102 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Take, for example, the Yale of Evesham. The last twenty years have 

 seen the most extraordinary development in market gardening in this 

 favoured spct— although this year it has suffered cruelly from late frosts, 

 like most other places in England. I was told only the other day that 

 the average rent per acre is i?4, and men pay this willingly, because they 

 can make a living out of it. Not only so, but what is, to my mind, so 

 suggestive and important is that the young men hardly ever leave the 

 Vale for towns, but take to market gardening from boyhood, as it were, 

 by instinct. Surely this speaks volumes on the problem of rural de- 

 population. 



A large retail fruiterer, speaking to me quite lately on the subject of 

 the fruit trade, said that there was an extraorelinary difference in the sale 

 of fruit, especially amongst the working classes. A few years back if he 

 sold a bunch of bananas in a week he considered it quite a lot, now he 

 sold dozens of bunches ; and when fresh fruit could not be supplied the 

 demand began for bottled fruit, especially Apricots, for which people were 

 willing to pay Is. M. for a 20-oz. bottle. 



The enormous exhibits of bottled fruits and vegetables at the Army 

 and Navy Stores, and ether co-operative houses, and Italian grocers, show 

 what the demand must be, but, alas ! most of it bears a foreign label. 



Then, again, to touch only upon jam, tons of fruit are preserved in 

 this form every year, and the inferior grades are made into pulp, which 

 can be easily done, and stored away to make up into mixed jam for cooking 

 and other purposes when the slack season comes round. Pulp is also 

 largely used in the confectionery trade. 



The advantage of good bottled fruit is that it will keep for a con- 

 siderable length of time. (Apricots and Gooseberries, bottled in 1901, 

 were shown to the audience.) Therefore, in years of plenty, when there is 

 a glut of fruit, advantage should be taken to bottle great quantities, so 

 that it can be reserved for bad seasons, such as this will be, and as the 

 last two have been. This remark applies both to private persons and to 

 the trade. In winter we are only too glad to get bottled fruit for pies and 

 puddings as well as for dessert, as it not only gives variety to our food, 

 but is also most valuable from the point of view of health. 



I now come to my second point. 



2. — The Different Methods of Bottling Fruit. 



In the " good old times " of stillrocms, and of herbs and simples and 

 decoctions of all sorts, no doubt bottled fruit was "laid down " in dozens 

 in the capacious cellars and storerooms and cupboards which occupied so 

 large a space in the old-fashioned English home. How changed are all 

 our ways ! A modern flat, with its space reckoned by inches, would not 

 have been tolerated by our grandmothers, neither could storage room be 

 found for bottled fruit or any other commodities in anything but the 

 minutest quantities. 



But to return : How was fruit bottled ? No doubt the original method 

 was in a long-necked bottle the contents of which were heated in an oven 

 or saucepan and the bottle was corked and tied down with bladder. This 



