338 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



each case does best under local conditions, and best meets the 

 requirement. 



As a step towards ascertaining these points, the respective 

 Governments have each arranged something in the nature of trial 

 plots, in which greater variety is introduced than would usually be 

 done by a private grower or even by a nurseryman. In the Transvaal 

 some 400 varieties are on trial, in Natal about 1000 varieties, while 

 in Cape Colony a smaller number of selected kinds is being distri- 

 buted for trial at many centres. 



It is generally conceded that only a few varieties are wanted at 

 one place, but the point in this experiment work is to find which are 

 the few kinds best worth attention in each locality. Experience in 

 America, Australia and elsewhere has been that each locality eventu- 

 ally produces locally a few kinds best suited to itself, or selects and 

 adopts as its own a few chance trees of unknown history but of 

 special quality. 



And in this selection not only has the effect of local conditions 

 on all available varieties to be tried, but the special requirement 

 of the market to be supplied has also to be considered, for it is 

 surprising how some kinds are in demand in one market, and unsale- 

 able in another. 



Proving these problems is public work if the Colony desires 

 to benefit, otherwise a few energetic men control the trade and make 

 the profit, and the public is left out. 



Experiment work in other directions, as to soils, fertilizers, prun- 

 ing, cultivation, espacement, irrigation, intercropping, shelter, stocks, 

 packing, cold storage, transport, etc., are also in hand as Government 

 work, and each Government has an officer in charge of such work. 



Export of Fruit. 



After a century of slow progress, fruit culture made a fresh statt 

 when, in 1889, a first attempt was made to ship fruit to England on 

 a commercial scale. The Castle Steamship Co. responded to the 

 growers' demand by fitting up in one of its steamers a cool chamber 

 with a capacity for 30 tons. Whether the growers filled this or not 

 does not appear, but the Cafe Agricultural Journal (Vol. II., page 

 208) contains a report, dated March nth, 1889, by Mr. J. Willard, 

 Member of the Fruit Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, 

 to the Secretary of the Cape Agricultural Society, on a trial shipment 

 of apparently three cases of fruit, which included Grapes, Pears, and 

 Melons, the two latter being in one box. During the next two years 

 export business was still in the initial experimental stage, but in 1892 

 some 500 cases of fruit in variety were shipped, and the results led 

 both the Castle and the Union Steamship Companies to fit up cool 

 chambers of 60-ton capacity in each of several steamers for the next 

 year's trade, when a large business at once sprang up. 



