REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE FRUIT INDUSTRY. 519 



III. Taxation grievances — alleged excessive and unfair valuation of 

 fruit holdings for the purposes of local rates and Imperial taxation. 



IV. Railway grievances — complaints of excessive rates, preferential 

 rates, unpunctual deliveries, bad handling, pilfering, inadequate service 

 and refusal to pay claims. 



V. Foreign competition, and tariffs hostile to British fruit. 



VI. The insufficient inspection of fruit — especially of foreign fruit. 



VII. The difficulty of obtaining labour in country districts. 



VIII. The insufficiency of markets, and other market grievances. 



IX. The ravages of birds. 



X. The effect of the rise in the price of sugar on the jam industry. 

 Other matters affecting the fruit industry will be mentioned under a 



general heading. 



Insufficiency of Knowledge. 



18. The fruit industry as at present conducted is a comparatively 

 modern one, and it may be said to be largely in the experimental stage in 

 this country. It is not surprising, therefore, if the average grower is 

 ignorant of many things essential to his success ; but the ignorance 

 alleged appears to go very far beyond this, and, on certain material 

 questions, nobody in this country appears to be able to speak with 

 certainty. To give two remarkable instances : — first, with regard to 

 manures, doubts appear to exist as to the effect of manures on fruit trees, 

 especially on Apple trees. The beneficial effect of all kinds of manure on 

 Apple trees has generally been assumed, but from the account given by 

 Mr. Pickering of the remarkable series of experiments carried on during 

 nine years at the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm it appears that there 

 the effect of manure upon Apple trees has been practically nil. Mr. 

 Pickering stated that there were at Woburn twenty main plots, each con- 

 taining eighteen bush Apple trees. In some of these plots they applied no 

 dung at all, in others they applied dung to the extent of twelve tons to 

 the acre, in others to the extent of thirty tons to the acre, and in others 

 they applied artificial manures ; the result had been that after nine years 

 there was not one per cent, of difference between the trees which had been 

 treated and those which had not been treated. Similar results had been 

 obtained with standard Apple trees. The conclusion drawn from these 

 experiments is, not that manure has no effect on Apple trees, but that it 

 has none in particular soils, and that the whole question requires far 

 more full and exhaustive investigation than has hitherto been given to it. 



19. The other example of the inadequacy of our present knowledge is 

 concerned with an insect pest known as the black currant mite. The 

 ravages of this mite in recent years have been most serious ; indeed, 

 unless some remedy is found, there is a danger that black currant grow- 

 ing may be extinguished in this country altogether. Yet, up to the 

 present, no effectual remedy has been discovered, and it is clear that, 

 although a good deal of work has already been done on the subject, 

 opinions differ considerably as to some of the fundamental facts concern- 

 ing the mite, e.g. whether it hibernates in the buds of the black currant 

 only, or elsewhere ; whether it is identical with the mite which attacks 

 nut bushes, or not ; whether the removal of infested buds is an effective 



