* * BRITISH Bolas.
Since some brief suggestions were issued last week in this place for the purchase of British_ bulbs, with congratulations to those Wisbech firms who have begun to send out coloured catalogues, a special plea has appeared on behalf of the growers of bulbs in Holbeach. At this fertile corner of south Lincoln- shire and at Sutton Bridge, which is alongside it, the most wholehearted experiment was made after the War to settle suitable ex-Service men on the land. The work was very efficiently though expensively done. Most of the expense was inevitable, since the settlement was made at an expensive date, when building costs had soared. But the architecture showed some genius and a worthy respect for beauty (witness the selection of "Norfolk thatch"), and the picking of the men was, and has been, sensible. In spite of cruelly high rents and the , culpable neglect of any co-operative machinery a satisfactory proportion of the holders made good. Of these soldier settlers a number attempted the experiment of growing bulbs ; and to-day good bulbs are growing in quantity all round that neighbourhood. Any one can get bulbs from the Lincolnshire smallholders by application to J. Cussen, Holbeach.
The daffodils, so far as my experience goes, are particularly good. The neighbourhood in general is becoming may I say? -- a sort of Haarlem. There are a certain number of very large glasshouses where a variety of the more precious bulbs are started and grown, as well as the out-door patches of the small- holders who sell both cut flowers and bulbs.
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