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and that very soon too. It is no use one man keeping 

 Ms orchard clean by spraying, and his next door neighbour doing 

 nothing at all. I have tried many remedies for it, but I 

 find there is nothing so successful as the Hellebore powder, 1 lb. 

 to which may be added 2 lbs. of soft soap and a handful of flour 

 mixed together into a paste. Let them stand for an hour, and then 

 add 40 gallons of water. The flour will make the mixture stick 

 better on the leaves and slugs. Hellebore is best forcherries, plums, 

 cherry plums, and quinces. I found this year that pears sprayed with 

 1 oz. of Paris green, 1 oz. of sulphate of copper, that is 2 oz. in all, 

 mixed in a paste, then adding 20 gallons of water, did very well. 

 It takes longer to kill the slug, but it is certain death to it ; and 

 it also kills the codlin moth grubs at the same time, helps to 

 do away with the black spot on the fruit, and seems to last 

 longer on the trees. I only sprayed them once with that, and 

 where I used the Hellebore, I had to use it three times, but I found 

 it only safe to use it on the pear trees. It will not do on the 

 cherry or plum, as the leaf is too tender for it. It is to the interest 

 of all our orchardists to keep good fruit, and they cannot do it 

 when the trees are filled with disease. Last year I thoroughly 

 cleaned my orchard and thought there would be no codlin moth 

 in it. It was just as badly affected, because they came from the 

 surrounding orchards. Unless we get united action we cannot 

 cope with these pests. In 1888 there was a Bill brought before 

 the House, the object beina; to destroy the pests. I was against 

 the Bill, because we had not the information in regard to the 

 pests. We did not understand them then. We asked the Govern- 

 ment to appoint an entomologist, and he has been working 

 ever since, and now there are remedies in his books for all those 

 pests. The Government has done that much for us, and now it 

 is our duty to put that advice into practice, but we must have an 

 Act of Parliament. The Government, in bringing in an Act 

 of Parliament, must not be too drastic and severe. In my 

 opinion the Bill should contain provision for the appointment 

 of an electoral State board and local boards throughout the 

 country, and inspectors to go through the orchards. The financial 

 depression to-day is so great that the Government cannot 

 clean our orchards, and we should be mean to ask for that. I 

 think we should say we will pay for the supervision and inspec- 

 tion. The colony should be divided into districts. Then there 

 should be a tax upon every orchardist in Victoria. Every one 

 with over one acre should pay so much and be rated, and it should 

 be collected into a State fund. I think the Act ought to be self- 

 supporting, and estimating the acreage of the fruit trees in the 

 colony, the individual tax would be very small. We have some- 

 where about 31,770 acres of orchard in the colony, of which the 



