CCXXXVm PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



a vei-y enthusiastic gardener, and I think 1 introduced some of the 

 first English trees and flowers to British Cohunbia — at any rate, I know 

 that I had the first Eibston Pippin tree in the Province. My garden 

 was very successful, through the assistance of an employ 6, himself 

 a Fellow of this Society, Mr. Leach. So that I know something of the 

 early horticulture of the Province. But my connexion with the 

 Colonial Fruit Shows is this : In 1901 I came to^ this country — of 

 course, I am an old Londoner, but I lived abroad a great many years — • 

 and I very soon decided to join the Eoyal Horticultural Society, if 

 they would have me, as a Fellow. They did; they kindly elected me. 

 Shortly after my election I approached the Society in the hope of 

 getting them to allow British Columbia fruit to be shown here. In 

 1902, or before that, your Secretary, Mr. Wilks, kindly offered to exhibit 

 any fruit I could get hold of. Then I corresponded with the Colonial 

 Government, and in 1903 they advised me that some fruit was on its 

 way to England. When it came to me, instead of being packed like 

 it is now, you can imagine my disappointment when I found that all 

 the apples had been carefully sealed up in glass tubes and preserved in 

 some liquid for exhibition here. However, that fruit was exhibited 

 at one of the Society Shows ; and, owing to its being, I think, the first 

 Colonial fruit sent home for exhibition, it attracted a great deal of 

 attention, although in glass tubes, and as an acknowledgment of my 

 efforts the Society kindly awarded me personally a medal, which I 

 preserve with great care, and which I look on as a reward for intro- 

 ducing the first Colonial fruit into England. 



I think the Colonies are immensely indebted tO' this Society ; but 

 they do not yet sufficiently appreciate the work which has been done 

 by the Society in connexion with these fruit shows, and they do not 

 realize that the Society has not only done so much for these shows 

 disinterestedly, but at very considerable expense to itself; and that is 

 the reason why the Colonies do not respond as they ought to do. For 

 instance, only two Provinces of Canada have exhibited to-day — New 

 Brunswick and British Columbia ! I am delighted to see that New 

 Brunswick is coming to the front, because that country is eminently 

 adapted for fruit-growing; it does not, perhaps, quite equal Nova Scotia 

 in that respect, but no doubt they will come to the front and be one 

 of the future supphers of fruit to this country. British Columbia is in 

 quite a different position; their exhibits were not sent with a view 

 particularly to selling the fruit. At the time I wrote to the Government, 

 the idea we had in mind was that Great Britain wanted education as 

 to what the climate and the conditions existing in British Columbia 

 were. I found there was immense ignorance here in that respect, 

 which was not to be wondered at, because British Columbia was shut 

 off from the world before the Canadian Pacific Railway was built, and 

 it takes time to open up a country so distant as that. My earliest 

 correspondence was very limited, but now it amounts to hundreds of 

 letters a day making inquiries, which indicate the great ignorance 

 in this country of what are the conditions prevailing on the North-West 



