270 



THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE, 



[September 8, 1888. 



Advertisers are specially requested to note, that, 

 under no circumstances whatever, can any 

 particular position in the paper be guaran- 

 teed for advertisements occupying less space 

 than an entire column. 



APPOINTMENTS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



MONDAY, 

 TUESDAY, 



Sept. 



WEDNESDAY, Sept. 12, 



MEETINGS. 



Sept. 10 — Chambre Syndicate of Ghent. 



,, ( Royal Horticultural Society : Fruit 

 ( and Floral Committees. 



SHOWS. 



,' National Chrysanthemum, Eoyal 

 | Aquarium, Westminster (two 

 days). 

 Glasgow and West of Scotland 



WEDNESDAY, Sept 



THURSDAY, 



\ Cheltenham (two days). 



SALES. 



f Bulbs, by Messrs. Smail & Co., 

 at 23, LimeStreet, London, E.G., 

 at 12.30 p.m. 

 First-cla9s Bulbs from Holland, at 

 Stevens' Rooms. 

 Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & Morris' 

 Rooms. 

 ("Greenhouse and Stove Plants, at 

 <.„. ,, ) Eastgate Nurseries, Peterborough, 

 oiii.ii< by Messrg> p ro theroe & Morris 

 ( (two days). 



/"Bulbs, by Messrs. Smail & Co., at 

 ., ) 23,LimeStreet,E.C, at 12.30 P.yL. 

 ) First-class Bulbs from Holland, at 

 (. Stevens' Rooms. 

 Choice Orchids in Flower, and Im- 

 ported Orchids, at Stevens'Rooms. 

 Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & Morris' 

 o ,,, Rooms. 



beft. in G r e a t Annual Trade Sale of Green- 

 house Plants at Ladd's Nursery, 

 Swanley Junction, by Messrs. 

 \ Protheroe & Morris. 

 i"Bulbs, by Messrs. Smail & Co., at 

 ) 23, LimeStreet,E.C.,atl2.&0p.M. 

 \ Established and Imported Orchids 

 (. at Protheroe & Morris' Rooms. 

 /"First-class Bulbs from Holland, 

 ,-J at Stevens' Rooms. 

 °\ Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & 

 (. Morris' Rooms. 



Sept. U<! 



In our present issue we give a 

 Fruit Culture, short report of two provincial 



conferences that have already 

 been held with respect to the development of 

 fruit-culture as a national industry. Next week 

 we hope to be able to make mention of the 

 meeting at the Crystal Palace, and, later on, of 

 that in the old home of the Royal Horticul- 

 tural Society at Chiswick, where, it will be 

 remembered, the most extensive and most suc- 

 cessful conferences were held a few years since. 

 We can but rejoice heartily at the public interest 

 manifested in this question. So much more might 

 be done than is done — so many more pounds 

 might be retained in our own pockets — so much 

 less coin find its way into the coffers of our neigh- 

 bours. All this must be admitted ; but in their 

 zeal, the promoters of extended fruit-culture 

 must not suffer themselves to fall into the delu- 

 sion, that fruit-culture is to be a perfect cure for 

 agricultural depression. To say, as one gentle- 

 man at St. Alban's is reported to have done, that 

 " in the growing of Fruit lay England's salva- 

 tion " is to use the language of exaggeration. 

 It may — and we believe will be — very useful as an 

 auxiliary, and if it enforce on our agriculturists 

 the recognition of the folly of putting all their 

 eggs into one basket, to use a homely proverb, 

 it will do good service. Nevertheless, we have 

 only to look back to the Fruit Crop Reports 

 given annually in these pages for the last quarter 

 of a century and upwards, to see that the risks 

 and contingencies of fruit-growing on a large 

 scale are, to say the least, as great as those with 

 which the farmer has to contend, while the diffi- 

 culties in the form of land-laws, markets, and 

 transit are certainly no less. 



The Conferences will, we hope and believe, do 

 much to show what sorts can be grown at a 



profit in particular localities, and what sorts it is 

 a mere waste of space to cultivate. For the 

 selection of appropriate stocks and other details 

 of cultivation, the farmer or market-gardener 

 must at first depend upon the gardener or the 

 nurseryman. "Whatever, is to be the future of 

 agriculture in this country, it is certain that the 

 farmer has much to learn from the gardener. 

 Fruit culture just now is in the air, but it is only 

 one resource out of many open to him. In the 

 future it will be by the careful study and ex- 

 tension of the methods adopted by the florist 

 and the gardener that progress will be made. 

 The knowledge of first principles is not too well 

 ingrained among gardeners — it is all but absent 

 in the great mass of farmers ; and yet upon the 

 teachings of physiology and chemistry, and upon 

 practical experiments made in experimental gar- 

 dens — success depends in the future. This, it will 

 be said, is a slow and tedious process, and so it is ; 

 but have not the teachings of experience been 

 tedious and slow ? Any means whereby combined 

 action may be brought to bear upon the search 

 for knowledge and its application to practice must 

 be welcomed as hastening the rate of progress, 

 and in this direction a reconstructed Royal Hor- 

 ticultural Society might do much good. In these 

 days of specialisation, however, and particularly 

 in the present state of things, it seems almost 

 hopeless to expect that the Society will take its 

 proper place at the head of all such movements, 

 and therefore it is well worth considering whether 

 the time has not come for the formation of yet 

 another special society, if we cannot have, as 

 we should prefer, a special department of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society. On this subject a 

