When I returned to Guernsey in 1903, I found that the industry of fruit-growing under glass had grown immensely since 1896, so that the whole system of export had to be reorganised. In 1896 it was the tourists’ boats which transported the fruit and vegetables to Southampton, and the gardeners paid one shilling for each basket taken at Guernsey and delivered at the Covent Garden market. In 1903 there was already a Guernsey Growers’ Association, which had its own boats keeping, during the summer, a regular daily service direct from Guernsey to London. The Association had its own storehouses on the quay and its own cranes, which lifted immense cubic boxes containing on their shelves twenty or even a hundred baskets, and carrying them to the boats. The cost of transport was thus reduced to 4d. per basket. All this crop is sold every morning at Covent Garden to the London dealers and greengrocers. The importance of this export is seen from the fact that a special steamer has to leave Guernsey every morning with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. As to the total exports of fresh flowers, plants and shrubs, various fruit and vegetables (including £555,275 worth of potatoes), they reached £1,115,650 in 1910. All this is obtained from an island whose total area, rocks and barren hill-tops included, is only 16,000 acres, of which only 9,884 acres are under culture, and 5,189 acres are given to green crops and meadows. An island, moreover, on which 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of cattle and 900 sheep find their existence. How many men’s food is, then, grown on these 10,000 acres? Belgium has also made, within the last few years, an immense progress in the same direction. While no more than 250 acres, all taken, were covered with glass some thirty years ago, more than 800 acres are under glass by this time.[114] In the village of Hoeilaert, which is perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under glass, given up to grape-growing. One single establishment, Baltet remarks, has 200 greenhouses and consumes 1,500 tons of coal for the vineries.[115] “Cheap coal--cheap grapes,” as the editor of the _Journal of Horticulture_ wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly not dearer in the beginning of the summer than they are in Switzerland in October. Even _in March_, Belgian grapes were sold in Covent Garden at from 4d. and 6d. the pound.[116] This price alone shows sufficiently how small are the amounts of labour which are required to grow grapes in our latitudes with the aid of glass. _It certainly costs less labour to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow them on the coasts of Lake Leman._[117]