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educate farmers to some knowledge of science than scientists to 
some knowledge of farming” is a practical and common-sense 
view of the matter. The farmer or fruit-grower does certain 
things in his work, and he goes to science to explain to him the 
reason why, and to help him perhaps to do them better and to. 
greater profit. By reducing science to practice in an experimental 
field or garden, science is then expressed in terms of daily life, 
and the grower can follow and profit by it, but in its abstract 
form as accurate knowledge he fails to get the benefit from it. 
The multiplication of such experimental gardens, if the experi- 
ments are properly conducted, is simply so many scientific lessons 
conveyed in a language which the fruit-grower can readily under- 
stand and appreciate. 
In Mr. Neilson’s department the meriis of the different varieties 
of fruit trees in the market may be tested, so that growers may 
know the best kind to use, making due allowance for the different 
districts. And this is particularly important at the present time, 
when tea and other traveliers are turning their attention to tree 
peddling. In several districts I have visited the tea agent has 
been about, and effected sales at a high price, while no guarantee 
was given that the trees supplied were what they were represented 
to be. The next step will be that the country will be overrun 
with seed-mongers, who may provide a very inferior article, unless 
the schoolmaster is abroad to enlighten the buyers. It is to be 
hoped that the kind of knowledge scattered from this horticultural. 
centre will soon cause the “tree peddlers,” like Othello, to find 
their occupation gone. Experiments will also be made in hybrid- 
izing, cross-fertilizing, and selection, whereby improved varieties 
of various kinds may be raised. Cross-fertilization takes place 
between flowers of the same plant or between flowers of different 
plants of the same species, whereas hybridization is a further ex- 
tension of this process, or a crossing of the flowers of different 
species. The gardener has already largely used it for combining 
desirable qualities in the same plant. 
Experiments also as to the different and best modes of cultiva- 
tion, propagating, and pruning, as well as in the application of 
manures, and even the effects of irrigation will be tested when 
water is available. 
In my own department the effect of various remedies on diseases 
of plants are being tried, and this is a most important use to which 
the experimental gardens may be applied. Disease, like the poor,. 
we have always with us, and here test experiments can be carried 
out under personal control, the results of which will be available 
for the colony at large. Of course, we do not wish and do not 
expect to have a great variety of disease to deal with here, but in 
different districts there are experimental plots, as we might call 
them, where the owners are willingly carrying out experiments. 
