FORESTRY AND AGRICULTURE. 5 



Pests of various kinds no doubt give sometimes much trouble, 

 but; as a rule, their presence in numbers sufficient to menace 

 the existence of the crop is a proof of bad or careless culti- 

 vation. During my stay in Tasmania several so-called 

 " pest scares " arose, and it always struck me that if the 

 same time, energy, and labour displayed in writing and 

 disputing about their existence or non-existence, and the 

 best means of eradicating them, in the long letters appearing 

 every day in the newspapers, had been judiciously expended 

 in the orchards and fruit gardens, the result would have 

 been decidedly advantageous to the fruit crop. We must 

 not forget that agriculture in all countries has been subject 

 to pests of all descriptions, some of them more destructive 

 than the average of those with which you have to deal, and 

 Tasmania can scarcely expect to escape from the ills that 

 plants are heir to. But scientific culture, increasing care 

 and examination, combined with the well-directed applica- 

 tion of the latest remedies, will be found as effective in 

 either considerably diminishing or eradicating these pests 

 in Tasmania, as they have been elsewhere. The suppression 

 and extinction of pests, to be effective, must be thorough, 

 and, consequently, entails a certain loss of fruit, as every 

 apple affected by codlin moth, &c., or injured in any way, 

 must be picked from the tree at once and destroyed. This 

 waste of produce (more apparent than real, the tree profiting 

 by the removal of unsound fruit), should be followed by 

 careful selection, picking, and packing, if the fruit is expected 

 to arrive at its destination in good condition. It would seem, 

 however, that many producers are not alive to this fact, and 

 will not take, or do not know how to take, the most neces- 

 sary precautions to prevent any but the soundest and best 

 fruit being sent to markets at a distance of some 13^,000 miles. 

 They appear to think that purchasers in England and on 

 the Continent are such fools as to be willing to pay a good 

 price for bad fruit, although they have the choice of impor- 

 tations from some of the finest fruit-exporting countries in 

 the world. Worse still, the recurrence of inferior shipments 

 from Tasmania will lower the reputation of its fruit, and 

 purchasers on the other side of the world, who have neither 

 the time nor the will to discriminate between good and bad 

 shippers, will refuse to have anything to do with fruit 

 exported from that country, unless at such low prices aa 

 they may think may cover any risk they run. This, in 

 reality, means the destruction in a very brief space of time 

 of some of the best markets in which to dispose of youi 



