he same grower sells them at only 2s. 6d.
per pound. He tells us so himself in a horticultural journal. The fall
in the prices is caused by the tons and tons of grapes arriving in
January to London and Paris.

Thanks to the cheapness of coal and an intelligent culture, grapes from
the north travel now southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary
fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are
sold at 1s. 8d. per pound by the gardeners, and yet this price, like
that of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production.

In March, Belgium grapes are sold at from 6d. to 8d., while in October,
grapes cultivated in immense quantities--under glass, and with a little
artificial heating in the environs of London--are sold at the same price
as grapes bought by the pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and the
Rhine, that is to say, for a few halfpence. Yet they still cost
two-thirds too much, by reason of the excessive rent of the soil and the
cost of installation and heating, on which the gardener pays a
formidable tribute to the manufacturer and the middleman. This being
understood, we may say that it costs "next to nothing" to have delicious
grapes under the latitude of, and in our misty London in autumn. In one
of the suburbs, for instance, a wretched glass and plaster shelter, nine
feet ten inches long by six and one-half feet wide, resting against our
cottage, gave us about fifty pounds of grapes of an exquisite flavour in
October, for nine consecutive years. The crop came from a Hamburg
vine-stalk, six year old. And the shelter was so bad that the rain came
through. At night the temperature was always that of outside. It was
evidently not heated, for it would have been as useless as heating the
street! And the care which was given was: pruning the vine, half an hour
every year; and bringing a wheel-barrowful of manure, which was thrown
over the stalk of the vine, planted in red clay outside the shelter.

On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of care given to the vine
on the borders of the Rhine of Lake Leman, the terraces constructed
stone upon stone on the slopes of the hills, the transport of manure and
also of earth to a height of two or three hundred feet, we come to the
conclusion that on the whole the expenditure of work necessary to
cultivate vines is more considerable in Switzerland or on the banks of
the Rhine than it is under glass in London suburbs.

This may seem par