WOMEN AS MARKET-GARDENERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF TRH " SPECTATOR:9 SIR—r have just seen Miss Whyte's letter in your issue of December 5th, and cannot help feeling that it suffers from a most unfortunate confusion of two very different ideas,— namely, the study of gardening, and its practice in market- Work. The one is synonymous with a course of training, the other with a professional career. Miss Whyte's authority has suggested to her that "all suburban and country girls at present at a loss for an interest in life, all girls who are suddenly facing the problem of earning a living and deter- mining whether they will tint postcards at home' or go abroad as that wonderful creation of fancy, a travelling com- panion," and "all the ladies of slender or important means, who are withering and fading in foreign pensions," should "collect in England and cultivate gardens in an intelligent manner." The proposal that a difficult and hazardous sphere of work should- thus be reinforced from the ranks of the undecided, the untrained,. and the unsuccessful in life is enough to fill any serious member of the gardening profession with horror and dismay ; but these disabilities appear to Miss Whyte as constituting such women's very qualification for success. Such an unpractical scheme, where seemingly there is to be no requirement of natural taste and ability, training, capital, or business capacity for a profession in which we bear of many sad failures among com- petent members of both sexes, must surely result in any- thing but "the cultivation of gardens in an intelligent manner." Of the types of women suggested, the first would probably, after a month's trial, decide that market-gardening is an affair of hard and monotonous drudgery; the second, if she continued, could be, for a long time at least, little beyond a hindrance from her lack of training; while of the third—the "withering and fading" type, with neither youth, robust health, nor money to bring to the work—I can only think with sincere pity. Let me conclude by remarking that your reviewer's experiences as to market value, profit, and loss will appear to those who are interested in the profession as being more practically useful than any rosy descriptions of the receipts of lady gardeners occasionally running into close on a thousand a year.—I am, Sir, (ko.,
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