 correspondent writes : — 



" In the interest of the fruit-growiDg industry of this 

 country it is greatly to be hoped that one of the good 

 results likely to accrue from the holding of confer- 

 ences this autumn will be the formation of a National 

 Fruit Growers' Society. We believe it to be one of 

 the pressing requirements of the times. At first sight 

 it appears somewhat strange, in these days of keen 

 competition and business enterprise, that such a 

 society has not been brought into existence long ago, 

 and it is only because we believe it to be an absolute 

 necessity — seeing that we are soon to have a Minister 

 of Agriculture and Horticulture — that we call atten- 

 tion to the subject at this juncture, trusting thereby 

 to stimulate the energy of those whom it most con- 

 cerns. In a matter of this kind the duty of the Press 

 begins and ends with drawing the attention of prac- 

 titioners to the subject, and with directing or point- 

 ing out the channels in which their interest lie, and 

 it is for them, and for them alone to take active 

 proceedings afterwards, to set in motion the ma- 

 chinery through whose agency they are expected to 

 reap advantageous results. 



" There are already a few local societies in different 

 parts of the country, and these we have reason to 

 believe are doing a real and substantial service to 

 their members. These in time to come will doubt- 

 less be largely increased in numbers, and, in our 

 opinion, advantageously so ; but what we have in 

 mind at the present time is the starting a society 

 which shall be of a national character, and to which 

 all these local or district ones — at least such of them 

 as think it advisable to do so — may be affiliated. 

 At the present time there is a vast amount of capital 

 employed and floating about seeking for employment 

 in the fruit-growing industry of this country, and 

 it behoves its owners to seek for methods of combi- 

 nations whereby it shall receive legitimate protection 

 to prevent loss or depreciation as far as it is in human 

 power to do so, or at least, when they do occur, to 

 confine them within the narrowest possible limits. 

 Presuming that a National Fruit Growers' Society is 

 brought into existence forthwith, we can quite con- 

 ceive that some persons will say the time is not yet 

 ripe for such a thing — what will its functions consist 



of, and in what direction will it seek to do good by 

 looking after the interests of its members? — are 

 questions which all shrewd and common-sense 

 persons will ask themselves before giving a subscrip- 

 tion towards its support, or before fruit growers 

 themselves will consent to have their names proposed 

 as members. 



"We will endeavour to answer these questions, 

 and also to enlarge upon them, for it is only by such 

 pithy points being put in a clear light that such a 

 society as we are now advocating can ever hope to 

 be established on a firm basis, or to become perma- 

 nent, and of an increasingly popular character. In 

 the first place, the society should hold an annual 

 meeting of members for the reading of papers on 

 matters connected with fruit growing, and others 

 treating on the economic aspect of such questions as 

 may be expected to crop up from time to time in 

 regard to our fruit growing industry; the reading of 

 each paper to be followed by a discussion ; in fact, 

 to nut the matter in other words, the meetings should 

 take the form of an annual Conference, and there 

 cannot be the slightest doubt but what great good 

 will result. Secondly, the society should be able to 

 command the services of a qualified horticultural or 

 agricultural chemist, so that any member by paying 

 a small fee could obtain a chemical analysis of soil 

 or manure at any time he wished for such informa- 

 tion ; and with the table of analysis there should be 

 a few remarks stating what chemical properties will 

 benefit the said sample of soil, and also what value 

 can be attached to the manure for fruit growing pur- 

 poses. This matteris one of very great importance, and 

 it is a strange fact that no horticultural society of the 

 present day, so far as we are aware, employs an analy- 

 tical chemist for this purpose, and any fruit grower, be 

 he a private gardener or a man working on his own 

 capital, wishing to obtain such information, must do 

 so through an Agricultural Society, or by paying a 

 large private fee, the amount of which acts as a 

 deterrent to men of small means. We believe that 

 thousands of pounds are lost annually over artificial 

 manures owing to a want of more knowledge on the 

 subject by those who use them. Thirdly, the 

 society should issue a Journal yearly or half-yearly, 

 in which should be given in tabulated form statistical 

 information relative to importation and exportation 

 of fruit in its various forms, i.e., dried, bottled, jams, 

 and in green or ripe condition. Such a matter as 

 this is also of the greatest importance to fruit 

 growers, and as the fruit growing industry developes 

 itself it will manifest itself in an intensified degree. 

 Indeed it is becoming daily more apparent that we 

 have been exceedingly lax and neglectful of such 

 an important source of information, but the opinion 

 is now fast gaining ground, that it stimulates the 

 business capacities of men with the best brains, and 

 contributes largely to the levelling-up of inequalities 

 where they exist. In addition to such information 

 as this, the society's Journal should contain a 

 limited number of contributions from some of its 

 leading members, on subjects immediately connected 

 with the fruit-growing interests — not necessarily on 

 systems of culture — but mostly on the broader 

 questions — such, for instance, as improved methods 

 of fruit transit and distribution, drying, storing 

 packing, and marketing of fruit, with others again 

 relating to tithes, rates and taxes, in so far as they 

 affect owners and occupiers of fruit farms and gar- 

 dens. Of these latter questions some persons may 

 think that they are already well understood, un- 

 alterable, and fully accepted ; but on that we differ 

 in opinion, and we think it will be found that, when 

 the new elective County Councils come into force 

 and get settled down into working order, there will 

 be a very great deal in this respect that will require 

 to be closely looked after. Having pointed out the 

 directions in which the work of a National Fruit 

 Growers' Society lies, the next question is as to 

 management and putting it into working order. 

 The latter part of the question may be answered, 

 first, by saying that we know of no better plan than 

 for the leading market-growers attending the Con- 

 ferences to join hands and make arrangements to 



