The fruit selling of the streets of London is of a distinct character from that of vegetable or fish selling, inasmuch as fruit is for the most part a luxury, and the others are principally necessaries.

There is no doubt that the consumption of fruit supplies a fair criterion of the condition of the working classes, but the costermongers, as a body of traders, are little observant, so that it is not easy to derive from them much information respecting the classes who are their customers, or as to how their custom is influenced by the circumstances of the times. man, however, told me that during the last panic he sold hardly anything beyond mere necessaries. Other street-sellers to whom I spoke could not comprehend what a panic meant.

The most intelligent costers whom I conversed with agreed that they now sold less fruit than ever to working people, but perhaps more than ever to the dwellers in the smaller houses in the suburbs, and to shopkeepers who were not in a large way of business. man sold baking apples, but not above a peck on an average weekly, to women whom he knew to be the wives of working men, for he had heard them say, "Dear me, I didn't think it had been so late, there's hardly time to get the dumplings baked before my husband leaves work for his dinner." The course of my inquiries has shown me—and many employers whom I have conversed with are of a similar opinion—that the well-conducted and skilful artisan, who, in spite of slop competition, continues to enjoy a fair rate of wages, usually makes a prudent choice of a wife, who perhaps has been a servant in a respectable family. Such a wife is probably "used to cooking," and will oft enough make a pie or pudding to eke out the cold meat of the Monday's dinner, or "for a treat for the children." With the mass of the working people, however, it is otherwise. The wife perhaps has been reared to incessant toil with her needle, and does not know how to make even a dumpling. Even if she possess as much knowledge, she may have to labour as well as her husband, and if their joint earnings enable them to have "the added pudding," there is still the trouble of making it; and, after a weary week's work, rest is often a greater enjoyment than a gratification of the palate. Thus something easily prepared, and carried off to the oven, is preferred. The slop-workers of all trades never, I believe, taste either fruit pie or pudding, unless a penny be bought at a shop or in the street; and even among mechanics who are used to better diet, the pies and puddings, when wages are reduced, or work grows slack, are the things that are dispensed with. "When the money doesn't come in, sir," working-man said to me, "we mustn't think of puddings, but of "

A costermonger, more observant than the rest, told me that there were some classes to whom he had rarely sold fruit, and whom he had seldom seen buy any. Among these he mentioned sweeps, scavengers, dustmen, nightmen, gaspipe-layers, and sewer-men, who preferred to any fruit, "something to bite in the mouth, such as a penn'orth of gin." My informant believed that this abstinence from fruit was common to all persons engaged in such offensive trades as fiddle-string making, gutdress- ing for whip-makers or sausage-makers, knackers, &c. He was confident of it, as far as his own experience extended. It is, moreover, less common for the women of the town, of the poorer sort, to expend pence in fruit than in such things

The fruit-sellers, meaning thereby those who deal principally in fruit in the season, are the more intelligent costermongers. The calculation as to what a bushel of apples, for instance, will make in half or quarter pecks, puzzles the more ignorant, and they buy "-hand," or of a middle-man, and consequently dearer. The Irish street-sellers do not meddle much with fruit, excepting a few of the very best class of them, and they "do well in it," I was told, "they have such tongue."

The improvement in the quality of the fruit and vegetables now in our markets, and consequently in the necessaries and luxuries of the poorer classes, is very great. Prizes and medals have been deservedly awarded to the skilled and persevering gardeners who have increased the size and heightened the flavour of the pine-apple or the strawberry—who have given a thinner rind to the peach, or a fuller gush of juice to the apricot,—or who have enhanced alike the bloom, the weight, and the size of the fruit of the vine, whether as regards the classic "bunch," or the individual grape. Still these are benefits confined mainly to the rich. But there is another class of growers who have rendered greater services and whose services have been comparatively unnoticed. I allude to those gardeners who have improved or introduced our vegetables or fruit, such as now form the cheapest and most grateful and healthy enjoyments of the humbler portion of the community. I may instance the introduction of rhubarb, which was comparatively unknown until Mr. Myatt, now of Deptford, cultivated it years ago. He then, for the time, carried bundles of rhubarb into the Borough market. Of these he could sell only , and he took back with him. Mr. Myatt could not recollect the price he received for the rhubarb he ever sold in public, but he told me that the stalks were only about half the substance of those he now produces. People laughed at him for offering "physic pies," but he persevered, and I have shown what the sale of rhubarb now is.

