The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-02-04


 Houses.
 Thirty miles southwest of Lands End the narcissus farmers of Lyonesse are busy over the January produce of their floral harvest. Many a hothouse is all aglow with white and gold and local steamers are beginning to bear their growing consignments of frag- rant boxes past the perils of the Wolf and the Rundlestone to the Great Western Railway terminus and start ing point at Penzance. But beautiful as is this horticultural industry, and fascinating as it is also association with stormsWept little islands, runged around in the hours of heavy gales With a girdle of foam from the black crags of Penmuis to the towering rock mass of Minavawr, the story of it's origin and growth is more romantic still
 Indeed that micorocosm of the Scilly Isles has had visissitudes of fortune, says the London Tribune, if we only start with the last odd hundred years or so of it's story. In the Revolution ary and Napoleonic wars it did very we'll as a port; squadrons of warships and fleets of merchant vessels being ferquent visitors to it's island encircled roadstead. The small farmers found an abundant market for their vegc- tables and other produce, not only with the vessels contained in harbor by easterly winds, but with the fleets always cruising off Brest and the Gib, as our rock fortess at the mouth of the Mediterranean was familiarly known to them.
 Then came the peace and a commer- cial collapse, partly redeemed from disaster by the inauguration of a kelp industry. Then the demand for kelp failed, and again there was. distress. Still in the days of of sailing ships an east wind always filled the pretty lit- tie roads, and undaunted enterprise also made scilly ship owning and ship building port. Besides, the cul- tivation of early potatoes for the Lon don market brought a new affluence to the farmers, who invsted their savings in island owned ships. Then the de- velopment of steam destroyed the ship owning and shipbuilding industry and a spirit of financial gloom settled down on Lyonesse.
 All the while, however, unknown to most of it's inhabitants the making of Pactolus lay disregarded in many an island nook, orchard and garden. And this brings me to a date about thirty seven years ago, when it is known that in the Isles of Scilly there were eight varieties of narcissus quite apart from any that might be growing in the Abbey Gardnes, the beautiful pleas aunce of Mr. Dorrien-Smith at Tresco. IA few of these were to be found grow ing wild, others in the gardens of the farmers.
 How these flowers came into the islands is so MT. Dorrien-Smith, the popular ''Wing of Scilly," has told me, matter of some obscurity. Sixty three years ago, however. it is known that the captain of a French vessel which had taken shelter in the roads presented two bulbs of Camperneli to MT. Gluyas. It is not unlikely that some of the varieties of narcissus | mentioned may have been introduced by Benedictine monks, who through long generations occupied the Priory of St. Nicholas
 Certain it is that seventy-two years ago the late MT. Augustus Smith, the ! uncle of the present King brought | in several sorts of narcissus. To him must also be ascribed the credit of 1 discerning the commercial possibilities I of the bulbs AS he sauntered about his dominions his aesthetic eye was | observant of the narcissus, noticed | how early and luxuriantly they l bloomed, and came to the conclusion that as an export they might be pro- l fitable. At length he himself wooed 1 Covent with a small consignment of lilies, and was rewarded receiving a check for a sovereign As occasion offered he mentioned the matter to certain of his tenants, but they were influenced by a natural conservative instinct and did not at first act on his hints. A few of them, however imitat- 1 ed their King" in a modest way, and contributed their mite to the supply l of the London flower market.
 | Sicily's total area is $500 acres, of which rather less than 1000 are sus- ceptible of profitable cultivation. Con- sequently the spare land, apart from 1 the occupied farms, was more limit ed in quantity than it is in Manitoba. l There was great run on it. and in a | very short time every available acre adapted to naNissus culture began to
 be taken up. The output increased 1 by leaps and bounds, the weight of the cut flowers running into hundreds of i tons. AS lilies are not individually very heavy the total harvest of blooms reached a prodigious figure. One of
 the most striking sights to be seen at I Scilly are the little boats laden with
 their fragile and fragant flowers which ! struggle from the smaller" off islands some dark and stormy wintry morn- ing, against surge and blast, to reach the steamer at St. Marys pier.
 One consequence of the growth of the narcissus industry in Sicily has
 been the discovery by the farmers of
 the value of glass houses, and the islanders of thirty years ago would
 have been greatly astonished if they had been told how large an archipela-
 gic area the mere lapse of generation would suffice to shelter in the fashion. ] For mild as the Scil1onian winter is l the rare apparition of ice in a pond