August 14, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
149 
quite doubled. I have succeeded in increasing the sweet ])rinciple in 
Apples, Grapes, and Peaches by cultivation and proper fertilisation, and 
this when the principle was originally present in normal quantity. In 
increasing the sugar we also increase every other desirable quality in the 
fruit, for one principle cannot be forced into prominence without being 
accompanied by all the others. 
How Fruits are Sweetened. 
Strawberries. 
Peaches . 
Pears. 
Oranges . 
Grapes (Black Hamburgh) 
„ (Concord) .. .. 
„ (Green) 
Melons (Water) .. .. 
„ (Musk) .. .. 
Cane Sugar. 
Grape Sugar. 
00.. 
.17.26 
00.. 
.14.08 
00. 
. 1.60 
. 00 
The table explains how several kinds of fruits are sweetened. The 
per-centage of cane sugar and fruit sugars which enters into Strawberries, 
Peaches, Pears, &c., is shown. It will be noticed that in Grapes no cane 
sugar is presented ; the sweet principle is entirely glucose. Of course 
fruits vary greatly in the amount of sugar they contain. These examples 
are presented as the results of analysis made with the view of obtaining 
general or approximate results. Whilst it is possible to increase the 
saccharine principle, and also to modify the hydrated malic acid consti¬ 
tuent in fruits, it is entirely beyond our power to change the fixed nature 
of Vines, shrubs, and trees by any methods of cultivation or fertilisation 
yet discovered. I know of nothing more wonderful in nature than the 
persistency with which vegetable structures adhere to their original 
design. Trees producing sour Apples, Pears, Peaches, or Vines produc¬ 
ing astringent Grapes cannot be turned aside from their laboratory work, 
unless by the introduction of scions or the employment of the knife in 
other ways. 
We all know that two trees growing side by side from the same soil, 
breathing the same air, and precisely alike in external and internal 
structure, will grow fruit totally dissimilar in chemical constituents and 
physical appearance. If a young sour Apple tree is cut off low in its 
trunk, and scions of another kind inserted, it is changed only above the 
point where they are placed. The chemical reactions below continue 
true to their original instinct, and if fruit comes from a sprout it is 
charged with the acid juices of the parent trees. 
We thus have the bewildering fact brought before us that sap circu- 
Inting through one portion of a tree culminates in the production of 
excess of acid in the fruit, while in another [there is found an excess of 
sugar. It is not unusual to observe a newly set scion bud, blossom, and 
bear fruit the first year. The Apple may weigh ten times as much as the 
frail scion which held it up and supplied the nutriment necessary for its 
growth, but the little twig transplanted to an alien limb will set up a 
laboratory of its own, and from the strange juices brought to it will 
manufacture fruit entirely dissimilar to its companion fruits growing in 
close proximity. An example of this nature was afforded in my orchard, 
when from a scion having a surface for cell action of only 9 square 
inches a sweet Apple was grown weighing 7 ozs., and affording from its 
juices 93 grains of fruit sugar. 
We have, however, still more wonderful examples of fruit chemistry 
in Apples, which in their own structure exhibit sectional differences of 
composition, one-half or one-quarter being saccharine, the other portions 
being extremely acid, and having the sectional lines distinctly drawn. 
I have seen a basket of this remarkable fruit in which the divisions were 
in all proportions, but each one unmistakeably marked. 
I have brought to view these interesting examples of plant chemistry 
simply to awaken inquiry and stimulate research, that we may, if 
possible, obtain new light upon some most perplexing problems.—D r. 
James R, Nichols (in Transactions of Massachusetts Horticultural 
Society), 
EXTENSION OF COVENT GARDEN FLOWER MARKET. 
Meddle-aged people who in their young and vigorous days “ did ” the 
early market at Covent Garden as one of the recognised sights of London, 
says a London daily paper, no doubt will beimder the impression that they 
have seen all that is to be seen there, and know all about it. They are 
under a great delusion. If for once on a Saturday morning—or any other 
morning of the week for that matter, but Saturday morning is the best— 
they will muster a little of their pristine energy and will turn out and 
make for Covent Garden in time to be there between six and seven o’clock, 
they will find a market altogether different from the one they have in 
remembrance. There are few things of the kind more remarkable in 
London than the enormous development of an interest in flowers, and those 
who know the head quarters of the trade only as it was twenty years ago, or 
ten years ago, could hardly fail to be amazed at it as it has appeared during 
the past spring and early summer months. 
