of our farmers in the \Ye>t roented the presence of the new- 

 comer>. whse leaning in most instar. fruit rather than 



wine. \Ve claim. however, that it is owing partly to the advent 

 of tlu ame tiitlanders that many of our farmers have been 



enabled to tide oxer what has been for all a very severe struggle. 

 Food stuff> and forage were going up in price; wine going down 

 i we remember it at 2 IQS. per leaguer). Phylloxera, ravaging 

 most dMricts. placed our farmers in a most unenviable position. 

 Eighteen years ago mortgages were foreclosing right and left, 

 and the confidence of capitalists and merchants in the future of 

 the \Yestern Farming industry had sunk to zero. 



The interest taken in the newer fruits and the enterprise often 

 of the farmers themselves, and the confidence engendered by the 

 then satisfactory behaviour of the newer fruits, we consider, 

 turned the scale as regards confidence in Western land. Wine 

 farmers will claim it was the wine industry ; we claim, however, 

 no, as wine was during that period at a very low figure indeed 

 and the farmers were at that time undecided with what stocks 

 they could successfully cope with Phylloxera. As we say. from 

 about seventeen years ago, prices of land in the Western Pro- 

 vince have been steadily going up the result to the occupier being 

 that his friend the mortgagee, who was at that time getting rest- 

 less and uneasy, began to be inclined even to help him with in- 

 creased loans, and with the assistance of the loans which we claim 

 was justified by solid natural increase in value of the soil, farmers 

 were able to go on with tree and vine planting, with the net 

 result that to-day the land in the Western Province has increased 

 in value to the extent of several million sterling. 



This was further 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 development 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 num- 

 ber of fruit trees shall be planted and cared for as giving addi- 

 tional security for their money, and this is as wholesome a sign 

 as can well be. 



Altogether we claim that twenty-two 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 



