on which 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of cattle and 900 sheep find their existence. How many men’s food is, then, grown on these 10,000 acres?
Belgium has also made, within the last few years, an immense progress in the same direction. Wile no more than 250 acres, all taken, were covered with glass some thirty years ago, more than 800 acres are under glass by this time. 114 In the village of Hoeilaert, which is perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under glass, given up to grape-growing. One single establishment, Baltet remarks, has 200 greenhouses and consumes 1,500 tons of coal for the vineries. 115 “Cheap coal-cheap grapes,” as the editor of the Journal of Horticulture wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly not dearer in the, beginning of the summerer than they are in Switzerland in October, Even in March, Belgian grapes were sold in Covent Garden at from 4d. and 6d. the pound. 116 This price alone shows sufficiently how small are the amounts of labour which are required to grow grapes in our latitudes with the aid of glass.It certainly cost less labour to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow them on the coasts of Lake Leman. 117
I will not conclude this chapter without casting a glance on the progress that has been made in this country since the first edition of this book was published, in 1898, by fruit and flower farming, as also by culture under glass, and on the attempts recently made to introduce in different parts of England “French Gardening,” — that is, the culture maraîchère of the French gardeners.
There is not the slightest doubt that fruit-growing has notably increased — the area under fruit orchards having grown in Great Britain from 200,000 acres in 1888 to 250,000 acres in 1908; while the area under small fruit (gooseberries, currants, strawberries) has grown from acres in 1901 to 85,000 in 1908.118 In some counties the acreage has trebled.119 Large plantations of fruit have grown lately round London and all the large cities, and the counties of Kent, Devon, Hereford, Somerset, Worcester and Gloucester have now more than 20,000 acres