in the low lands he can 

 raise for his local markets a big range of vegetables and 

 flowers. He can live under conditions normally congenial 

 to him. He can follow, if he will, the example of his 

 ancestors, and subdue the untamed lands with which New 

 England as well as New York State and Pennsylvania are 

 filled. On Long Island alone there are still over 200,000 acres 

 of land suitable for the most intensive cultivation practices of 

 Europe. The soil is without surface boulders, rolling on the 

 north shore and in the middle section, running, by the best of 

 all tests — the spade — from 3 to 4 feet deep, and drained by 

 the most perfect system of natural drainage. It is coarse 

 gravel, filled with sea-wash sand, a combination that brings 

 about a slow drainage, yet holds the moisture so that the sum- 

 mer sun brings it up through the capillary tubes, and, with the 

 great bodies of water lying around the island, giving unfailing 

 nightly precipitation, makes drought an unknown factor. 

 This soil is early and friable, and with rational, natural, over- 

 head irrigation, — a condition which is ideal. Below every 

 square foot of the island's soil runs an immense volume of 



