453 
Another Danger. 
There is another danger of the boom in prices, and 
that is perhaps aggravated by the climate in which we have 
to live. It is this — that men who find money coming in so 
easily may he in danger of getting a little slack, and less 
careful in their husbandry. If there is one industry more 
than another which calls for continuous hard work, obser- 
vation and application, and the best intelligence that men 
can bring to bear upon it, it is the planting industry . A 
man finds that the returns from his trees are so good that 
if a tree drops out from some cause here or there he says 
to himself that he will not bother about it— he is getting 
eight shillings a pound, he has thousands more trees and 
what does it matter ? The difficulty is that the one tree may 
matter a great deal. The destruction of that one may re- 
veal, after careful observation, the causes at work that 
would bring about the death of many more trees. The 
Government has provided experts, but after all these gentle- 
men are limited in tfieir observations, because they are not 
able to observe details of soils, situations, rainfalls, and 
many other conditions which affect agricultural products. 
Grave Peril. 
If all this work is to be left to the Government’s scien- 
tific observers, 1 am afraid that the future of the industry 
is really in grave peril, because the essence of the industry 
is that it starts with a most violent interference with the 
ordinary course of nature. It is the essence of the industry 
that those engaged in it should be constantly watchful of 
the health of the plants from which they expect to get their 
returns. The opportunities which the Government obser- 
vers have are limited in every direction, and unless those 
who are in contact with the production throughout the 
whole country are on the watch, and ready to call attention 
to anything unusual, 1 am afraid that the little the Govern- 
ment* observers can do will not be of very much avail. I 
think that not only should we expect, but we have right to 
expect , that planters should themselves constantly observe 
what is going on in their plantations. I think it is in the 
interest of those on the other side, who are deriving hand- 
some incomes from the produce, that they should devote 
some part of these large dividends to safeguarding the 
future of the industry. 
