404 THE COTTAGE GARDENER. February 20. 
The strawberry trade of Covent Garden is not likely, 
however, at present to fall into the hands of foreigners. 
The London market-gardeners have long looked with justice 
upon this fruit as particularly their own. By the skill they 
have bestowed upon its culture it has advanced enormously, 
both in flavour and size, from the old standard “ hautboy ” 
of our fathers, and which foreigners mainly cultivate to the 
present day. Mr. Miatt, of Deptford, is the great grower; 
by judicious grafting he has produced from the old stock 
half-a-dozen different kinds, the most celebrated being the 
“ British Queen,” which attains a prodigious size. Large 
quantities of strawberries are sent to the market in light 
spring-vans. They are placed in l lb. punnets or round 
willow baskets, or they are carefully piled in pottles, and the 
process of “ topping-up,” as it is called, is considered quite 
an art in the trade. The rarest and ripest fruit, which goes 
direct to the pastry-cooks, is still more deftly treated. Lest 
it should he injured by jolting, horse is exchanged for 
human carriage. A procession of eight or ten stout women, 
carrying baskets full of of strawberry-pottles on their heads, 
may often be seen streaming in hot haste up Piccadilly, 
preceded by a man, like sheep by a bell-wether. It is 
probable that they have trudged all the way from Isleworth 
with the fruit, and as they frequently make two journeys in 
the day, the distance traversed is not less than twenty-six 
miles. 
After strawberries, perhaps peas are the most important 
article produced by the market-gardeners. Dealers, in 
order to consult the convenience of hotel-keepers and such 
as require suddenly a large supply for the table, keep them 
ready for the saucepan; and not the least curious feature of 
Covent Garden, about mid-day, is to see a dense mass of 
women—generally old—seated in rows at the corners of the 
market, engaged in shelling them. One salesman often 
employs as many as 400 persons in this occupation. The 
major part of these auxiliaries belong to the poor-houses 
around; they obtain permission to go out for this purpose, 
and the shilling or eighteen pence a-day earned by some of 
the more expert is gladly exchanged for the monotonous 
rations of the parish. In the autumn, again, there will be a 
row of poor creatures, extending along the whole north 
side of the square, shelling walnuts, each person having 
two baskets, one for the nuts, and another for the shells, 
which are bought by the ketchup-makers. The poor flock 
from all parts of the town directly a job of the kind is to be 
had. If a fog happens in November, thousands of link-boys 
and men spring up with ready-made torches; if a frost 
occurs, hundreds of men are to be found on the Seipentine 
and other park waters, to sweep the ice or to put on your 
skates; there are in the busy part of the town half-a-dozen 
fellows ready of a wet day to rush simultaneously to call a 
cab “ for your honour; ” and every crossing when it grows 
muddy almost instantly has its man and broom. A sad 
comment this upon the large floating population of starving 
labour always to he found in the streets of London. 
The busiest time at the market is about six o’clock, when 
the costermongers surround Covent Garden with their 
barrows, and hundreds of street hawkers, with their hand- 
baskets and trays, come for their day’s supply. The same 
system of purchase is pursued here as at Billingsgate—the 
rich dealers buy largely and sell again, and the poorer 
club their means and divide the produce. The regular 
street vendor who keeps his barrow, drawn by a donkey or 
a pony, looks down with a certain contempt upon the in¬ 
ferior hawkers, principally Irish. They only deal in a certain 
class of vegetables, such as peas, young potatoes, brocoli, 
or cauliflowers, and have nothing to do with mere greens. 
