520 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



remedy. The insecticides proposed up to the present for eradicating the 

 evil have proved to be altogether ineffectual. 



20. But this is by no means all. What knowledge is possessed by 

 those who may be termed "fruit experts " is most insufficiently diffused 

 among growers. It is a common practice to allow grass to grow in 

 orchards, even with young trees, and to plant trees in grass, without 

 removing the grass from around them ; yet there can be no doubt, as 

 proved at the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm, that no form of ordinary 

 ill-treatment produces such bad effects on a young tree as does the growth 

 of grass over its roots. If fruit trees are planted in grass, the latter 

 should always be removed to a distance of two or three feet from the 

 stems, though later on, when the trees are well established, grassing-over 

 may, perhaps, take place with impunity. Then, far too many varieties, 

 especially of Apples, are planted for market purposes. Mr. Monro's 

 evidence on this point was most emphatic. " If a customer came to us 

 now," he said, "or to any firm in the market that import American or 

 Canadian Apples, they could buy for the next season 100,000 barrels of 

 one variety if they liked, and of one grade. We cannot sell ten bushels 

 hardly of one variety of English fruit. You do not know what you are 

 going to have with English fruit. It is almost impossible to get fresh 

 customers on to English Apples. . . . We cannot get our grocers to keep 

 English Apples, because we cannot depend on keeping up a supply. 

 Occasionally they want Cox's Orange Pippins. We supply them for a week 

 or two, and then cannot go on, and they say ' Send us American or Canadian,' 

 and they get a sort that suits them, and can get that sort for nine months 

 out of the year with cold storage, and they keep on with them. That is 

 what they want." The fact is that many English growers do not know 

 what market varieties they can grow on their soil to a profit, and they 

 experiment with innumerable varieties. Again, great ignorance appears 

 to exist as to the proper treatment of trees. Far too few precautions are 

 taken in many districts against the. ravages of diseases and insect pests, 

 and pruning is frequently either very badly done or not done at all. It 

 is the same with grading. Nothing pays better. One witness estimated 

 that the difference made would amount to 2s. a bushel on the price realised 

 for the whole crop, perhaps representing 130 an acre. Yet by a large 

 number of growers grading is entirely neglected, through ignorance, 

 apparently, of its importance or of how to grade. And if grading is fre- 

 quently neglected, the packing of British fruit is by universal testimony 

 exceedingly bad as a rule. It compares most unfavourably with that of 

 foreign or colonial fruit. 



21. In view of this generally admitted want of knowledge, so detrimen- 

 tal to the British grower, it may be well to state what steps have hitherto 

 been taken to provide horticultural instruction in this country. The 

 Committee were fortunate in receiving a full account of this from Mr. 

 Brooke-Hunt, one of the Superintending Inspectors of the Board of 

 Agriculture ; from Mr. Luckhurst, Mr. Goaring, and Mr. Ettle, the 

 Horticultural Instructors of Derbyshire, East Sussex, and Somersetshire 

 respectively ; from Mr. Keeble, the Director of the Department of Horti- 

 culture at University College, Reading ; from Mr. Buckmaster and Mr. 

 Leaf, of the Board of Education ; and from Mr. Struthers, of the Scotch 



