Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 
75 
raised in England ; but cabbages and greens of all kinds are 
not imported to an}" extent, being too bulky, and the season for 
imported cauliflowers and other vegetables practically is over 
before the English season has begun. The season of imported 
fruits likewise is for the most part over before those grown in 
this country are ripe. It is thought that a large trade might be 
established with France, Holland, and Belgium in fruit grown 
in England, coming as it does when the season of the common 
fruits of the Continent has passed. There also is a wide field 
for energy in the adoption of systems like those of the market- 
gardeners at Vaugirard and other places near Paris, of growing 
early vegetables under bell-glasses, and frames and lights. 
English producers surely might supply the large towns with 
salad-plants grown under glass, and, later on in the season, out 
of doors, more cheaply and certainly in a more fresh condition 
than the French gardeners. The quantity of these salad-plants 
imported is enormous, and it is increasing, because practically 
the importers now have the field to themselves. Early fruits 
also could be grown on a large scale under glass to compete 
Avith those that come from the Continent. In short, if well- 
directed and well-sustained attempts were made to produce early 
vegetables of excellent and good appearance, it is believed that 
the foreign growers might be ousted after a time. It may be 
thought that these are too trifling details for farmers proper to 
worry themselves about ; but every farmhouse has its garden, 
whose soil and situation are in nine cases out of ten the best on the 
farm, and which is too often the worst-farmed part of the land ; 
this entails the services of a gardener, or a workman who knows 
something of gardening, occasionally or permanently. A better 
gardener or an unusually intelligent labourer might be employed, 
and the garden should be considered as a source of possible profit, 
and tilled and tended in the most careful manner, and extended 
to the farm land as circumstances might warrant. Near towns 
it would be found that dealers would come out and take vege- 
tables and fruit, until the quantity he produced would enable 
the farmer to consign to market on his own account, or to make 
arrangements with Supply Associations or retailers. In this 
manner what may be called the garden of the farm would be 
developed from the nucleus of the existing garden. All kinds 
of smaller herbs could be produced. Cultivation under glass 
might be adopted in the gardens of farms far more than it is at 
present, and with much profit and advantage, in the production 
of cucumbers and early salad plants, and gradually increased if 
found desirable. This might be done not only with bell-glasses 
and handlights, but also with frames and protection to fruit- 
trees on walls, and with also cheaply-built greenhouses. Flowers 
