The results of this development are simply striking. Thus it appears, from an inquest made in 1906 by the French professors of agriculture, that the yearly export of fresh flowers from the _département_ of the Alpes Maritimes attains as much as £400,000, and that of the flowers used for perfumes gives from £280,000 to £320,000 in addition to the just mentioned sum.[107] From the _département_ of the Var, 3,475 tons of flowers, valued from £160,000 to £200,000, were exported in 1902. * * * * * I must refer the reader to the work of Charles Baltet if he will know more about the extension taken by market-gardening in different countries, and will only mention Belgium and America. * * * * * The exports of vegetables from Belgium have increased twofold within the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and whole regions, like Flanders, claim to be now the market-garden of England, even seeds of the vegetables preferred in this country being distributed free by one horticultural society in order to increase the export. Not only the best lands are appropriated for that purpose, but even the sand deserts of the Ardennes and peat-bogs are turned into rich market-gardens, while large plains (namely at Haeren) are irrigated for the same purpose. Scores of schools, experimental farms, and small experimental stations, evening lectures, and so on, are opened by the communes, the private societies, and the State, in order to promote horticulture, and hundreds of acres of land are covered with thousands of greenhouses. Here we see one small commune exporting 5,500 tons of potatoes and £4,000 worth of pears to Stratford and Scotland, and keeping for that purpose its own line of steamers. Another commune supplies the north of France and the Rhenish provinces with strawberries, and occasionally sends some of them to Covent Garden as well. Elsewhere early carrots, which are grown amidst flax, barley and white poppies, give a considerable addition to the farmer’s income. In another place we learn that land is rented at £24 and £27 the acre, not for grapes or melon-growing but for the modest culture of onions; or that the gardeners have done away with such a nuisance as natural soil in their frames, and prefer to make their loam out of wood sawings, tannery refuse and hemp dust, “animalised” by various composts.[108] In short, Belgium, which is one of the chief manufacturing countries of Europe, is now becoming one of the chief centres of horticulture. (See Appendix R.) * * * * *