Moreover, the importation of foreign "pines" may be cited as another instance of the increased luxuries of the poor. The trade in this commodity was unknown until the year . At that period Mr. James Wood and Messrs. Claypole and Son, of Liverpool, imported them from the Bahamas, a portion being conveyed to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, of London. Since that period the trade has gradually increased until, instead of pines being sent to Liverpool, and a portion of them conveyed to London, as at , pines are now imported to London alone. The fruit is brought over in "trees," stowed in numbers from to , in galleries constructed fore and aft in the vessel, which is so extravagantly fragrant, that it has to be ventilated to abate the odour. But for this importation, and but for the trade having become a part of the costermonger's avocation, hundreds and thousands in London would never have tasted a pine-apple. The quality of the fruit has, I am informed, been greatly improved since its introduction; the best description of "pines" which Coventgarden can supply having been sent out to graft, to increase the size and flavour of the Bahaman products, and this chiefly for the regalement of the palates of the humbler classes of London. The supply from the Bahamas is considered inexhaustible.

Pine-apples, when they were introduced, were a rich harvest to the costermonger. They made more money "working" these than any other article. The pines cost them about each, with the other, good and bad together, and were sold by the costermonger at from to The public were not aware then that the pines they sold were "salt-water touched," and the people bought them as fast as they could be sold, not only by the whole , but at a slice,—for those who could not afford to give for the novelty, had a slice as a taste for The costermongers used then to have flags flying at the head of their barrows, and gentlefolk would stop them in the streets; indeed, the sale for pines was chiefly among "the gentry." The poorer people— sweeps, dustmen, cabmen — occasionally had pennyworths, "just for the fun of the thing;" but gentlepeople, I was told, used to buy a whole to take home, so that all the family might have a taste. costermonger assured me that he had taken a day during the rage for pines, when they came up.

I have before stated that when the season is in its height the costermonger prefers the vending of fruit to the traffic in either fish or vegetables; those, however, who have regular rounds and "a connection," must supply their customers with vegetables, if not fish, as well as fruit, but the costers prefer to devote themselves principally to fruit. I am unable, therefore, to draw a comparison between what a coster realises in fruit, and what in fish, as the seasons are not contemporary. The fruit sale is, however, as I have shown in p. , the costermonger's harvest.

All the costermongers with whom I conversed represented that the greater cheapness and abundance of fruit had been anything but a benefit to them, nor did the majority seem to know whether fruit was scarcer or more plentiful year than another, unless in remarkable instances. Of the way in which the introduction of foreign fruit had influenced their trade, they knew nothing. If questioned on the subject, the usual reply was, that things got worse, and people didn't buy so much fruit as they did half-a-dozen years back, and so less was sold. That these men hold such opinions must be accounted for mainly by the increase in their

The fruit of which there is the readiest sale in the streets is usually considered among the least useful—cherries. Probably, the greater eagerness on the part of the poorer classes to purchase this fruit arises from its being the of the fresh "green" kind which our gardens supply for street-sale after the winter and the early spring. An intelligent costermonger suggested other reasons. "Poor people," he said, "like a of any fruit, and no fruit is cheaper than cherries at a pound, at which I have sold some hundreds of pounds' weight. I'm satisfied, sir, that if a cherry could be grown that weighed a pound, and was of a finer flavour than ever was known before, poor people would rather have a number of little ones, even if they was less weight and inferior quality. Then boys buy, I think, more cherries than other fruit; because, after they have eaten 'em, they can play at cherry-stones.'"

From all I can learn, the halfpenny-worth of fruit purchased most eagerly by a poor man, or by a child to whom the possession of a halfpenny is a rarity, is cherries. I asked a man "with a good connection," according to his own account, as to who were his customers for cherries. He enumerated ladies and gentlemen; working-people; wagoners and carters (who "slipped them quietly into their pockets," he said); parlour-livers (so he called the occupants of parlours); maid-servants; and soldiers. "Soldiers." I was told, "are very fond of something for a change from their feed, which is about as regular as a prison's."

