Due to increased confidence in agriculture and the opening up 

 of the North and the establishment of communications thereto. In 

 the Eastern Province, the result of the planting of fruit trees has 

 not, we consider, cut anything like the same figure in the develop- 

 ment of agriculture. The planting, however, has steadily gone 

 forward, and we know for a fact that merchants and others 

 interested in the development of the country at the back of them 

 have considerable confidence in the possibility of fruit cutting 

 quite a figure in the development of the country, in fact we know 

 of mortgagees who in lending money on land have insisted, before 

 doing so, that a certain number of fruit trees shall be plaated and 

 cared for as giving additional security for their money, and this 

 is as wholesome a sign as can well be. 



Altogether we claim that eight years ago there began a revival 

 of interest in fruit-growing we say advisedly revival 

 because as we have stated in the chapter under the head of " The 

 Horticultural Past," we consider there was formerly a deep and 

 widely distributed interest in fruit. The difference between the 

 interest taken then and that taken now being, whereas it was the 

 natural interest of. an horticultural loving paople who had a lean- 

 ing towards improving their fruit, to-day it is the commercial 

 minded man who thinks he sees a chance of making money. 



BOTANIC GARDENS. 



We think a few lines in acknowledgment of the, good work 

 done by the Botanical Gardens in the Colony will not be out of 

 place. Let us recognize at once that they have done most 

 excellent work. 



Throughout the British Colonies and Dependencies the 

 establishment of Botanical Gardens has invariably followed, 

 British rule. Without having any certain information as to the 

 origin of the idea we shall put it down to Kew, the Director ,of 

 which unique Institution has done an enormous lot of work in 

 assisting the Colonial and India Office in the development of 

 the cultivation of products of the soil. Perhaps in no other part 

 of Her Majesty's Dominions has this been , more clearly 

 demonstrated than in the West Indies, where owing to ,the 

 terrible depreciation in value of land and diminution of wealth, 

 consequent upon the taking off of the sugar duties, the 

 financial ruin of our Colonies there appeared imminent. The 

 result of the Commission appointed by the Colonial Office in 1896 

 to enquire into the state, of the West Indies being that it was 

 decided that new products must be found to take the place of the 

 sugar cane, and it is mainly we believe through the agency of these 

 institutions, which are scattered through every island of the West 

 Indies, that the plants and data as to cultivation are to be 



