quantities of all sorts of manure-soot, fish guano, leather dust for cabbage (chamois dust being the best), and so on — and the most profitable sorts of fruit-trees and vegetables are continually tested; all this being, of course, not the work of some scientist or of one single man, but the product of the collective experience of the district.
It must not be thought, however, that fruit-growing has been overdone. On the contrary, the imports of fruit into the United Kingdom, both for food and for jam-making, continue to be enormous, and to increase every year. Suffice it to say, that this country imports every year about £1,000,000 of tomatoes and £2,000,000 of apples, half a million worth of pears, nearly £30,000 worth of grapes — giving thus a total of £4,200,000 worth of all fruit. And at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich Englishmen and foreigners.
Finally, I also ought to mention the recent development of fruit culture near the