524 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



county in fruit-growing is, as we have seen, Cambridgeshire ; but the 

 Cambridgeshire County Council has never had a fruit station at all. 

 Several witnesses expressed satisfaction with the work which was being 

 done by the County Councils, whereas others spoke unfavourably on the 

 subject. Such a difference of opinon is but natural, as the quality and 

 extent of the work done must differ widely in different cases. The 

 Committee do not doubt that there may often be much room for improve- 

 ment, but they believe that, on the whole, good work is being done by 

 these lecturers, and that an extension of such teaching, especially in 

 connection with well-organised demonstration grounds, is highly desirable. 

 But the lecturer should be a man of sufficient practical and scientific 

 knowledge to be of assistance to professional growers, and not merely to 

 act as instructor to cottagers and tenant farmers. His work, however, 

 should be strictly educational. The fact that the County Council demon- 

 stration grounds are sometimes spoken of as experimental gardens is 

 calculated to produce an impression that experimental work is actually 

 conducted in them. This apparently is not the case. Several witnesses 

 have insisted on the practical impossibility of the conduct of investigations 

 in such demonstration grounds : the extent of land, as well as the funds 

 available, are inadequate ; and the ordinary lecturer possesses neither the 

 time nor the qualifications for such work. " Experimentation," as one 

 witness expressed it, " is just as much a matter of special training as any 

 other business in life," and County Council lecturers who make trials of 

 manures, or of varieties, under imperfect conditions, and draw conclusions 

 from their results, may be doing much more harm than good. The 

 teaching of known facts, and not the attempting to discover unknown 

 ones, is the proper function of the County Council lecturer. 



25. It is to the Government — to the Board of Agriculture — the Com- 

 mittee turn. The Board, indeed, undertakes certain work now, in direct 

 communication with growers, by the issue of leaflets, especially with 

 regard to the best means of combating insect pests and diseases. But the 

 Committee have had evidence that these leaflets are insufficiently dis- 

 tributed, and are unknown to many growers ; and, in some cases, the 

 leaflets cannot speak with certainty owing to the deficient state of 

 existing knowledge. All this points to the necessity for closer study and 

 deeper research and experiment. The Committee, therefore, agreeing 

 with the great majority of the witnesses, recommend that a sub-Department 

 of the Board of Agriculture be established, to deal with horticulture and 

 pomology. Similar Departments of Government exist at the present 

 moment in Canada and in several other British Colonies and foreign 

 countries. Such a sub- Department should contain experts, with a practical 

 acquaintance of fruit-growing, and with a scientific knowledge of the 

 origin and course of diseases and insect injuries. The functions of the 

 Department would be two-fold. It would, first of all, be a bureau of 

 information and an intelligence department, collecting and tabulating 

 facts and statistics relating to fruit cultivation in various parts of this 

 country and abroad, keeping closely in touch with the County Council 

 and other fruit stations, sending experts to visit plantations in the country, 

 and ready at all times to render assistance and to tender advice to growers. 

 Secondly, an experimental fruit station should be established, somewhat 



