ration: A SCILLY FLOWER GARDEN.

_Photo by Alex. Old._]

Industrially, we chiefly think of Scilly in connection with flowers.
At one time there was some active ship-building, and Scilly-made boats
had an excellent reputation; but steam navigation put an end to this.
There was also a very lively business in potatoes, at first almost
without competition; but this trade has been hit very hard by the
Channel Islands, by foreign imports, and by the crushing cost of
freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the shores of the
Mediterranean than they do from Scilly; the foreigner is given every
advantage in his efforts to undersell the Briton, and the Briton,
though fighting at home, fights with one hand tied behind. Fishing at
Scilly was long in a precarious state, but is now a little better,
owing to the use of steam-drifters. The isles are too far from the
markets, but by catching the boat to Penzance the fishermen can now
get their fish away in most cases before it has had time to spoil.
With mackerel, the most profitable catch, this is very important, as
the mackerel so speedily deteriorates; but a good deal of the fishery
that takes place off the Scillies is not in the hands of
Scillonians--Cornishmen, East Anglians, foreigners, all compete. With
regard to flowers Scilly seems more happily placed, though to some
extent the same difficulties apply--the distance, the cost of
carriage, the competition of the untaxed foreigner. The story has been
often told--how, rather more than thirty years since, W. Trevellick,
of Rocky Hill, St. Mary's, sent a few bunches of narcissi in a hamper
to Covent Garden as a venture, and was astonished at the return they
brought him. These were simply "Scilly Whites," which had been growing
wild about the cottages without any one hitherto dreaming of their
financial possibilities.

The knowledge of a demand soon roused the supply; new species were
cultivated, everything was done to ensure early flowering, the more
sensitive kinds were protected by wattle-fences and hedges of
escalonia or veronica; and from January till May every steamer to the
mainland carries tons of blooms. A ton of flowers is something rather
spacious; and in the height of the season as many as thirty tons are
taken in one boatload. The more severe the weather on the mainland,
the better is the demand. The bulbs are set in narrow fields, to
secure their shelter from the winds by thick hedges. As many as two
hundred kinds