The visitor who makes his way towards it from any point of the compass 
between six and seven o’clock in the morning will be inclined to suspect 
that he is too late, and that the market has already begun to dissolve. In¬ 
termittent streams of flowers are dribbling away in all directions. Market 
carts are already rattling off into the suburbs with tailboards all aglow 
with colours that would make a rainbow ridiculous ; donkeys and their 
barrows go tottering over the stones under burdens of blossoms that would 
have made sensational flower shows in daj's not so very long ago ; small 
capitalists are trudging off with bundles of Stocks or armfuls of Finks ; 
and here and there a cab may be seen stuffed with pots of Mignonette and 
Lobelia, and jiiled up on its roof with Trumpet Lilies and Fuchsias, 
Pelargoaiums and Calceolarias. Fle^; Ttreet and the Strand, which an 
hour or two before have been all astir with the newspapers, have now sub¬ 
sided a little, and every now and again quite a floral procession may be met 
moving through the still, sleepy thoroughfare, and pleasant whiffs of 
Musk and Heliotropes and Roses come upon tlie morning breeze. The 
stranger is apt to think that the market must be getting thin ; but as he 
turns up either of the streets lea^ng directly to it the stragglers he has 
met appear to be altogether insignificant. A whole neighbourhood is 
literally choked up with flowers, the actual market being only the central 
point of the trade which surges through all the surrounding thoroughfares 
and flows out into the Strand. Wellington Street is closely packed with 
vehicles laden with flowers, and the buildings on each side are barricaded 
with them. The office of the Morning Post seems to be embedded in a 
thicket of Indiarubber Plants, Delphiniums and scarlet Geraniums ; the 
Lycium springs from a tangled undergrowth of Marguerites and standard 
Rose Trees, Clematis, and Tropaeolums, Cockscombs, and Antirrhinums, 
and the shop fronts of both sides of the way are banked up with boxes of 
Golden Feather and Lobelia, Pansies, and serried ranks of the most 
beautiful Fuchsias. The dense growth spreads away down the narrow 
thoroughfares into Catherine Street ; all along Tavistock Street scores of 
burly porters are pushing their way about with mountains of pendant 
bloom upon their heads ; on the steps of the Strand District Offices a 
stalwart dealer sits and smokes his peaceful pipe, securely shut in from the 
surging crowd by a fortification of Strawberries and ripe Tomatoes in 
baskets, bundles of Watercress and pots of Ericas, Maidenhair Ferns, and 
the most delicate Arum Lilies. Burleigh Street is quite a part of the 
market. St. Michael’s Church stands knee-deep, so to speak, in Ixias 
and Dracfenas, Phloxes, and herbaceous Calceolarias ; and the flood of 
gleaming colour spreads away right down into the Strand, where vans 
and carts, unable to get nearer to ti;e central point, are packing and un¬ 
packing their treasures. 
Of course this has always been a busy spot in the early morning, and 
these breezy slopes on the north of the Strand have from time immemorial 
breathed odours of Cherry Pie and Mignonette before breakfast, whatever 
may have been their fragrance afterwards. But no such displays of flowers 
as may be seen now were ever dreamed of a few years ago. It seems but the 
other day that flowers formed only a minor feature in the market, and that 
the trade was pursued beneath a number of ricketty sheds on the outskirts. 
Only a few years ago the Duke of Bedford set up a substantial building, with 
a superficial area of some 16,000 feet. This we believe was something of an 
experiment and seemed at the time likely to meet the utmost requirements 
of the trade for many years to come. But we have been mstheticising very 
rapidly since then. Our artists have been impressing upon us the beauties of 
Sunflowers and large white Daisies, and Government has been setting us 
practical examples in the parks and public gardens of what may be done 
with flowers; and though our artistic censors have not yet subdued our 
inborn delight in crude scarlets and yellows, and our public guides have 
sorely misled us in their ’prentice-hand partiality for ribbon borders and 
carpet-bedding, we are undoubtedly moving on in the charming pursuit of 
floriculture. “Flowers for the gardin” and “All a-growin’and a-blowin,” 
have become familiar ditties in our suburbs. Hundreds of hardworking 
fellows now do a good peripatetic trade that was never thought of ten or 
twenty years ago, and the spacious building constituting the head quarters 
of the trade has long become all too small for the purpose, although there 
has been prevalent in this market a sort of “ Box and Cox ” arrangement by 
which two or three tenants have been accommodated at one and the same 
stall. 
There are about 300 stalls in the existing flower market, and many of 
these are tenanted by those whose trade lies chiefly in certain classes of 
goods pertaining to particular seasons, and who only occupy their stands in 
those seasons. It has been the custom to let the stands at other times to 
casual comers, who, of course, have to turn out if the lawful occupant puts 
in an appearance. But, notwithstanding this multiple tenancy, the market 
has become wholly inadequate to the requirements of the trade, and the 
Duke of Bedford has pulled down several valuable houses fronting Tavistock 
Street and is about to extend the market right down to this thoroughfare. 
A certain part of the structure now in use, and which was put up as a 
temporary experiment, will also be cleared away and the space taken into 
the permanent new building, which will add altogether about 100 more 
stands. This will make altogether about 400 shops entirely engaged in the 
flower business, which is nevertheless probably even now only in its early 
days as regards the great mass of Londoners. Every season brings an 
increase with it, and the early spring and “bedding-out” trade this year has 
been, we understand, the largest ever known, though from the conditions of 
the trade it is scarcely practicable to set forth the increase in figures. _ There 
can, however, be no doubt about the increase of late years. Everything has 
contributed to it. The development of facilities for transport have practically 
brought many parts of the Continent as near to the market as the midland 
counties were a few years ago, and cut flowers of a great many kinds are 
now to be had in Covent Garden at seasons of the year which would have 
rendered them quite phenomenal a generation or two ago. 
Various influences have been at work, too, in the development of a taste 
for floriculture—the planting of our parks and public gardens, the autumn 
distribution of cuttings, the multiplication of flower shows, the establishment 
of one or two popular publications on horticulture, and so forth. Tear by 
year, as London grows, and flowers become more and more indispensable, 
this central flower market demands greater space for its expansion, and 
though the addition which the Duke of Bedford is now making to it will 
greatly increase the accommodation, it will apparently do little more than 
meet the present requirements of the trade, and in a very few years even 
further schemes of extension will probably be found necessary. Even now 
it is deemed expedient to provide for the utmost possible utilisation of the 
additional space, and we undei'stand that in the leases of these new stands 
it will be expressly stipulated that when not actually occupied by the 
regular tenants “ casuals ” may be taken in. This, as we have said, is a 
custom that has long been in force, but in future lettings it is to become a 
matter of stipulated right instead of mere favour on the part of the tenant 
as heretofore. In addition to the demolitions on the ground adjoining the 
site of the present flower market, a further clearance has been made on the 
west of the narrow way leading up from Tavistock Street into the m.ain 
market. It is, we are informed, not quite definitely determined what 
