576 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



No wonder, then, that we find the State so intimately associating 

 itself with the colonial fruit industry. 



Now let us betake ourselves for a few moments to a colonial fruit 

 settlement. What do we find? A community of inteUigent workers, 

 following their calling with uniformity of methods practically sound and 

 endorsed by science. When practice and science are agreed that some 

 method in vogue may be safely superseded by some new method or 

 course, the old is promptly and universally discarded and the new 

 method adopted. These fruit-farmers are no slaves to custom and 

 habit, but ever ready to change if change means progress. 



In such a settlement one will find that, just as cultural methods 

 and management are of a uniform type, so, too, are the kinds, and 

 even varieties, of fruits under cultivation practically identical on all 

 the farms. The district having been found to be especially favourable to 

 raising certain kinds and varieties of fruit to a high degree, of perfection, 

 practically all the farmers devote their land to those fruits, the prin- 

 ciple of producing in quantity a few varieties of fine quality rather 

 than small quantities of several varieties unequal in quality meeting 

 with general acceptance as a sound business principle. 



Thus, however small the individual holding may be, the produce of 

 it is of the same nature as that of the settlement in general, and when 

 the time arrives for the handling of the crop it may be graded, packed, 

 and marketed with a large bulk of similar produce, the small grower 

 sharing with the large grower all the benefits and economies resulting 

 from co-operation in all the processes of crop -handling, and finding a 

 market for his fruit that but for co-operation he could never gain. 



This system of " fruit-growing in communities " spells advantage 

 to the individual grower in many respects — advantage that must be 

 wanting to the isolated farmer. No settlement is without its ** asso- 

 ciation," union," or " society " of planters, and through this body 

 the individual grower has the means of obtaining all the technical 

 assistance he may need in his orchard work, as well as advice, informa- 

 tion, and co-operation in the business of the disposal of produce. 



All the while the paternal administration of the State, through its 

 Department of Agriculture or Bureau of Horticulture, takes care that 

 no ' ' expert ' ' guidance is lacking to a comnmnity of growers — guidance 

 of a kind that the single individual could obtain only with great difficulty, 

 if at all. The State maintains a trained band of practical and scientific 

 experts always at the disposal of the industry. The excuse of " not 

 knowing how " is barely possible. Did the growers not avail them- 

 selves voluntarily of the assistance which the State provides it would 

 be gently but firmly forced upon them. The State well knows that its 

 own aims would be thwarted were the industry to languish from lack 

 of expert guidance and official supervision, and makes provision for 

 both. As a body the fruit-growers readily avail themselves of this 

 provision ; occasionally the individual may be lax in this respect. 

 Mindful that the thriftless, careless individual in a community of 

 growers is a danger to that community, the State puts legislation in 



