RATIONAL FRUIT CULTURE. 19 



more inexpensively gathered and marketed than small ones, 

 and are, as a rule, more readily saleable; but the disadvantages 

 are considerable. Unless the varieties are rightly chosen they 

 may not fertilise one, another; flowering simultaneously, they 

 may all have their crops destroyed by a single night's frost, or 

 by two or three days' unfavourable weather; and the owner 

 of fruit which must all be sold at once, has less opportunity 

 of taking advantage of a rise in price than another who has 

 fruit coming into season at different times. In this connec- 

 tion, it may be mentioned that it is very early or very late 

 fruit which is the most profitable. 



TREES SHOULD NOT BE FAR APART. 



Important though it is to select the right varieties and 

 to have a sufficient number of them, another condition is 

 necessary to ensure success. They must not be planted far 

 apart. The wind may scatter the pollen widely, it is true, 

 but this is mere chance. In any case, unless the wind changes 

 its direction, the pollen from any one tree will be dispersed 

 only on one side of it, and those on the other sides will get 

 none from it. 



CLOSE PLANTING AIDS BEES. 



Bees, again, do not travel far from their hives unless 

 the weather happens to be warm and sunny, and the farther 

 the trees are apart the fewer cross-journeys the bees are likely 

 to make. In the ' ' Journal of the Victorian Agricultural De- 

 partment," it is stated that the yield of a large field of Cran- 

 berries was found to be greatest near the hives, lessening as 

 the distance increased. This was only what might have been 

 expected. The smaller the aniount of unproductive work the 

 bees have i,o perform — in travelling to and fro — the more time 

 they will have for doing what is useful. 



