to early peas, and so on. During the Chicago Exhibition a special “strawberry express,” composed of thirty waggons, brought in every day 324,000 quarts of the freshly gathered fruit, and there are days that over 10,000 bushels of strawberries are imported in New York — three-fourths of that amount coming from the “truck farms” of Virginia by steamer.109
This is what can be achieved by an intelligent combination of agriculture with industry, and undoubtedly will be applied on a still larger scale in the future.
However, a further advance is being made in order to emancipate horticulture from climate. I mean the glasshouse culture of fruit and vegetables.
Formerly the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich mansion. It was kept at a high temperature, and was made use of for growing, under cold skies, the golden fruit and the bewitching flowers of the South. Now, and especially since the progress of technics allows of making cheap glass and of having all the woodwork, sashes and bars of a greenhouse made by machinery, the glasshouse becomes appropriated for growing