STERILISERS AND STERILISATION | 5 
every district, there should be a centre for both fruit- 
drying and fruit bottling, conducted on the lines of a 
Co-operative creamery. This would enable the villagers 
to dispose of their surplus fruit at a price which would 
pay for picking, although not perhaps for carriage; and 
the Co-operative factory would have a great bulk of 
preserved fruit to put on the market in the winter. 
This is a subject which will repay very careful 
thought and organisation, because each year the acreage 
laid down in fruit increases, and rightly so; but in view 
of this the Board of Agriculture or the County Councils 
should have ready a well-thought-out scheme by which 
all fruit could be utilised, instead of wasted, as it often 
is, to the great discouragement of the grower. ‘The 
whole trend of the Royal Commissions on Small Holdings 
and the Housing of the Working Classes is to keep the 
people om the land, much more than to get them back 
to it; and therefore common sense demands that life to 
the rural population must be made more attractive, and 
more profitable, than it is at present. One way by which 
the latter can be brought about is by fostering all kinds 
of gardening and small industries generally. Of these 
small industries we would place fruit preserving in a 
very foremost place. 
This, then, is the producer’s side of the question, as to 
why we should bottle fruit; but the consumer also can 
bring arguments to bear in its favour, the most practical 
one being, that he eats fruit in all forms, whether in the 
raw state or dried, bottled, canned, or preserved in sugar. 
Every day, every week, every year the demand increases, 
and the supply must therefore increase, from home or 
abroad. ‘This is an authenticated statement which 
cannot possibly be refuted. 
Take the single instance of bananas. Six or ten years 
ago they were hardly known, and their consumption 
was limited to a very few, these being mostly of the 
