Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/464

 *

The Welland at Cowbit Road, Spalding.

annually exported to Holland, it is said, to find their way back to England in the autumn as Dutch bulbs. I do not vouch for the truth of this, but certainly the business, which has been for years a speciality of Holland, where the lie of the land and the soil are much the same as in the South Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire Fens, is now a large and lucrative industry here, and is each year expanding. The Channel and Scilly Islands and Cornwall can, of course, owing to their climate, get their narcissus into bloom earlier, but the conditions of soil are better in the Fens. Still, a liberal supply of manure is needed to insure fine blooms, and sixty or seventy tons to the acre is none too much, a crop of mustard or potatoes being taken off after its application before planting the bulbs.