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rule they are not ■wanted. Mr. President, I can only say that if the fruit-growers of 

 Ontario or any other section of the Dominion, or of the world, wish to make any 

 change in their fi-uit orchards and get cleai' of any disadvantages they may be suf- 

 fering under now, by living in the interior of the country, a long way from ship- 

 board, I would like them to come to the Province of Nova Scotia, to the Annapolis 

 Valley, and to other valleys that are now being opened up and provided with such 

 facilities as to enable us to export our fruit readily. Thousands of acres of land 

 available for fruit growing aie now lying in pasture or bushes. We look upon apple 

 growing in Nova Scotia as being the leading industry, and a great industry, that will 

 pay any practical man who devotes his whole time and attention to that business, or 

 even a general farmer who devotes a poition of his time to it. We are glad to know 

 that many friends are coming into the country exclusively for this purpose. One 

 gentleman from Ontario who is sitting before me now, a gentleman who lives in 

 Ottawa, bought a largo orchard in the immediate vicinity of Grrand Pr^, in the land 

 of Evangeline, which he hopes will be a great success. Alongside of him Judge 

 Weatherland's plantation is one of the wonders to visitors. He has made it a great 

 success ; it is an orchard among the bushes. To a great extent he has succeeded by 

 cutting away and making room for his trees, and clearing up as time will permit. 

 He is very enthusiastic, and although not a practical horticulturist, I think he bids 

 fair to make a success of orcharding. These are but samples of what is going on in 

 our Province ; and, as I said before, we have plenty of room for thousands more to 

 adopt the same plan and make Nova Scotia a continuous fruit orchard from one end 

 of the country to the other. 



Mr. Allan. — There was one point in Mr. Starr's observations which I could not 

 help noting. It was a very excellent one. It was the establishment at the seaboard 

 — ^I think it would be better there than inland — of convenient storage houses for the 

 purpose of storing the fruit in as natural a condition as possible. Por this reason, it 

 does not pay to ship all the varieties of fruit at the time of picking, as, for instance, 

 the Eussets. They are not wanted for immediate consumption ; there is no deniand for 

 'them in a British market at that particular time, and if we could i-egulate the traffic 

 so as to ship these varieties in the proper season for consumption to the British 

 markets, when they are wanted, we could, upon the average, receive a much better 

 price. The Russet, as a rule, is not wanted until after the new year and towards 

 the spring, so that our storage houses would come in very useful in that way. That 

 is a matter which requires a good deal of consideration to perfect it. 



Mr. C. E. H. Starr. — Will you allow me to say that a few years ago an English 

 firm built an expensive and fine fruit house at Annapolis for this very purpose. It 

 has, as a warehouse, been a great success. Unfortunately, the success of shipping 

 from that end of the valley has not been as great a success as we would wish, for the 

 reason that it is always better to get the ships to come foi- apples alongside the 

 wharf. I am rather surprised you have no such facilities at Montreal. 



Mr. Shepherd. — In this connection I may say that when you and I, as a deputa- 

 tion, visited the I'epresentatives of the steamship and and railway lines, Mx. Sargeant, 

 of the Grand Trunk Eail way, suggested this. Wementioned the points that Mr. Allan 

 made two years ago in regard to the port of Montreal being inferior to the port of 

 New York; that the extra handling at Montreal — the cartage from the railway to 

 the steamei- — militated against the port; and Mr. Sargeant then said they would send 

 the cars down to the wharves and sometimes the ships were not prepared to take 

 them, and they had to bring the cars back again. He said they had sent the cars 

 down three or four times before the ships were prepared to take the fruit on board. 

 He therefore, suggested this : He said they had acquired large warehouses in Mon- 

 treal alongside of which the track ran, and he suggested storing the barrels in these 

 warehouses until the ships were prepared to receive them, and then they could be 

 lightered down from the canal basin to the harbour. He thought less damage would 

 be done in that way to the fruit and the cartage would be saved. 



Mr. Allan — That would necessitate an extra expense, however. The expense 

 of it might be serious, but it is hard to tell. 



