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Small Fruits and Their Commercial Value in Ontario. 



The President. — The next paper will be on " Small Fruits and their Commer- 

 cial Value in Ontario," by Mr. A. M. Smith, of St. Catharines, President of the Onta- 

 rio Fruit Growers' Association. In his absence it will be read by Mr. Woolverton. 



Mr. Smith's paper was as follows : — 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, — I have been asked by your committee to give 

 a paper on the commercial value of small fruits; but from want of any reliable 

 statistics or data, I can give nothing moi'e than a rough estimate or calculation of 

 the money value of this class of fruits grown in the Dominion, and I have concluded 

 to give you instead a few thoughts and suggestions in regard to their economic value 

 and the importance of paying more attention to this branch of horticulture. In 

 regard to the healthfulness and necessity of these fruits I think there can be no ques- 

 tion. The former is endorsed by the best medical authority and the latter by the 

 best housekeepers and cooks in ihe country, and coming in a season when there is 

 scarcely any other fresh fruits makes them doubly valuable ; and it is a wonder to me 

 that the tables of Canadians, particularly' those of our farmers, who have every facility 

 for growing them, are not better supplied. Of course, when the country was new and 

 farmers were busy clearing their land they had an excuse for not devoting their time 

 to their cultivation, particularly as there were in most places sufficient wild berries 

 to supply their wants — besides the newer and better sorts had not then been intro- 

 duced. But now that the country is cleared up and the wild ones have disappeared, 

 and there are plenty of choice kinds that can be cultivated with less trouble than it 

 would take Lo go to the bush to hunt up wild ones, how is it that nine-tenths of the 

 farmers of Canada do not grow enough small fruits for their own consumption, to say 

 nothing of growing them for market? I will venture the assertion that not one 

 farmer in fifty, take this Dominion through, has a bed of strawberries on his farm, except 

 they may be wild ones ; and I will venture another assertion, that there is not one 

 farmer in 500 but what would eat a good sized dish of strawberries and cream twice 

 a day for a month if they were set before them and their wives, and families. Wouldn't 

 their mouths water for a dish once a week if they could get them ? And a very little 

 trouble and expense would supply them with these and other small fruits through- 

 out the season. But you ask these men, why don't you plant ben-ies, currants, &c., 

 and they will tell you they can't afford to buy the plants — or they have not time to 

 tend them ; while at the same time they are spending more for plug tobacco and 

 poor whiskey every year than it would take to buy plants enough to plant an acre, 

 and they spend more time loafing around the bar-rooms and corner groceries than it 

 would take to cultivate them. But I am happy to say there is beginning to be an 

 improvement in this direction. Occasionally a farmer visits some of his friends in 

 town and stays to tea, and gets a taste of strawberries (townspeople, who have no- 

 land-you-know can afford such luxuries), or visits a more progressive neighbour's gar- 

 den and sees them growing, and the next year he plants a few, and thus it is spread- 

 ing a little, and I am in hopes that in a few years farmers will begin to eat fruit, as 

 well as those who have no land to grow it on. 



' One thing that makes the growing of small fruits of importance is that they 

 will succeed in many sections of our country where larger fruits cannot be grown, 

 on account of the severity of the climate; and with the present methods of canning, 

 evaporating and preserving fruit, there is scarcely a settler in any part of this wide 

 Dominion who could not grow enough of some kind of fruit to have a supply the 

 year round. There has been a great increase in the varieties of small fruits in this 

 country within the last few years. It is within the memory of most of us when all 

 the cultivated varieties of strawberries and raspberries could have been counted on 

 our fingers, and the currants on our thumbs. But now they are nunibered by 

 hundreds, and every year brings out a score of new ones, clamoui-ing for public favour. 

 'Tis true but few of them are superior or equal to many of the old varieties, and 

 many soon drop out of the list and are lost sight of; but some come to stay, and are 

 real acquisitions and improvements on the old, and in this way great advancements 



