PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 17 



educate the people, and would be of iucalculable benefit to 

 all the North of Australia and the adjacent islands. 



Food Supplies of the People— First in regard to fruit pests, 

 there should be no further delay in rigorously enforcing 

 approved measures of treating the principal fruit destroyers. 

 It is simply wicked, for instance, to allow, as we have all 

 seen them, neglected apple orchards to harbour and act as 

 breeding grounds for codlin moth. Such an orchard is 

 simply a focus of infection for all the country around, and 

 should be dealt with as strictly as were the vines for 

 phylloxera. In regard to this pest, the present moment is 

 peculiarly opportune, for apparently apple culture is to 

 immediately expand enormously in this State, and if we 

 are to have an export trade the matter must be attended to. 

 What I say of apples may be applied to other fruits. The 

 total result of neglect is that a wholesome food is dear and 

 often bad, and the poor rather than the rich are the sufferers. 

 It is not the good careful orchardist who is opposed to 

 regulation, for already he takes the measures which ought to 

 be made compulsory for all. It is the careless and negligent • 

 he, however, is just the person whom it is necessary to coerce 

 and to his protests no heed should be given, any more than 

 to a man who had small-pox in his house and protested that 

 he could have what he liked on his own premises and that 

 his neighbours had no right to interfere and were very 

 impudent persons for doing so. I am aware that there are 

 other causes for the dearness of fruit in Sydney, but these 

 are hardly so directly amenable to control. 



Second, as regards purity of foods the Board of Health is 

 to be congratulated on the success which has followed its 

 efforts in this direction. In the matter of preservatives 

 we were told that salicylic acid, boric acid, sulphurous 

 acid, etc., etc., were necessary in this and that 

 food, e.g., milk, butter, sauces, cordials, beer, sau- 



B— May 1,1907. 



