To sum up what appears, at present, to be the teaching of recent experiment, I venture to think that so far as the existent gardeneremployé is concerned, the practical result has been to raise his standard and his position, rather than to show that he is in need of recruits from the so-called educated classes. The social position of most of those who have distinguished themselves in the examinations of the Royal Horticultural Society is practical proof of this, if proof be needed, and, on the whole, should not be matter for regret among those whose view is the wider one of the improvement of horticulture and not the advancement of a class. The position of working gardener is still open to the gentle man and woman, but they must not expect anything more than a fair field and no favour among those to whom technical instruction and other easily accessible methods of study have given full facilities for education with themselves.

Is there, then, to use a word less inappropriate in this connection than in its usual associations, no point in horticulture at which culture has its special uses? If the views of a considerable number of experts are to be accepted, if, for example, we may follow the natural deductions of the recent census-almost the consensus-of opinion in the Morning Post, we may, I think, believe that there is, but it must be by specialisation, and with employment of capital, individual or preferably, as I think, co-operative. In this most suggestive direction, lack of space will not permit me to enlarge, and I can only refer briefly to views which have been widely expressed elsewhere.

Many of those most qualified to judge are assuring us that to horticulture, rather than to agriculture, we must look for the future employment of land and labour. They remind us that the monetary law of this country, the anachronism of monometallism, is one of the chief causes of the influence at present operating upon agricultural prices, and that this would not affect fruit and flower growing for home consumption; they point out also that the market gardener, unlike the farmer, has a right of property in any improvement which adds to the value of the land occupation.

It is true that fruit, like other produce, comes to us cheap from abroad, but surely the toleration by the poor and middle class, especially in towns, for American apples and continental strawberries, peaches, and apricots, would soon disappear when once they found that fruit of first quality, not gathered before it was ripe, and not subjected to a sea-voyage, could be had at the same price as the inferior articles which are better known to the rising generation. Fruit-growing involves, of course, a time element, as does no other crop; but a fourteen years' lease would ensure profit in the planting of plums; raspberries, currants, and gooseberries would pay well in half that time, and the planting of apples, pears, and cherries would be adding to the value of property and would be the affair of the landlord.

Mr. Bunyard than whom surely no one in England is better qualified to speak-in his Fruit-farming for Profit, a record of the results of forty years' experience in the management of the largest fruit-tree nursery in the kingdom, has pointed out that the statistics of fruit-importation are misleading, and include a number of fruits, such as bananas, pines, oranges, lemons, and the like, which would never be grown here in any quantity. Moreover, he points out many by-products of fruit-growing, not only in various forms of preserving, in which we might well take a lesson from America, but in the making (under various names which had better not be inquired into) of damson and gooseberry wine, of the growing of damsons and black currants for dyeing, and of apples for a variety of purposes which the light of nature would never suggest. Fruitgrowing, moreover, incidentally encourages other trades, such as osier-growing and basket-making.

Here we are only at the beginning of things, there is still a wide field for experiment, and experiment requires capital, science, and the scientific-that is, the educated, not merely the instructed— habit of mind.

I think there is still abundant work for Horticultural Colleges in carrying further the instruction given by County Councils, but they should be on lines not yet attempted, and which can only be carried through by a public body having no private ends to serve. I would point out that the advanced theoretical teaching given at Swanley, which has borne excellent fruit in the examination room, may well be continued, but it should be under the organisation of a body having not merely amiable and philanthropic intentions, but some knowledge of the subject: let us say the Royal Horticultural Society. No part of the funds should be allowed to benefit any private person, nor should the gardens be required to serve any end but that of lessonbooks for the students, having only such relation to the market as should suffice to teach the conditions of selling, packing, and selection. This, one would hope, should ensure the study of produce under other than merely commonplace conditions, and make possible the risk which must always attend experiment and the inquiry into the unknown. The fees should be well within the reach of the professional classes, that the College may not be only for the well-to-do on the one hand, and the County Council scholar on the other. It should, however, be at the service of those of the leisured classes who wish to specialise in certain subjects, to experiment or to take up for short periods some particular branch of study for application to the home garden. The management should make such arrangements for lodging and boarding as, under proper restrictions, should meet varying requirements; in short, the advancement of horticulture being the recognised purpose of the institution, that and that alone

should be the end it is required to serve. My interest in this direction has brought me into relation with many of those most prominent in horticulture, and I feel persuaded that on lines wide as these such an institution would obtain their fullest sympathy and support.

