THE MARKET GARDENS OF PARIS. 



471 



labour to the weather. This individual had worked four- 

 teen years at the business^ and was desirous of disposing of 

 his garden^ feeling rich enough to retire and live on the 

 fruits of his labour. These men have their vicissitudes not- 

 withstanding the vigorous industry and excellent system 

 of culture which is general with them. Some that I 

 visited devote a considerable portion of space to a difficult 

 crop — Cauliflower seed. This takes a long time — more than 

 a year — to bring to perfection ; one market gardener who 

 had been in the habit of growing large and precious quan- 

 tities of it for Messrs. Vilmorin_, Andrieux^ and Co.^ had 

 scarcely gathered two pounds of it in consequence of the 

 great heat of the season of 1868. 



There is a Societe de Secours Mutuel among these 

 market gardeners. To give an example of the way they 

 work, I have merely to state that when a body of pro- 

 vincial cultivators were almost ruined by inundations, the 

 Paris society sent them more than 1200 lbs. weight of seeds 

 to begin again with. Generally they seem independent, 

 and are said to accumulate money ; but their houses do not 

 show the comfort that one could desire. However, few 

 will doubt that it is better to have a large class of small 

 proprietors in a thrifty and independent, if very humble 

 condition, than one individual with his hundreds of acreSj 

 and every soul employed by him without a single thing in 

 the world to call his own, except it be misery, poverty, and 

 degradation. The Paris market gardener is very far from 

 being mistaken for a " genteel person, or putting in the 

 smallest claim to the 



" Grand old name of gentleman, 

 Defamed by every charlatan, 

 And soiled by all ignoble use ;" 



but he is a thousand degrees better than the poor wretch 

 working in a London market garden, who is practically a 

 slave, and a very wretched, badly-fed, badly-housed, and 

 badly-clad slave too. 



The cultivation of the Mushroom is of vast importance 

 about Paris ; and I will next deal with the doings of the 

 Champignonnistes, a class of men who devote themselves 

 entirely to its culture. 



