ADDRESSES 187 



Jersey and Guernsey have been visited, no one can fairly 

 appreciate the possibilities of intensive gardening. Origin- 

 ally erected for the purpose of growing grapes, they now 

 combine that with the raising of all crops grown in the open 

 air. These glass shelters are of the simplest construction, 

 in most cases mere frames of glass and wood, sometimes 

 heated, but oftener not. But they yield enormously, crop 

 after crop, throughout the entire season. Hardly is one out 

 of the way than another takes its place. Before the potatoes 

 are out of the ground, beet or broccoli is set between the 

 rows, etc. The whole island of Guernsey is dotted with 

 them : here mere lean-tos against the sides of the buildings, 

 there more substantial structures in the fields, or again 

 rising tier upon tier up the steep hillsides. The grape crop, 

 of which the annual exportation from the island of Guernsey 

 is over five hundred tons, valued at some two hundred thou- 

 sand dollars, and on which the inhabitants chiefly relied for 

 an income, has now become a side issue, and is entirely 

 eclipsed by the immense quantities of potatoes, tomatoes, 

 peas, beans, and carrots raised under these shelters. It was 

 not my good fortune to visit these glass-houses in the early 

 season: but in November, on the island of Jersey, at Goose 

 Green, in a house some nine hundred feet long by forty-one 

 or two broad, I saw them ploughing down the centre while 

 they gathered tomatoes from the vines on either hand, 

 and picked the pendent bunches of grapes from the trellis - 

 work on the sides. 



No more interesting description of the vegetable houses 

 has been written than that by Prince Kropotkin, and you 

 will, I am sure, bear with me for a few moments if I quote 

 from his recent article on the "Possibilities of Agriculture." 



