86 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In this I was perfectly right. Whether I was right in my 

 choice of a suhject, for the reasons already stated, remains to be 

 seen, but I venture to think, from what I know of the good-nature 

 of those connected with garden pursuits, I can claim your in- 

 dulgence if I fail to gain your approval ; and if any remarks of 

 mine are such as to provoke hostility of thought, you must please 

 put them down to provincial prejudice, or, may I say, to that 

 simplicity which is one of the most prominent attributes of raw 

 rusticity. 



I appreciate the difficulty of saying anything new on the 

 question, but I shield myself behind the fact that the reitera- 

 tion of a truth is not a needless undertaking until precept is 

 put into practice. So long as we pay our millions of money 

 into other hands for produce which could come from ourselves, 

 we are quite safe in assuming that there is yet reason for 

 action. 



Coming up from pastoral pursuits to this great centre of 

 crowding, clamouring life, how can one express the feelings that 

 somehow naturally force themselves to the front ? They may be 

 said to be somewhat thus : Here you have in your great crowded 

 centre somewhere approaching 5,000,000 of souls. This area, 

 with its vast population, has practically grown nothing but 

 bricks and mortar save the trees and flowers in its beautiful 

 pleasure parks and its promenades ; and if this great centre were 

 dependent upon its own resources for market produce for its 

 daily needs, it would very quickly have to answer its children's 

 cry for bread by giving them stones. 



This great multitude must take some feeding. The open 

 country of the shires gives garden ground enough for all. The 

 earnings of the provinces find their way largely into the pockets 

 of the landowners, and they, in the natural order of present-day 

 methods, spend a large portion of their time and the greater 

 part of their wealth in London. There is a kind of feeling that, 

 seeing so much of the wealth of the country comes here, more 

 might be done for us and less for the foreign coquettes who court 

 your favour and gain your sympathy and support for such things 

 as we can grow quite satisfactorily at home. 



I do not at all fear the bogey of foreign competition. This is, 

 I remind myself, a National Conference, but the subject is really 

 universal. The idea involved in fruit production and distribution 

 is too large for a nation. We cannot, for instance, grow the 

 orange. We should not like to dispense with it, therefore we 

 invite the foreigner to send it to us ; but we can produce pippins : 

 then why should you raise your eyes above the beautiful fertile 

 plains, say, of Kent and Sussex, and with the telescope of a false 

 economy find beyond the seas, in the broad acres of America, 

 Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, the admitted beauty of fruit- 

 ful plains, but also an added imaginary beauty, really nothing 



