128 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 13, 1891. 
season is so overcrowded with pressing work as to necessitate 
neglect of some other department calling for labour and immediate 
supervision. In cases of this kind it is usual that after this over¬ 
pressure there may come a period of prolonged feeble activity 
until the return of the time when a renewed outburst is needed to 
put matters upon a clear basis again. This may be said in another 
way by exhorting the fruit grower, in the language of the familiar 
proverb, “not to carryall his eggs in one basket.” He should 
be able to spread his resources with tolerable evenness over the 
longer period of the working days of the year, or in the busy time 
the preparation for the market and the attendance there will 
constitute such a crowded day as will render attention to home 
dutirs—to the necessary demands of special growing crops—an 
irksome toil, an attempted futility, and must mean loss of money 
and repose of mind, of pleasure, of peace, and of profit— pleasure, 
which every man’s calling ought to give him, or he is better out of 
it ; of peace, which every man’s life must have in some measure, 
and might have in fulness and of profit, without which we are 
unable to provide for the stern necessities of an existence 
demanding at least food, clothes, and shelter. With everything 
properly balanced, and with due regard to daily duty, there should 
follow that best of all rewards on the earthly plane—health 
and contentment. It is not every industry that can ofEer such 
advantages. 
It will be remembered that the grand Carlylean maxim was, 
“ Produce ! produce ! produce ! ” This is a splendid utterance of 
the wonderful old rugged prophet and sage philosopher, whose 
writings are rightly counted amongst the most precious treasures of 
our literature and philosophy. Carlyle’s maxim is timely. Its 
counsel is greatly needed in our present age. It is a healthy tonic 
f m the present day lassitude—a stimulus for the weary languor 
which seems to be creeping into the labour ethics of the end of the 
century. My brief remarks find focus in the same idea. The 
fruit growing idea is “Produce! produce! produce!” We are 
aiming at production. And this opens out the next phase of the 
subject to which I must briefly allude. Production includes at least 
two phases—quantity and quality. Whilst we aim for both we 
must insist upon quality. Let me write this out in capitals—iusist 
upon quality. There is little room now for, and less profit upon, 
anything in the way of fruit that is not up to the mark as to quality. 
Soon there will be no ready market for anything but that which 
can be branded “ Al,” and I believe the day will never come when 
good fruit, well grown and carefully packed, will not find an eager 
market demand and a ready sale at profitable prices, but we have to 
make steady and gi’eat advancement in this respect. I hope the 
day may c )me when fruits can be offered and bought by sample, 
when the fruit grower need not stand idle in the market place 
behind his hampers waiting the whim of the purchaser, who in his 
turn is likely waiting for the decline of the day and the correspond¬ 
ing decline of prices, a process which often goes on to save the 
necessity of carting home the unsold produce. Why not sell fruit 
by sample as grain and other produce of the earth can be 
sold ? Why can I not buy British fruits of a certain brand and a 
certain quality ? This must come together with improved market 
methods, central agencies, increased railway facilities, and other 
blessings for which we are waiting, and which a future organisa¬ 
tion connected closely with this industry must take in hand with 
determination. 
There are other questions, such as fruit preservation, upon 
which I should have liked to have touched, but in a subject so 
wide we must leave certain tracts of interesting territory marked 
like the maps of the world, “ unexplored.” Fruit as food might 
be favourably and profitably discussed—in a double sense, if you 
like—but this must wait another opportunity. There are other 
points, too, connected with the industry from a Government point 
of view—as, for instance, the fact, that whilst the fishery industry 
receives State aid, no such helpfulness is rendered to this, I venture 
to urge, more important industry of fruit growing. Another in¬ 
teresting and peculiar fact is, that whilst in some countries there is 
Government supervision of orchards, and an insect-infested fruit 
grove has to be reported to Government officials, so that the plague 
may be stamped out before its harmful influence is extended, our 
own Government at home limits such precautionary measures to 
swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease. 
