98 
Fruit-growing in Kent. 
the result that the trees only bore a crop once in two years, and 
the fruit grew small by degrees and beautifully less. The owners 
of the celebrated cherry orchards in East Kent have found out 
the folly of starving the trees. For the last few years they have 
manured the land liberally with manure brought from the 
London stables and cow-sheds, which has largely increased the 
quantity and improved the quality of the fruit. Sheep fed with 
corn and cake feed off the grass, and it is now quite the excep- 
tion to mow orchard-land. 
The cultivation of fruit affords constant work of a compara- 
tively pleasant and easy nature to very many hands throughout 
the summer. Picking all fruit but apples is usually done by 
women, who are paid by the day, or by the sieve or bushel, and 
who earn from Is. 6cZ. to 2s. 3d. Packing is performed by careful 
men, who arrange the fruit in the sieves so that it may appear to 
the best advantage, covering it with paper, dried grasses, or fern 
leaves, and fastening it down with transverse sticks laid across. 
The East Kent growers send their fruit by rail and steam- 
boat to London. Nearly all the fruit grown in Mid Kent is for- 
warded by rail. In a good year the railway stations in the chief 
fruit-producing localities are thronged with vans laden with 
fruit, from the early green-gooseberry season, in May, until the 
apples have all been gathered, at the end of October. Many of 
the West Kent growers, being near London, send up their fruit 
by road. As a rule, the best fruit is sent to Covent Garden, 
— " The Garden," as it is styled — to the Borough, and Spital- 
fields Markets. Very choice fruit, however, generally finds its 
way to Covent Garden. A large proportion of the fruit is con- 
signed to salesmen who first satisfy the requirements of fruiterers, 
greengrocers, and " costers," for retail purposes. Afterwards the 
agents of large jam and preserve manufacturers at Liverpool, 
Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other towns, buy enor- 
mous quantities ; ^the inferior and damaged qualities go to 
smaller houses for smashing up into a heterogeneous mass* 
named in accordance with the demand. In some cases straw- 
berries, raspberries, and currants, are sold by the growers to 
contractors by the ton. To give an idea of the extent of jam- 
making, the ' Liverpool Courier ' stated lately that at a manu- 
factory at Bootle about 15 tons of preserves are made in one day 
in a good fruit season.* The large towns in Scotland chiefly 
take damsons, black currants, and Warrington gooseberries. 
It might be supposed that Kentish fruit-growers, only forty 
miles distant from London, would not be affected in any great 
* A fruit salesman writes : " Speaking within limits, I should think from 300 
to 400 tons are smashed up daily in the soft-fruit season." 