Another class of purchasers are the little girls who vend 
watercresses. Such is the demand for cresses, that they are 
now largely cultivated for the market, the spontaneous 
growth proving quite inadequate to the demand. They are 
produced principally at “ Spring Head,” at Walthamstow, in 
Essex, and at Cookam, Shrivenham, and Farringdon, on the 
line of the Great Western, which brings to town no less than 
a ton a week of this wholesome breakfast salad. The best, 
however, come from Camden Town. Most people fancy 
that clear purling streams are necessary for their production ; 
hut the Camden Town beds are planted in an old brick-field, 
watered by the Fleet ditch ; and though the stream at this 
point is comparatively pure, they owe their unusually lux¬ 
uriant appearance to a cevtain admixture of sewerage. A 
great many hundreds of bunches are sold every morning in 
Covent Garden ; but the largest share goes to Farringdon 
Market. The entire supply to the various metropolitan 
markets cannot be less than three tons weekly. Rhubarb is 
almost wholly furnished by the London market-gardeners. It 
was first introduced by Mr. Miatt forty years ago, who sent 
his two sons to the Borough market with five bunches, of 
which they only sold three. From this time he continued its 
cultivation, notwithstanding the sneers at what were called 
his “ physic pies.” As he predicted, it soon became a 
favourite, and now hundreds of tons weight are sold in 
Covent Garden in the course of the year. It would be 
impossible to give any precise account of the fruit and 
vegetable produce that is poured day by day into London ; 
for the authorities themselves only know how many baskets 
arrive, not how much they contain. The railway returns 
give us the quantity brought from a distance, and we find 
that the seven lines transmit annually somewhere about 
70,000 tons of vegetables and soft green fruit. This is 
irrespective of dried fruit, oranges, &c.—a business of itself, 
involving great interests and employing an immense capital, 
and of which we will say a few words. 
The foreign-fruit-trade has its head-quarters in the city. 
The pedestrian who walks down Fish Street Hill would 
assuredly never surmise that at certain seasons a regular 
fruit exhibition is kept up within those dull brick houses, 
before which the tall column lifts its head. All the world 
knows the Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, whose effigies seem 
to stand in the public eye upon a vast pyramid of pine¬ 
apples. This firm hold sales of various kinds of fruit in 
their auction-rooms in Monument Yard. On these occasions 
the long apartment makes a show, before which, for quantity 
at least, that of Chiswick pales. Pine-apples by thousands, 
melons, forbidden fruit, and mangoes, fill the room from 
end to end ; so famous indeed is the display, that there are 
lithographic engravings of it, in which the salesmen are 
seen walking about as perplexed apparently by the luscious 
luxuriance around them, as Adam might have been in his 
own happy garden. The pine-apple market is of modern 
date. The first cargo was brought over about twelve years 
ago, and since that time the traffic has rapidly increased, 
and at the present moment 200,000 pines come yearly into 
the port of London, of which nine-tenths are consigned to 
Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, the original importers. They 
are principally from the Bahamas, in the West Indies, 
where they grow almost spontaneously; but of late years they 
have been more carefully cultivated, and grafts of our best 
hothouse pines have been taken out to improve their quality. 
There are five clippers appropriated to the carriage across 
the sea of this single fruit. The melons come from Spain, 
Portugal, and Holland. Spain is known to abound in 
melons, for Murillo's beggar-boys are perpetually eating 
them; but we believe it will he news to most Englishmen 
that the land of dykes supplies London with fragrant car¬ 
goes of an almost tropical fruit. The largest foreign-fruit 
trade, however, by far, is that in oranges. We shall perhaps 
astonish our readers when we tell them that upwards of 
00,000,000 are imported for the use of London alone, ac¬ 
companied by not less than 15,000,000 lemons. Any time 
between December and May, the orange clippers from the 
Azores and Lisbon may be seen unloading their cargoes in 
the neighbourhood of the great stores in Pudding and 
Botolpli Lanes. There are 240 of these fast-sailing vessels 
engaged in the entire trade, and of this fleet 70, at least, 
are employed in supplying the windows of the fruiterers and 
apple-stalls of London. All these fruits, together with nuts 
and walnuts, apples, plums, pears, and some peaches, &c., 
are disposed of weekly at the auction sales in Monument 
Yard to the general dealers, the majority of whom are 
located in Duke’s Place, close at hand, and are mostly Jew's, 
Indeed, we are informed that many of them are the identical 
boys grown up to manhood that used some twenty-five years 
ago to sell oranges about the streets, and whose old place 
has gradually been taken by the Irish. They act as middle¬ 
men between the importers and the tribe of peripatetics, who 
at certain times of the day resort hither to fill their baskets 
and barrows. Covent Garden also supplies retailers with 
oranges and nuts, especially on Sunday mornings, when the 
place is sometimes crowded like a fair. The following bill 