But upon these and other points such associations as the British 
Fruit Growers’ Association, under the auspices of which I am per¬ 
mitted to-day to address you, are always ready to seize, and from 
this Association and other similar societies whose record of past 
work, though necessarily brief, as the history of the movement is 
brief, is yet a noble testimony to good service actively rendered with 
most satisfactory results—from this Association and other organisa¬ 
tions I look, with a full hope, for the better day which I am persuaded 
is about to dawn. There are pessimistic growlers who see puzz'e 3 
and problems everywhere, men who have neither peace nor 
patience, who never get to the tops of the mountains, but mope 
and maunder in the mist at the foot of the hills, and say solemnly 
and drearily that the sun is always obscured by the rain cloud, and 
the breath of the wind is full of a blight curse. The Book 
of Job is believed to be one of the oldest books in earth’s library, 
and you find Job’s comforters were children of yesterday. They 
are with us to-day, and they are likely to be here to-morrow. We 
can pity them, but we can also afford largely to ignore them. To 
the right minded and the right hearted this industry—this move¬ 
ment is a splendid fact in the world’s welfare. We do not consider 
the matter entirely from a pounds, shillings, and pence point of 
view. In speaking of an industry it is necessary to keep this in 
view, but there is another side to the question, a most important 
one. The future happiness of the nation, and of other nations, 
for the subject is too large even for a nation—it is international in 
its best, its highest aspects—the future happiness and welfare can 
be, must be, largely influenced by an extended practice of fruit 
growing, involving of course an implied effect of this system, 
a largely increased use of fruits as the food of the people. 
There are weary eyes aching over the needle night after night, 
to these there is little to look at of this beautiful world—only the 
dull dim street ; there are heavy hearts which hear no semblance 
to music, save the dinner bell at the factory ; there are languishing 
spirits in close crowded courts fainting for the breath of the 
breeze. Toilers these in the towns whose lives are almost without 
hope. Open the gates of Arcadia ! Lead the children out into a 
peopled paradise ! How grandly then would everything go in the 
way which those who had eyes to see know must be right ? 
Coming face to face with the fair freshness of Nature, how we 
can strike off the chains that bind humanity down to the dull 
routine of a mechanical existence of a sunless life, when smoke 
and chimneys take the place of sunlight anditrees, and the hissing 
of steam and the fumes of chemicals torment and stifle those who 
might find freedom and fulness of life in work of the orchard 
and the garden or rest in the shelter of the grove.— Edmund J. 
Baillie. 
SUBURBAN FLOWER GARDENS. 
To those whose business lives are passed within the confines of 
a great city, but who love to taste the sweetness of blossom-scented 
air in their leisure hours, suburban gardens are a source of endless 
interest and pleasure. The Hawthorn in its snowy springtide 
mantle, and the Roses that we often see clothing trellises and 
gables, have a charm for them that few country dwellers can 
appreciate. In many suburban byways near busy main thorough¬ 
fares delightful pictures of flower and tree beauty may be found, 
and if one wanders somewhat farther afield, where the houses are 
more scattered, the gardens larger, and interspersed, perhaps, with 
stretches of meadow land, such scenes are still more numerous. 
Not a tithe, of course, of the inhabitants of great towns trouble to 
search for them ; but those who can shake off languor and lassi¬ 
tude and escape into the sweeter atmosphere and brighter sur¬ 
roundings of the city’s outskirts will find much that is inspiriting 
and health-giving. 
Suburban flower gardens are many sided. So far as London 
alone is concerned they are to be found in all sorts and conditions 
within the sound of Big Ben. My own ramblings have been 
chiefly confined to the Surrey side of the Thames, but “ within 
that limit is relief enough.” It has not the lion’s share of the 
great parks, nor, perhaps, of imposing private gardens, but it has 
a wealth of natural effect and unpretentious garden beauty, which 
it would be almost a platitude to say is immeasurably more 
gardenesque. I have never quarrelled with those who tell me that 
this county or that is the most beautiful in the land (and one 
knows in particular the Devonian’s pride), but if events have 
favoured I have led them down leafy lanes where there is a glory 
of wayside gardens, and asked if they can show me where Nature 
and man have combined to paint a scene more fair, but the answer 
has never come. If it were not for the infinite variety to be met 
with suburban wanderings would begin t> pall, but the picture is 
ever changing. True garden beauty must ever be that in which 
the effects, like Nature’s own, are diversified and fleeting. As 
flower gives place to flower by the woodland and the wayside, so in 
the perfect garden there must be new features as the cycle of the 
seas <ns pursues its unresting course. It is too much to look for 
this in one small enclosure, especially where business cares are so 
pressing as to afford scanty leisure, but as many pass under the 
eye one by one it is found that different ideas and methods have 
unconsciously combined to provide a complete and delightful whole. 
One garden is at its best in the spring time, and before Daffodils, 
Primroses, Scillas, and other blossoms of the opening year have 
faded the hitherto bare ground of its neighbour teems with life. 
