II 



places at different times from seed as well as by grafting, 

 as we have so many variations in size and quality, although each 

 shows a similarity which tends to show they are nearly akin. 



In Apricots we feel we are unable to determine anything 

 in regard to their origin, and as to what varieties they spring 

 from. \Ve gather that their identity has been lost owing to the 

 haphazard way in which they have been propagated since their 

 introduction. 



/;/ PI ions it is interesting to remark that practically every 

 variety (and there must have been many varieties that were 

 introduced in the early days of settlement) have failed to give 

 satisfaction to the planter; the result being that at the date on 

 which we write, if one examines the old plum trees scattered 

 about the country, one must come to the conclusion that the 

 growing of the better varieties had been long abandoned by the 

 farmers, and that the few that were standing and bearing fruit 

 were of the varieties which were the stock carriers for the earliest 

 importations, to wit. the Christmas plum, a small round red one, 

 which is nearly akin to the myrobolan, and which we think to be 

 identical with the myrobolan so celebrated as a non-suckering 

 stock carrier in Europe, Australia, and America. Then, again, 

 the Early Golden Drop, widely disseminated throughout the 

 country, is a kindred sort, and more or less identical, except in 

 the colour of its fruit.* 



The only other sort which one sees practically all over the 

 country is the small blue plum, which can be identified by the 

 number of suckers that it throws up ; this is undoubtedly the 

 Black Damas, used largely as a stock on which to grow plums, 

 and the fruit of which is miserably sour and unpalatable. 



\Ye may add we have seen these three varieties named scat- 

 tered over the Colony, East and West, and through the Transvaal 

 and Orange Free State. So here we claim we have the interest- 

 ing fact of the grafted sorts dropping clean out of existence, and 

 the stocks remaining and being disseminated as worthy of 

 planting, and in the matter of plums the problem has not yet 

 been solved in the country as to how to get a uniform good result 

 from plums of the domestic type except as regards a few varie- 

 ties. 



REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN HORTICULTURE. 



Some twenty-three years ago our industry, as an industry, 

 was in a parlous state, the planting then being undertaken being 

 on a scale which prevented its ever cutting a figure in even inter- 

 Colonial trade, and the Export as a possible Colonial industry 



* History of myrobolan traced back 1601. 



