ORCHARD PROSPECTS. 7 



inevitable laws of trade, the best and the cheapest must prevail in 

 the end. The benefit to humanity at large is unquestionable, but 

 to individuals and localities the result is often disastrous. Agricul- 

 ture is now tried severely to contend with these great changes, and 

 the struggle still goes on with increasing severity, in almost all the 

 articles of its production. The result cannot be otherwise than to 

 compel every district, and every locality, to produce those articles 

 for which it is specially adapted, in the best possible form, or, in 

 other words, by the highest cultivation. If free-trade in corn, and 

 the introduction of live and dead meat, restrict the profit of the 

 farmers, happy should they be, who, living in the fruit districts of 

 England, have their Orchards to help them. 



Two hundred years ago, it was the necessities of isolation that 

 caused the Orchards to be looked to as a good source of profit; in 

 these times it is a world-wide competition that makes the same 

 demand. Thus it has come to pass, by a curious revolution in the 

 cycle of commerce, that the careful cultivation of English Orchards 

 has again become a necessity, and every effort must be made to 

 improve their condition, and to make them, as they can be made, 

 one of the main sources of the profit of the farm. 



The fruit districts in England, in all ordinary seasons, should 

 afford the chief supply to the English markets, but they do not do 

 so. American and Continental Apples and Pears are brought, year 

 by year, in larger quantities, to supply our great centres of popu- 

 lation, and they are even now coming from x\ustralia. These 

 importations are always noticed to possess the two leading market- 

 able qualities, " size," and " beauty of colour," and the best are also 

 excellent in flavour and quality. In bad seasons, as in 1879, 

 particularly, American Apples were bought to supply our own apple 

 districts. This competition, will, for the future, always have to be 

 encountered, and it is very satisfactory to know that it may be 

 met successfully, by care and attention to our own Orchards. Of 

 late years, table and kitchen fruit, " pot fruit," as the local name 

 has it, have been much more extensively grown here, and they 

 must still be grown, in increasing quantities, and in improved 

 quality. This particular change, however, will not prove the one 



