at Philadelphia. It seemed extraordinary that we had neglected 

 to send fruit home as ordinary cargo, and had paid so highly for 

 refrigerating chambers. Fruit might do better as deck cargo, as 

 there would be ventilation, but if cases were made purposely for 

 ventilation, and if a fan were used to ventilate the hold, they might 

 carry at a little advance in the charge for the ordinary hold of the 

 ship. Mr. Kitchen had sent home a consignment of 40 cases as 

 deck cargo. As to the exportation of grapes, Mr. Shoobridge, of 

 Tasmania, one of the largest growers there, had been home lately, 

 and he had expressed the opinion that grapes would be one of our 

 best fruits for exportation, and while some had been a failure, he 

 made use of these significant words, "I would hesitate before I 

 would accept the failure that has taken place as evidence that we 

 cannot send grapes successfully to the English market." The 

 department would take steps to see whether fruit could be carried 

 home as ordinary cargo. He thought that was positively neces- 

 sary to the successful export of fruit. Either the companies 

 would have to be induced or compelled to reduce their present 

 freights for refrigerating by fully one-third, or they must make a 

 success of carrying as deck or hold cargo. He trusted that such 

 experiments would turn out reasonably successful. 



Mr. Williams, of Numurkah, moved — " That all nurserymen 

 in Victoria should be licensed and under the supervision of the &o- 

 vernment, the regulations guiding same to be drawn up by a joint 

 committee selected from the Boards of Horticulture and Viticul- 

 ture." He said he was not aware that the matter dealt with in 

 his resolution would have been dealt with at the Conference on the 

 previous day, but still he thought it should be placed on record 

 that the distribution of the various insect pests wholesale over the 

 colony should be put a stop to, and also the sending out of trees and 

 plants grafted on to worthless stocks. It was a very serious item, 

 that after the Government had given such an impetus in the way 

 of bonuses to the planting of thousands of acres of fruit trees, 

 after two or three years a grower might find that he had planted 

 worthless varieties for the simple reason that they had been 

 grafted on to suckers or stock unsuitable to the district. For that 

 reason he thought that a general supervision should be placed 

 over nurserymen. Some of the leading ones had yesterday signi- 

 fied their approval of that view. He thought that all present 

 would recognise that sufficient supervision had not been placed 



over nurserymen. , , ., , , n ,, • 



Mr. BOTCE said, as a nurseryman, that while he had no objec- 

 tion to the propositions embodied in the Bill, he did not think the 

 Government should interfere as to the stocks that the nurseryman 

 worked their grafts on. One stock might be suitable for one soil 

 and not for another. They heard complaints as to trees sent 



3086. D 