A. GOODRICH FREER,

late Hon. Sec. to the Horticultural College, Swanley.

THE DALMENY EXPERIMENTS

MANURING WITH BRAINS

In these fin de siècle days, when our home markets are continually glutted with grain, meat, and other agricultural produce from foreign countries, and prices in consequence are steadily kept at a very low level, the great problem before the British farmer is how to produce the best possible crop at the lowest possible cost. The foreign competitor has many advantages over the British farmer, inasmuch as he grows his produce on land which, as a rule, can be bought outright for less than the sum which the British farmer has to pay annually in name of rent for the hire of land of equal fertility. As a rule, too, the foreign competitor has at his command a plentiful supply of cheap labour, whereas in the home country the scarcity of labourers and the consequent high rate at which agricultural labour has to be paid for are among the greatest difficulties which the farmer has to face. In many cases also, the foreign competitor has the advantage of a better climate than the home farmer. The advantage of proximity to the great consuming. centre has also ceased to operate in favour of British agriculturists, for the steamship on the ocean highway now brings grain and other produce from New York or Odessa at a cost for transport which is certainly not greater than would be charged by our home railways for carrying the same produce by rail from Liverpool to London. But despite the great advantages which the foreign competitor possesses in the form of cheap land, cheap labour, &c., the British farmer has held his own in the competition with the world, and it says much for the skill and enterprise of the British farmer that the average yield per acre of cultivated land in Great Britain is vastly greater than that of any other country. The liberal use of artificial manuring is the main cause of the greater yield per acre of produce in Great Britain, and it is mainly through this greater yield of produce per acre that the British farmer has been able to withstand the competition from foreign countries where land is cheap and labour plentiful.

Artificial manuring is absolutely essential to successful farming in Great Britain, for the removal from the land of a great quantity of

grain, potatoes, meat, milk, wool, &c., every year to the great consuming centres, involves a steady drain on the fertility of the soil, and as in the cities the residual produce' of all these food-stuffsthe fertilising value of which is estimated by Sir William Crookes at 16,000,000l. sterling per annum-is for the most part sent through the drains into the sea, the fertility of the soil would be steadily reduced if it were not for the use of artificial manures. As a matter of fact, our national bill for imported artificial manures bulks up to the goodly total of 22,000,000l. per annum, or close upon 258. per annum for every acre of cultivated land in the United Kingdom. It has also to be noted that this large sum of 22,000,000l. expended by our home farmers every year on imported artificial manures is quite independent of the manurial value of the artificial feeding stuffs imported into the country, the manurial value of these imported feeding stuffs being estimated at 12,000,000l. per annum. It follows therefore that the science of manuring is one of the most important branches of knowledge which the British farmer must master if he is to be successful in his business. There can be no manner of doubt whatever that in the earlier decades of the Victorian era an immense amount of money was annually lost by farmers applying high-priced manures or manurial mixtures, which were either unsuited to their soils or were bought at much more than their proper value. In 1879, when the agricultural depression was becoming very acute through the fall in prices caused by increased importations of agricultural produce from abroad, the Marquis of Salisbury in a memorable speech roundly declared that if farmers 'would manure their land with brains as the painter mixed his paints' there would be much less heard about agricultural depression. This statement was severely criticised at the time, but the inexorable logic of events has abundantly proved that although the statement in question was rather sweeping in its scope, there was a deal more truth in it than most people believed at the time. Since then a great deal of attention has been devoted to the subject of 'manuring with brains,' though it cannot be said that up till lately we have learned very much from all the countless and costly experiments in manuring that have been made since 1879.

In 1843 the renowned Rothamsted experiments were started by Mr. John (now Sir John) Bennet Lawes, in conjunction with his lifelong collaborateur Mr. Joseph (now Sir Joseph) Henry Gilbert. These experiments have been continued ever since, and Sir John Lawes, with princely munificence, has not only made over the Rothamsted experimental grounds and laboratories to the nation, but has also set apart the sum of 100,000l. as an endowment fund to provide for the Rothamsted experiments being carried on to perpetuity. These experiments are unique in many ways. For fifty-six years the same kinds of grain crops have been grown on the same