38 Commercial Gardening 



seated for nearly 1000 people. A restaurant, a grocer's shop, and a 

 post office are kept on the premises. The pickers come from all parts of 

 Scotland. They are engaged by a man appointed for the purpose. Every 

 picker must produce a certificate of character. The season 1910 was a short 

 one, and the pickers were only at work for about six weeks. Notwith- 

 standing this, the catering department, which has a staff of about thirty 

 servants, including a manager and experienced waitresses from Glasgow, 

 sold food to the value of 975. Fortunes are not made, but in addition 

 to the advantage of a month in the country, with decent lodgings and 

 good food, many of the women make money. During their short stay 

 in 1910 they sent through the Post Office between 300 and 400 to 

 their relatives in different parts of the country. 



The Essendy growers have also a Fruitgrowers' Association of their 

 own. They have a representative in Blairgowrie, who takes general 

 charge of the sale and dispatch of their fruit. They have a representative 

 in Glasgow, who deals with the traffic going to the West of Scotland, as 

 well as assists in the disposal of the fruit generally throughout the United 

 Kingdom. They have another representative in London, who confines his 

 energies to the sale and delivery of the London consignments. Since the 

 small holdings were created, 2872 tons of raspberries have been sent from 

 Essendy. Notwithstanding the unremunerative prices that have been 

 ruling in the fruit market for the past few years, which have hit the 

 growers at Essendy as well as the growers in every other part of the 

 country, 48,550 has been received for the fruit dispatched. It is needless 

 to say that nothing approximating such a sum could have been obtained 

 from such an acreage in Scotland devoted to ordinary agricultural crops. 



Alyth. The fame of the Essendy experiment in fruit culture soon 

 spread to other parts of the county. Alyth, a village about 5 ml. to the 

 east of Blairgowrie, became the centre of the Raspberry industry in that 

 part of the county. The holdings are mostly held under lease. They 

 extend from | ac. to 40 or 50 ac., if the land under cultivation at Jordan- 

 stone, some miles from Alyth, be included in the Alyth district. There 

 are now between 100 and 200 ac. under fruit. The Alyth Fruitgrowers' 

 Association sees to the sale and the dispatch of most of the fruit grown. 

 The development of the trade may be seen from the following figures, 

 showing the gross tonnage dispatched from the stations in the vicinity 

 of Alyth since 1906: 1906, 81 tons; 1908, 182 tons; 1909, 451 tons; 1910, 

 591 tons. 



Coupar-Ang'US. Coupar-Angus, 4f ml. to the south of Blairgowrie, 

 became the centre of another Raspberry district. The holdings in the 

 Coupar-Angus district are on an average somewhat larger than the hold- 

 ings in the Alyth district. The land, while heavier, is lower lying, and 

 has suffered more in recent years from frost. The trade, however, has 

 developed rapidly, and that notwithstanding a lack of co-operation on the 

 part of the growers. There was for a time a Fruitgrowers' Association in 

 the district. Now most of the fruit is being handled by dealers. These 



