The Canadian Horticulturist. 195 



SOME PROxMINENT CANADIAN HORTICULTURISTS.— XVI. 

 Thomas Beall, Esq. 



N continuing the sketches of those gentlemen who are 

 prominent in Canadian horticuUure, we are enabled to 

 give in this number a brief notice of the life and w^ork of 

 the Director for the Fifth Division, to which position he 

 was elected in 1878, and has ably filled ever since. 



Thomas Beall was born at St. Blazey Gate, Cornwall, 

 England, in May, 1828. In 1840 he came with his 

 parents to Canada, who settled on an uncleared farm near the centre of the 

 Township of Whitby, Ontario County. Here our Director, then a lad of twelve 

 years, commenced his experiments in fruit culture, which he may be said to have 

 continued up to the present. His neighbors living on the front assured him 

 that not even the apple would succeed so far north of Lake Ontario; but, nothing 

 daunted, he resolved to try. In i860 he removed from Whitby to Lindsay, and 

 at once commenced experimenting in horticulture, and has now demonstrated 

 that not only apples, but that some varieties of all of the staple fruits, except 

 peaches, could be successfully grown. He has planted nearly a hundred varieties 

 of apple, and forty of pear. Of the apple, some sixty kinds are succeeding well, 

 though of the pear only four sorts have yet proved to be a success. 



Nor did Mr. Beall confine his experiments to fruits alone, but proved that it 

 was quite within the range of possibility to grow many of the best varieties of 

 flowering shrubs and plants, including many of our most choice hybrid perpetual 

 roses. Of the latter there are now growing in his grounds, in perfect health, 

 some thirty varieties, the most of which were planted a quarter of a century ago. 

 He was also the first to plant the black walnut in that part of the country. In 

 1880 he read before our Fruit Growers' Association his first paper on the suit- 

 ability of the black walnut for cultivation in Central Ontario. This essay was 

 widely copied by both urban and rural newspapers, and doubtless many thou- 

 sands of that valuable timber tree are now growing that would never have been 

 planted but for the philanthropic spirit that actuated Mr. Beall in giving to the 

 public the results of his black walnut planting. 



The public is also indebted to him in large measure for the efforts that are 

 being made to secure greater uniformity and correctness in the judging of fruit 

 at fairs, as well as to give to the residents in each agricultural division a list of 

 the varieties of the several fruits that can be successfully grown therein. 



The crowning work of Mr. Beall's life, however, will be the accumulation of 

 meteorological data, the value of which, in its bearing upon the labors of the 

 fruit grower, can hardly be over-estimated. When such observations shall have 

 been so extended that we can know the average summer heat and winter cold, 



