85V 
June i, 1891.] THE TROPICAL AGRSOULll URIST. 
order that reports and full information might be 
sent in to the parent Assooiation and so the whole 
subject be dealt wi'h in a practical and complete 
fashion. In the interests of labour supply as much 
as of the well-being of the people, the matter is 
not one to be left alone. 
I’KUIT FllOM TASMANIA AND FISH 
THEREIN. 
At the Melbourne Exhibition of 1880-81, we had 
the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. 
Shoobridge, junior, of Bushy Park, Tasmania. 
To him and the late Mr. Moo ly, in truth we were 
indebted for help in arranging the Ceylon Exhibits, 
Mr. .Shoobridge putting off his coat for the pur- 
pose, in true colonial fashion, Mr Shoobridge 
himself was an exhibitor of hops which his father 
and he grow largely on their beautiful and fertile 
estate beyond New Norfolk, at tbe confluence of 
the dark-rolling “ Styx” river with the magnilicent 
Derwent, on the estuary of the latter of which 
the Australian Naples,— Hobart,— is built; rising 
up the sides of the foot hills of Mount Wellington. 
This mountain was white with snow and the pools 
at Bushy Park had ice on them, when we visited 
Tasmania for ihe first time in July 1881, and yet the 
wild rose and the gorse were, at the same time, in 
beautiful bloom, The dark colour of the Styx, which 
does not last all the year round, is supposed to bo 
duo to peat formations near its source. The 
noble Derwent originates in Lake S;. Clair, which 
has an area of 10,000 acres. It is one of a series 
of grand mountain lakes, for which and for a dense 
forest under growth, known as ” horizont-il ” 
(from its habit of spreading) Tasmania is distin- 
guished. Facing the antarctic pole as the island 
does, the cold of winter, (May, June, July,) is 
oocasionally keen at Hobart and the south side 
of the island, generally, deep snow lying on the 
mountains. Launceston, in the north, (on the fine 
tidal river Tamar, fed by the waters of the romantic 
south and north Esk) has a much warmer climate 
and altogether Tasmania ranks next to New Zaa- 
land in its resemblimeo in climate to Britain. 
Hosts of visitors from Melbourne and other parts 
of the Australian continent escape to Tasmania 
from the fierce heats of the summer months, 
January and February. Better even than Britain, 
and better certainly than most parts of Australia, 
are the soil and climate of Tasmania suited for 
fruit culture. Accordingly, when wo visited the 
Shoobridges in their beautiful aud fertile homes 
on the alluvials of the Derwent, in July 
1881, we found that besides hop culture their 
enterprise included apple and pear orohEtrds which 
rank amongst the most extensive and the most 
productive in the world. By one of the great 
•mseaers of the P. & O. and Orient line.s which 
goto Tasmania regularly to load with boxes of 
fruit, the Shoobridges alone have shipped 2,000 
boxes of apples. As each box contains a bushel 
and each bushel is, on an average, made up of L50 
fruits, the aggregate is dOO.OOO apples. This is only 
one of a senes of oqueignmepts to England, and Mr. 
Shoobridge, as wo yesterday indicated, is trying the 
Ceylon market, where apples ought to bo appreciated 
for tarts as well as for dessert. What a treat it 
would be to expatriated Britishers in Lilia, 
Ceylon and the Straits, if rich luscious pears 
eqtial in quality to tbe d. zen which Mr. Shoo- 
bndge kindly presented us with y. uterday, could 
he regularly supplied, ns wo hope they may be, 
although oven winter pears do not carry so well 
as apples. It seems a great point that each parti- 
culRi' fulit, free from the slightest bruise, should 
be carefully wrapped in tissue paper. In 
Tasmania, we learn, an apple tree begins to 
bear in its fifth year, and is in full bearing 
from the seventh to the twentieth year, the crop 
being counted by bushels, — we feel afraid to say 
how many, from each tree. Of course culture and 
manuring are necessary to enable the trees to 
produce good fruit in such plenty, although on many 
laruiS where labour was scarce, we saw trees 
laden with fruit amidst grass and weeds a 
couple of feet in height. It was enough to make 
a man’s mouth water to hear from Mr. bhoo 
bridge of the bushels upon bushels of aprionts 
gathered this seison from single trees. Apricots 
can be seen growing splendidly trained on walls 
at the exquisitely beautiful Botanic Gardens on 
the banka of the Derwent, near Hobart. Amongst 
the sights at Bushy Park are a fine oak, an rqualiy 
splendid cherry tree, and hawthorn growing so 
strong and tall that poh s cut 'rom the hedges are 
exported to parts oi New Zealand where all is grass. 
When Mr. Shoobridge, senior, originally settled at 
Bushy Park, he grew strawberries in such abundance 
that it did not pay to send tne fruit to the Hobart 
market ; and so, for many years, it has 
been an institution at Bushy Park to gather 
the children from all the Sunday schools 
within reach for a treat of strawberries 
and cream. The Shoobridges are members of the 
Wesleyan Church, and the uncle of our friend 
who visited us yesterday is a zealous local preacher. 
Mr. Shoobridge, junior, who came from Taimania 
in the “ Orotava,” (which, by the way, made the 
voyage from King George's Sound in the unpre- 
cedentedly short period of IJJ days,) has gone on 
to Britain as the chosen representative of the united 
fiuit growers of Tasmania, to watch over and 
promote their interests and obtain from the shipping 
companies facilities of stowage and advantages of 
freight, such as will establish the fruit export en- 
terprise on a steady and profitable basis. The 
matter could not be in better hands and 
for the sake of Ceylon as well as the fruit-aaters 
of England and the fruit-growers of Tasmania, wa 
trust Mr. Shoobridge’s efforts may be crowned with 
abundant success. When, more than a century 
back now, Britain commenced to send her convicts 
to Australia aud especially to Tasmania, it would 
have seemed a wild dream to anticipate that from 
the antipodean colonies, as the products of the 
enterprise and labour of communities of intelligent 
freemen, the mother country shuuld now be reoeiving 
supplies of gold and silver and oopper, of gram 
and fruit and specially wool, the finest in the world. 
In the romance of emigration and commerce, there 
are few chapters so striking as that which records 
the settlement aud advance of Australasia. 
Hit rouie back to New Norfolk from Bushy Park, 
we visited, about midway, the ponds and streams 
devoted to salmon and trout breeding. As far as 
trout are concerned the experiment has long been 
a gre.it success, specimena of the enormous siez 
mdioated by 26 lb. weight having been captured 
by anglers in the Derwent. Tne trout in this 
river are of the colour and flavour of salmon, but 
in some streams where, probably, food is neither 
in (juantity nor quality equal to that found in iha 
great river, the trout are white in flesh and deli- 
cient in flavour. That there has been success 
with salmon ova has been hotly debated, but we 
belli ve there is now no doubt on the subject. 
Salmon have been bred, but curiously a tered 
from the normal typo by local conditions. One we 
saw ill 1881 was' shorter and muoh broader (prolmbly 
to tho extent of one-third, measured from beily to 
back,) than those familiar to us in our youth a 
