252 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Avrrn, 1899. 
To quote the Tri-weekly Gleaner (Kingston): Mr. Gardner was shown 
some Jamaica fruit. “ Look here,” said a man, whose name is known in every 
fruitgrowing country in the world, “here is an orange that is still actually 
green ; here is one twice the size of that; there is one with a bruise,” and so 
on, and the sins of his countrymen stood out before Mr. Gardner with 
appalling distinctness. The bananas looked well enough, but he was told to 
lock at the opposite side of the bunches, when he saw that the fruit had 
been knocking against the side of the crate and had become discoloured. The 
head of one firm remarked with pleasant satire that the Jamaicans must pull 
down a pitch-pine house to make one crate. All whom he saw impressed upon 
him the absolute necessity of every kind of fruit being packed according to the 
latest methods in use. ‘* You West Indians,” they said, ‘‘ seem to be the most 
ignorant class of producers on earth, You are generations behind in every- 
thing relating to the fruit trade.” ‘The judgment was severe, but the men who 
gave it knew what they were talking about. 
The next thing which impressed Mr. Gardner was the singularly vast 
market there is in England for all kinds of tropical produce. | The present 
supplies only reach the well-to-do class, and that chiefly in London. The 
great provincial towns are practically without tropical fruit, and the bananas 
that he saw in the markets and stores there were scarcely worth the name. 
The middle and working classes have never been given the chance of becoming 
consumers of colonial fruit, and they form a potential market of enormous 
proportions. It is astonishing what they do buy in this direction, and how they 
are satisfied with what an American labourer would throw into the gutter. In 
this connection Mr. Gardner relates an amusing experience of his in London, 
He came across a street vendor hawking what he discovered on close inspection 
to be mangoes. They were the most wretched-looking specimens of the fruit 
a West Indian could conceive of. A colloquy with the man induced a crowd 
to gather, and Mr. Gardner’s example in buying some was followed by others, 
who asked the hawker how they were to be eaten. ‘“ Blow’d if I know,” he 
replied, scratching his head, ‘‘ | never saw them till this morning.” 
Mr. Gardner, we believe, has determined to aid the exportation of oranges 
to England by placing it within the power of the Jamaica producer to use the 
special type of wrapping-paper used by the Californian and Mediterranean 
grower ; and he sought out in England a special design of crate that might be 
used with the greatest advantage in the trade. He brought out thirteen of 
these with him, and he is making an experimental shipment of fruit b 
the next mail steamer, besides testing their capabilities in the island. It is 
well that this and other efforts should be made. Before the trade with England 
can be successfully engaged in, there are certain fundamental requirements 
which must be attended to. The fruit must be well picked; it must be well 
packed ; and it must be properly shipped: And the standard for these must be 
the standard of the most advanced fruitgrowing areas of the world. 
THE PROBLEM OF FRUIT PRESERVATION. 
THE Jamaica Tri-weekly Gleaner publishes the following letter from Dr, 
William Johnson Calder, M.B., M.S., on the subject of a discovery, which the 
doctor alleges to be highly important, tending to overcome the difficulties 
attending the morbific changes which take place in fruit in consequence of the heat 
generated in ships’ holds: — . 
Jamaica’s staple resource, rum and sugar, being now doomed, and men 
being made to understand and feel that their prosperity in this country depends 
on several industries and not the products of the cane alone, also from the force 
of necessity being compelled to enter into fruit cultivation, it appeared to me 