The currant, and the fruit of the same useful genus, the gooseberry, are sold largely by the costermongers. The price of the currants is or the half-pint, being the more usual charge. Of red currants there is the greatest supply, but the black "go off better." The humbler classes buy a half-pint of the latter for a dumpling, and "they're reckoned," said my informant, "capital for a sore throat, either in jam or a pudding." Gooseberries are also retailed by the half-pint, and are cheaper than currants —perhaps the half-pint is the average street-price. The working-classes do not use ripe gooseberries, as they do ripe currants, for dumplings, but they are sold in greater quantities and may be said to constitute, when introduced, as other productions do afterwards, the working-people's Sunday dessert. "Only you go on board a cheap steamer to Greenwich, on a fine summer Sunday," observed a streetseller to me, "and you'll see lots of young women with gooseberries in their handkerchiefs in their laps. Servant-maids is very good customers for such things as gooseberries, for they always has a penny to spare." The costers sell green gooseberries for dumplings, and sometimes to the extent of a of the ripe fruit. The price of green gooseberries is generally a pint dearer than the ripe.

When strawberries descend to such a price as places them at the costermonger's command, the whole fraternity is busily at work, and as the sale can easily be carried on by women and children, the coster's family take part in the sale, offering at the corners of streets the fragrant pottle, with the crimson fruit just showing beneath the green leaves at the top. Of all cries, too, perhaps that of "hoboys" is the most agreeable. Strawberries, however, according to all accounts, are consumed least of all fruits by the poor. "They like something more solid," I was told, "something to bite at, and a penny pottle of strawberries is only like a taste; what's more, too, the really good fruit never finds its way into penny pottles." The coster's best customers are dwellers in the suburbs, who purchase strawberries on a Sunday especially, for dessert, for they think that they get them fresher in that way than by reserving them from the Saturday night, and many are tempted by seeing or hearing them cried in the streets. There is also a good Sunday sale about the steam-wharfs, to people going "on the river," especially when young women and children are members of a party, and likewise in the "clerk districts," as Camden-town and Camberwell. Very few pottles, comparatively, are sold in public-houses; "they don't go well down with the beer at all," I was told. The city people are good customers for street strawberries, conveying them home. Good strawberries are a pottle in the streets when the season is at its height. Inferior are These are the most frequent prices. In raspberries the coster does little, selling them only to such customers as use them for the sake of jam or for pastry. The price is from to the pottle, being the average.

The great staple of the street trade in green fruit is apples. These are sold by the travelling costers, by the measure, for pies, &c., and to the classes I have described as the makers of pies. The apples, however, are soon vended in penny or halfpenny-worths, and then they are bought by the poor who have a spare penny for the regalement of their children or themselves, and they are eaten without any preparation. Pears are sold to the same classes as are apples. The average price of apples, as sold by the costermonger, is a bushel, and a penny. The sale in halfpenny and pennyworths is very great. Indeed the costermongers sell about half the apples brought to the markets, and I was told that for pennyworth of apples bought in a shop were bought in the street. Pears are a bushel, generally, dearer than apples, but, numerically, they run more to the bushel.

The costers purchase the French apples at the wharf, close to London-bridge, on the side. They give , , , or for a case containing bushels. They generally get from to profit on a bushel of English, but on the French apples they make a clear profit of from to a bushel, and would make more, but the fruit some-

Plums and damsons are less purchased by the humbler classes than apples, or than any other larger sized fruit which is supplied abundantly. "If I've worked plums or damsons," said an experienced costermonger, "and have told any woman pricing them: 'They don't look so ripe, but they're all the better for a pie,' she's answered, 'O, a plum pie's too fine for us, and what's more, it takes too much sugar.'" They are sold principally for desserts, and in pennyworths, at the half-pint for good, and for inferior. Green-gages are per cent. higher. Some costers sell a cheap lot of plums to the eating-house keepers, and sell them more readily than they sell apples to the same parties.

West Indian pine-apples are, as regards the street sale, disposed of more in the city than elsewhere. They are bought by clerks and warehousemen, who carry them to their suburban homes. The slices at and are bought principally by boys. The average price of a "good street pine" is

Peaches are an occasional sale with the costermongers', and are disposed of to the same classes as purchase strawberries and pines. The street sale of peaches is not practicable if the price exceed a piece.

Of other fruits, vended largely in the streets, I have spoken under their respective heads.

The returns before cited as to the quantity of home-grown and foreign green fruit sold in London, and the disposed of by the costermongers give the following results (in round numbers), as to the absolute quantity of the several kinds of green fruit (oranges and nuts excepted) "distributed" throughout the metropolis by the street-sellers.