Charing Cross Tomatoes The hall, so to call it, over
the underground railway at Charing Cross, becomes a famous centre of pictorial propaganda. It is about to be used for preaching the merits of that popular fruit, the tomato ; and the most thoughtful of our liberally- minded statesmen is to open the exhibit. The tomato within the last twenty years or so has made quicker and surer fortunes for the growers than perhaps any other vegetable. It has done more than this : it has proved the productive value of glass. It is alleged that the glass houses (mostly in the Lea Valley, which is the backbone of the industry) produce more wealth in the year than all the open fields of Hertfordshire. Glass houses—chiefly for tomato culture, though bulbs become a rival—spring up all over the counties ; in Cornwall, in Lincolnshire, in Lancashire and the rest ; and most of them produce their flowers and fruit, with a degree of certainty quite unknown to the general farmer. One of the best of the county agricultural stations some few years ago expended £7,000 in building glass houses for instructional and research purposes. Though this was the whole object the station made a clear profit of 16 per cent. on the first year's working. The statement that k7oo an acre can be produced from an
intensive garden in the French manner used to be received with incredulity. It is now a commonplace fact that an acre or less under glass can exceed the gross output of Li,000 and more, which is some ten times as great as the value of an acre of wheat.
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