35 



mischievous and misleaeling. I know 

 that many people imagine that it maKea 

 little or no difference whether a fcuit is 

 called by different names, and so they 

 make no effort to arrive at any finality in 

 the matter. A little consideration will, 

 however, show that not only is such con- 

 fusion discreditable to us, in view of the 

 importance of the fruit industry, but that 

 it also results in direct injury to the 

 growers and shippers. I am aware that 

 this fact has been denied and the possible 

 injury questioned, but I have had many 

 proofs of the correctness of my conten- 

 tion. I can recall instances of growers 

 sending the same kind of fruit by the 

 same steamer, under two different names, 

 and obtaining higher prices for one portion 

 of their consignment than they did for the 

 other. I can further refer to the case of 

 growers who have sent to some of the 

 other States for their trees, and who have 

 received altogether different varieties from 

 those they had ordered, simply because 

 they had given a different name to that by 

 which the fruit was known to the 

 nurseryman. There is a still more 

 weighty reason why we should endeavor 

 to have a uniform system of nomencla- 

 ture. It is nowadays recognised on all 

 sides that the aid of scientific expert 

 knowledge is a necessity in many of the 

 operations of fruitgrowing. We have to 

 depend on such knowledge for the pre- 

 paration of the various formulae which are 

 used in spraying, or in directing us to the 

 best and most economical methods of 

 applying manures. It has already hap- 

 pened more than once to my 

 own knowledge, that valuable in- 

 formation, having special reference to one 

 particular variety of fruit has been pub- 

 lished by the fruit experts of some of the 

 other States, but this information has 

 proved either misleading or of no service ; 

 because while the experts were referring 

 to one kind, another variety was under- 

 stood by the growers here. From eco- 

 nomic and commercial grounds alone, I 

 think it is desirable that there should be a 

 recognised system of nomenclature estab- 

 lished in tbe Commonwealth. There are, 

 however, other reasons of a more abstruse 

 nature which, I submit, would very pro- 

 perly prove a subject for scientific re- 

 search. It will be found that fruits can 

 be classified under distinct heads or 

 groups, and that there are characteristic 



features which will enable the observer to 

 place them in their proper order or group. 

 I would lay down the principle that, as 

 far as may be possible, the names of 

 fruits should convey some idea of their 

 character and quality. This is already 

 done in some instances, and we look for 

 the buttery, melting characteristic in the 

 Beurre class of pears. Other names con- 

 vey some idea of the locality from 

 which they originated. All this may be 

 very proper, but to crowd our fruit cata- 

 logues with the thousand and one syno- 

 nyms, many of which are meaningless and 

 absurd, is surely not a desirable course to 

 adopt. As an instance of what I mean, I 

 was called upon to judge some fruit at one 

 of the principal shows on the North-West 

 Coast, and amongst other exhibits there 

 were three plates of apples which were 

 entered by the names of Dolly, Moll;y, and 

 Polly. This is an extreme case, I admit, 

 but such incongruities are not so rare as 

 might be supposed. I should like to see 

 the work of classifying and naming our 

 fruits carried out on some distinctly scien- 

 tific and commonsense basis, and I am 

 convinced that when this is properly done 

 it will be found to have an important 

 economic value to the fruitgrower. With- 

 out wearying you with details, it might 

 be interesting to draw attention 

 to one of the modes in which 

 this inquiry should be pursued. 

 Botanical classification is determined very 

 considerably by the various processes of 

 fructification, and in describing fruits 

 tnemselves the formation of the ovary or 

 seed vessels forms tbe starting point of our 

 investigations. The variations, however, 

 are in many cases not so obvious as might 

 be imagined, and it is necessary to sub- 

 mit the fruit to close and careful examina- 

 tion, before it is possible to discover dis- 

 tinctive points of difference. With some 

 fruits this is comparatively a simply pro- 

 cess, but with others it has yet to be 

 ascertained whether they can be classified 

 by any system, which will be suffi- 

 ciently invariable to prove satisfactory and 

 reliable. In the case of pears, no system 

 has, up to the present time, been found 

 which can be relied on, for none of the 

 principal structural features of this fruit 

 are invariable. From the same tree — 

 even from the same branch— fruits can be 

 obtained which differ so completely from 

 one another that no reliance can be placed 



