Xil. 
are piled one upon the other in suclia way that frequently when it comes off the car it 
is in better condition for pigs than for placing upon the market. There is another griev- 
ance in connection with the express companies which I think it the duty of thts Asso- 
ciation to look into and try to have remedied. I refer to the petty pilfering of fruit 
from baskets and packages while in transit. I presume there is not a shipper who does 
not receive complaints every year from his customers of weight or measure being short, 
or baskets being broken open and fruit abstracted. The loss is generally so small that if 
he is very busy he does not take the trouble to report it, and if he does he seldom gets 
any satisfaction. The large shippers do not often notice it, but it comes especially severe 
on the small dealers in country towns and private individuals who are getting a few 
baskets for their own consumption. As a case in point, I was stopping a few weeks in 
the little town of Brussels last fall during the grape season, and a widow womaa living 
there who made her living by selling fruit and confectionery wanted me to order her up 
some grapes for retailing, 100 pounds or so at a time. I did so and when the first lot 
came up she reported them five or six pounds short. Thinking there might possibly be 
a mistake on the part of my shippers I deducted it from her bill and letit pass. On the 
arrival of the next shipment I happened to be in her store when they were delivered and 
noticed that some of the baskets had been broken open. I took one and weighed it and 
found that there had been stolen over three pounds by actual weight. I showed it to the 
agent and he reported it to the superintendent of the company, and that is the last I have 
heard about it. There was from 20 to 30 cents’ worth on each shipment taken from 
this poor woman’s hard earnings which would in two or three weeks amount to several 
dollars and she had no means of redress. If there had been that amount taken from a 
money or from any other package of value there would have been an investigation and 
restitution, and the guilty parties punished, Why should not property in fruit be 
respected as well as in any other commodity? I trust there will be a committee 
appointed to look into and remedy this evil. 
While we congratulate ourselves upon the achievements of the past we must not 
forget the duties of the present. There are many evils to remedy, wrongs to be righted, 
errors to be corrected, in the horticultural line as well as in others, and while we have 
made advancement in the past we must not forget that we are far from what we ought 
to be considering our advantages. There is not a country in the civilised world that has 
a better soil and climate for growing apples, pears, plums, cherries and many varieties of 
grapes in perfection than we have, to say nothing of small fruits, yet there is not one 
farmer in ten, take Ontario through, that grows half of these fruits required for his own 
use even. - I have travelled through some of the best fruit sections of the province during 
the past year, been upon the farms of some of our most prosperous farmers and enjoyed 
the hospitality of their homes, and I was surprised at their want of horticultural taste 
and knowledge. Even where every other surrounding was all that could be desired, as 
good buildings and fences, good horses and cattle, good roots and grain, well tilled fields, 
yet when you looked tor the orchard, the fruit or the flower garden or the lawn, they 
were either wanting or in a very negleeted condition ; and while their tables were well 
supplied with the substantial and luxuries of other kinds, there was a noticeable absence 
