336 NORTH WALES 



making butter at this season and sell only milk and 

 cream, both of which are more profitable than butter 

 at any time and can rise in price with the demand, 

 whereas butter prices are checked by the foreign 

 supply, which extends into the smallest watering-places 

 round the coast. Sheep and especially lambs sell well 

 during a summer season, and we are acquainted with 

 more than one farmer near a watering-place who lays 

 himself out to get rid of all his lambs fat in and 

 about August. 



But the profitable opening before the Welsh farmer 

 lies in the production of vegetables and fruit; we 

 saw no market gardening and very few large gardens 

 near the watering-places, and we were informed that 

 the whole of the vegetables and fruit consumed by 

 the immense visiting population was imported from 

 Liverpool and Manchester. Even potatoes are im- 

 ported, though we saw some excellent breadths of 

 main crop potatoes and one or two of earlies, the 

 latter sufficient to show that with proper management 

 a valuable business in early potatoes could be 

 established in Wales, as in so many other districts 

 on the western seaboard. But not a single field of 

 cabbages, cauliflowers, marrows, or peas did we see, 

 all crops which might yield from a single acre pretty 

 nearly the whole rental of the usual North Wales 

 farm. It is not merely a question of supplying the 

 summer visitors for a two months' season ; the light, 

 easily worked soils, the absence of frosts, and the 

 mild growing climate induced by the proximity of 

 the western sea, might make Carnarvon and Anglesey 

 the market garden of the thickly-populated slate- 

 mining areas close at hand, and also of Lancashire, 

 the Potteries, and the Black Country, with which there 

 is direct and easy communication. At present Lanca- 



