1 Ferz., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 123 
It is therefore to the interest of every fruitgrower in the colonies to obtain 
and plant out only the very best trees; and to obtain the very best trees, it is 
essential that only the best varieties be propagated, and that the care that L 
recommend as necessary should be taken in the selection of the stocks and 
scions that are to produce these trees. 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF EXISTING 
VARIETIES OF FRUIT. 
With the exception of selecting chance seedlings that have shown some 
special qualifications, such as earliness, productiveness, lateness, or freedom 
from disease, and propagating the same by budding or grafting, no systematic 
attempt has been made to produce fruits that: are especially adapted to 
Australian conditions, or even to systematically improve the existing varieties 
of fruits. In my opinion, this is a matter of such importance that it should be 
made an especial study by the various Departments of Agriculture throughout 
Australasia. I am confident that we can produce fruits that will be more 
suitable to our conditions, and that will be better adapted for the markets for 
which they are grown—be they local, intercolonial, or foreiga—than those that 
are being commonly grown ai present. California owes her position, as the 
premier fruit-producing country on earth, to the fact that her growers have 
developed types of fruit that are especially adapted to her conditions and to 
the markets which she supplies; and that she has grown these fruits only in 
such districts as are most suitable to the development of each individual 
variety. Here, on the other hand, our growers have done little if anything 
towards the development of special types; and as to their confining their 
attention to the variety or varieties of fruits that are best adapted to their 
individual soil or climate, it is often one of the last things.they have thought of, 
their orchards being more often conspicuous for the number rather than for 
the excellence of the varieties grown. 
There is no need to go outside of Australia, however, to see the effect of 
careful selection in the propagation of plants, as Dr. Cobb’s exhaustive 
experiments in the breeding of new and the improvement of existing varieties 
of wheats show us what results can be obtained; and I see no reason, if equal 
care is taken in the propagation of fruit trees to that exercised by Dr. Cobb in 
the production of his stud wheats, why our fruits should not be improved in a 
similar or even in greater proportion. E 
In addition to selection, there is the important question of developing new 
varieties by hybridisation, and this particular work opens up such a wide field 
for experiment that good results can only be achieved as the outcome of 
many years of extremely careful work, so that it isa matter entirely outside 
the scope of the ordinary propagator or fruitgrower, but is the province of a 
specialist such as Luther Burbank, of Santa Rosa, California. This is a matter 
that belongs by right to our Agricultural Departments, as it is more a public 
than a private question, for, no matter how skilled the operator may be, the 
production of a new variety possessing distinctly valuable qualities, not 
possessed by any existing variety, is not accomplished more than once in many 
thousands of experiments. Still when such a hybrid has been produced it is a 
great acquisition to the fruit industry, and of more or less commercial value 
to it. - ? 
There is, as I have before stated, a wide field for conducting experiments 
in the hybridisation of fruits, as we have many varieties which, though of 
especial merit in some particular, are yet of no commercial value owing 
to some other cause. Thus a tree may produce a fruit of exceptional 
quality which it is extremely desirable to have in quantity, but it 
may be either a very poor bearer, a stunted weakly grower, or very liable to 
disease; so that if a hybrid can be produced possessing the exceptional 
qualities of the original variety without its drawbacks, it is a decided gain. 
