£20,000; radishes and broccoli, £9,250; cut flowers, £3,000; mushrooms, £200; total, £99,950 — to which total the local consumption in the houses and hotels, which have to feed nearly 30,000 tourists, must be added. Since then these figures have grown considerably. In June, 1896, I saw the Southampton steamers taking every day from 9,000 to 12,000, and occasionally more, baslets of fruit (grapes, tomatoes, French beans and peas), each basket representing from twelve to fourteen pounds of fruit. Taking into account what was sent by other channels, one could say that from 400 to 500 tons of tomatoes, grapes, beans and peas, worth from £20,000 to £25,000, were exported there every week in June.
When I returned to Guernsey in 1903, I found that the industry of fruit-growing under glass had grown immensely since 1896, so that the whole system of export had to be reorganised. In 1896 it was the tourists’ boats which tranported the fruit and vegetables to Southampton, and the. gardeners paid one shilling for each basket taken at Guernsey and delivered at the Covent Garden market. In 1903 there was already a Guernsey Crowers’ Association, which had its own boats keeping, during the summer, a regular daily service direct from Guernsey to London. The Association had its own store-houses on quay and its own cranes, which lifted immense cubic boxes containing on their shelves twenty or even a hundred baskets, and carrying them to the boats. The cost of transport was thus reduced to 4d. per basket. All this crop is sold every morning Covent Garden to the London dealers and greengrocers. The importance of this export is seen from the fact that a special steamer has to leave Guernsey every morning with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. As to the total export of fresh flowers, plants and shurbs, various fruit and vegetables (including £555,275 worth of potatoes), they reached £1,115,650 in 1910.
All this is obtained form an island whose total area, rocks and barren hill-tops included, is only 16,000 acres, of which only 9,884 acres are under culture, and 5,189 acres are given to green crops and meadows. An island, moreover,