174 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



in having protection granted, and he had come to the conclusion 

 that if they were to beat the foreigner at all it would be by pro- 

 ducing a better class of fruit than the foreigner was able to place 

 upon the market. Last year at the Drill Hall he saw an exhibit 

 from Nova Scotia. What he then saw was worthless compared 

 with his own produce. Mr. Wise considered that five tons per 

 acre of Gooseberries made a pretty good return, but during the 

 past season he had himself over eight tons per acre of splendid 

 fruit. Pears had done remarkably well, and those referred 

 to by writers to the newspapers must have been grown on 

 trees that had not been properly pruned and manured. From 

 what he had seen that day he was determined to persevere. 



Mr. Cheal, of Lowfield, Crawley, Sussex, alluding to the 

 Times correspondence already referred to, said they heard a very 

 different tale from men of practical experience. It was only the 

 disappointed who could find time to write to the papers. The 

 successful were far too busy at this time of year to be able to 

 spare any time for newspaper correspondence. He thought the 

 solid facts given in Mr. Wise's paper would do a great deal of 

 good in contradicting many erroneous statements which had so 

 lately appeared in the daily newspapers. By exercising fore- 

 thought and care in planting he had no doubt but that fruit 

 cultivation was remunerative, but he warned novices against 

 rushing into fruit-farming without looking to the end ; because 

 if they did not know what they were aiming at, they would not 

 know where to begin. Markets had to be considered, soil had to 

 be taken into consideration, and if this were done they would 

 hear far less about failures and unprofitable plantations, and the 

 doleful stories related in the Press. He considered that in the 

 preserving of fruit we had one of the most important operations 

 for the future, because up to the present in a season of glut fruit 

 was either wasted or sold at an unremunerative price. He 

 always endeavoured to have bottled fruit on his shelf. If the 

 fruit were properly bottled it could not be distinguished from 

 fresh fruifc. 



Mr. D. T. Fish, of Bury St. Edmunds, said that in the 

 matter of cultivation he was sure that dealing with the tap- 

 roots was the very centre and keynote of modern fruit-culture. 

 The tap-roots had been the ruin of fruit-culture in thousands of 

 gardens and orchards ; indeed, he was not quite sure whether 



