e beauty of the country I need not say. Its influence is shown in a
notable increase of the love of flowers among the population generally.
The English villages no longer have the monopoly which they certainly
once had of flower-plots before and around the cottages, and of plants
carefully tended and blooming in the cottage windows. Years ago Dickens
used to say that London was the only capital in the world in which you
could count upon seeing something green and growing somewhere, no matter
how gloomy otherwise might be the quarter into which you strolled. This
is beginning to be true of not a few French towns and cities, while the
conditions of successful horticulture, in its various branches, give the
aspect of a garden to the rural regions in which it flourishes. The
nursery gardens, which are the most extensive, seldom cover more than
eight hectares; seed gardens range in extent from half a hectare to a
hectare; the fruit gardens from half a hectare to two hectares; the
gardeners who send up 'cut flowers' to market usually concentrate their
activity upon half a hectare of soil. These cultivators are all
capitalists in a small way, the least important of them requiring a
capital of from four to five hundred pounds sterling. And land so
employed is very often let on leases of three, six, or nine years, at
thirty-five pounds a hectare.

It is a curious thing that what may be called the 'Home Departments' of
France around Paris should be so much richer in these highly-developed
and remunerative forms of cultivation than the home counties of England
around London. Why should flowers, fruits, and vegetables, as a rule, be
so much better, so much cheaper, and so much more plentiful in the
French than in the English capital? The superiority of the French
markets cannot arise wholly from a difference of climate. Great risks
are run in this respect by the horticulturists of Picardy and the
Ile-de-France. M. Baudrillart tells a story of a large flower-gardener
in the Seine-et-Oise who, during the severe winter of 1879-80, found his
gardens deep in snow one morning, and, upon examining them, carefully
made up his mind that he stood to lose nearly 2,500_l._ sterling worth
of his best plants. That same evening he left for England, brought back
eleven waggon-loads of plants to supply the place of those killed by the
cold, and, by the spring, not only covered his losses but made a profit.

With its 'polygon' and its promenades the