Fifty Years of Fruit Farming, 
167 
place in fifty years is very great. Early apples are grown 
in this county. Quantities of the best sorts of plums, well 
selected and well grown, supply the metropolis and distant 
markets; pears, though a tickle crop, are abundantly grown. 
Better sorts have been planted in many instances in the form 
of bush trees and pyramids. Strawberries and other soft fruits 
are extensively produced. 
Among counties having smaller acreages, there has been 
extensive planting of soft fruits in Cambridgeshii'e, whose soil 
especially suits black currants, which are managed exceedingly 
well. In several districts greengages are well grown, and this 
compai'atively modern culture is extending in the Royston, 
Meldreth, and Shepreth districts. Damson trees have been 
planted judiciously in late years. In Lancaster fifty years 
ago fruit-growing was unknown, save in gardens and a few 
plantations here and there. Now there are close upon 3,000 
acres. Gooseberries have been for some years quite a speciality 
of Lancastrian cultivation. Many fine sorts originated there, 
notably the Lancashire Lad, Warrington, and others of equal 
value. 
Many kinds of fruits are produced in quantities increasing 
year by year, and of improved quality, in Berkshire, Bucking- 
hamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, and Surrey — counties in 
which fifty years back fruit production was upon a very small 
scale. In other counties in which there is at present a small 
acreage, there is an apparent tendency to add to it, not merely 
by sticking in fruit trees and fruit bushes without regard to sort, 
and leaving them unpruned, neglected, and unmanured, but by 
planting with forethought, and giving proper attention to after- 
treatment. Gooseberries are grown in the fens of Lincolnshire 
with satisfactory results, and this cultivation is increasing year 
by year in this county. 
Even in Scotland, whose climate would be thought quite un- 
suitable for fruit, there have been considerable additions to its 
acreage in recent years. Fifty years back fruit-growing for 
market was hardly dreamed of. Lanarkshire and Perthshire 
are the principal centres, having more than 2,000 acres between 
them, farmed in a highly skilful manner. Gooseberries are well 
grown there ; strawberries also flourish exceedingly, though 
they are of course late. Many are sent in some seasons from 
Lanark to London. 
In 1872, when the acreage of fruit land was first estimated 
and given in the Agricultural Returns of Great Britain, the total 
number of acres was 169,808. The returns for 1888 show that 
there were then 199^1 78 acres in Great Britain plus an inds-» 
