Feb. 2, 1920.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 119 



destruction ? I have spoken to intelligent New South Wales stock-owners 

 who have told me that they could not have carried on without pear on their 

 holdings, jjarticularly during the recent drought. 



It will take sonxe time to supply landowners with the necessary apparatus 

 and machinery, so the actual work cannot begin at once, but I believe that 

 the present time is suitable for action such as I have indicated. 



The subject of Australia's most important weeds (for such are the Opuntias 

 or prickly pears) is one which I have studied with some care. On coming 

 to the Botanic Gardens in 1896, after a long training in economic botany, I 

 was struck by the imperfection of our knowledge of these plants, and in the 

 same year, in this Gazette (pp. 651-7), I offered a " Plan of an enquiry into 

 the merits of Prickly Pear as a Forage Plant " (translated from the French 

 -of Paul Bourde). In this Gazette for January, 1898 (p. 38), I submitted an 

 abstract of a paper on Opuntia by P. Gennadius, Director of Agriculture at 

 Cyprus. " A Preliminary Study of the Prickly Pears naturalised in New 

 i^outh Wales," in the Gazette for the same year (pp. 978-1008), with a number 

 of illustrations, was a more ambitious effort, and was the first attempt in 

 Australia to elucidate our prickly pears. 



In 1900 I inspected most of the Opuntia collections in Europe, and had 

 .several interviews with the then leading authority on Opuntia in the world 

 ((Prof. Schumann, of Berlin), discussing with him Australian forms and 

 Australian conditions; and in 1902 and subsequently, the Sydney daily 

 newspapers gave me considerable space for articles on the prickly pear. 

 Previous to 1906, and subsequently, by means of specimens, coloured drawings 

 and lecturettes, I brought the matter of prickly pear before the Royal Society 

 of New South Wales. In 1907-8 (Mr. A. H. Campbell being my executive 

 officer) I conducted, on behalf of the Lands Department, experiments for 

 several months on the pear pest on Scone common. These experiments 

 were both qualitative and quantitative, and in them arsenical sprays of 

 various strengths and composition were employed. Some of the results 

 •will be referred to later. 



I made two trips to Queensland pear-infested country, one which included 

 Warra and Dulacca, on which I was accompanied by Mr. Temple Clerk, and 

 the other to the Rockhampton district in 1909. I am not a stranger to pear 

 in some other parts of Queensland, and I have visited some really bad pear 

 country, which it is the duty of every citizen to do. The series of papers in 

 the Gazette entitled " The Prickly Pears of interest to Australians," No. 1 

 (April. 1911), to No. 1-5 (September, 1917), owe much of their value to the 

 l^eautiful coloured plates by Miss Flockton. The series is not quite (X)mplete ; 

 iDut it would be difficult for an Australian now to say that he cannot recognise 

 any prickly pear that has become acclimatised in Australia, or that he has 

 not the chief particulars in regard to each of them before him. He can, 

 therefore, follow non-Australian literature in regard to our introduced 

 cspecies. " The Cultivation of Spineless Prickly Pear "" {Gazette. October, 



