468 



THE MARKET GARDENS OF PARIS. 



words of mine can induce cultivators to adopt something 

 like a system for watering gardens effectively ; but there can 

 be no doubt whatever that it would be a decided advantage 

 to establish immediately in every large kitchen garden a small 

 department near the best supply of water^ to make it rich 

 and light, and keep it thoroughly moist during the dry and 

 warm months ; so that a few crisp and delicate salads and 

 vegetables may not during a dry season be as impossible 

 with us as upon the Sahara. This small division might be 

 established in most places without any but the most trifling 

 cost, and the result would be very satisfactory indeed. Even 

 a few very rich and light beds, closely cropped and looked 

 after, and placed near a good supply of water, would repay 

 the cultivator, and perhaps soon lead him to adopt the same 

 plan of gi'vTLng abundance of food and water on a larger 

 scale. It need hardly be added that it would not be neces- 

 sary to make any such arrangement in any very moist 

 districts in the British Isles ; but although theoretically our 

 chmate is very moist, there are many parts of the southern 

 and midland counties where a modification of the Parisian 

 plan would prove a decided advantage. 



'In addition to the abundant watering and rich manuring 

 the Parisian market gardeners owe a great deal of their 

 success to a close system of rotation, eight crops per year 

 being frequently gathered from the ground. Were it not 

 so the cultivators could not exist, so very limited is the 

 ground each possesses, A considerable portion of the surface 

 in one garden I visited was devoted to Cos lettuce, and 

 very fine specimens of it ; but beneath them there was a 

 dark green carpet of leaves very close to the ground — the 

 leaves of the ScaroUe, which forms such an excellent salad, 

 and is indeed one of the very best of all salads, and not yet 

 sufficiently grown in England. The young plants have 

 plenty of room to grow now amongst the closely-tied up 

 Cos lettuce ; but the moment the Cos is cut for market, the 

 ScaroUe has fall liberty, and with abundance of water soon 

 makes wide heads. Then perhaps some young plants of 

 another vegetable are slijjped in at regular intervals in the 

 angles between four plants of ScaroUe, which crop will be 



