178 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ave., 1899. 
discovery, but I do not think it is known to horticulturists, nor have I ever seen 
any reference to it in any literature. The stock might perhaps affect the tree, 
but I do not think it would influence the quality of the fruit, except perhaps in 
the case of an/extra vigorous tree, when a coarser fruit would result. 
The Hon. J. V. Cuaraway: I think we must thank Mr. Williams for his: 
paper. Grafted trees appear to have few friends among the speakers here to- 
night, but I imagine that for all that, many professional orchardists, or most of 
them, will prefer them, for many reasons, to seedling trees. With seedlings: 
there is not the certainty of date when they will bear, nor is there a certainty as. 
~ to the fruit they will produce. It is true that many of our farmers, not 
authorities in the purchasing of worked trees from the southern colonies, have: 
been most unfortunate with grafted stock. There have been people, seeking” 
whom they may devour, going about among farmers, advertising themselves as. 
the agents of nurserymen. In reality, however, neither they nor their principal, 
if they had any, were nurserymen, but were simply swindlers who bought u 
stocks grafted on anything, or half grafted, and sold them to farmers, with 
specious promises, throughout the length and breadth of this land. What Mr. 
Peek has called the petty failures that have occurred in fruitgrowing through 
this cause, I call myself a great disaster to those who would have taken up fruit- 
growing in a small way in this colony. - We hope to be able to see our local 
nurserymen of Queensland able and willing to push these harpies out of the 
land, and that the Government is giving them all the assistance they can in the 
matter they know perfectly well. The Government cannot sell their stock for 
them, but if once they make thoroughly known what has been going on, and 
what nearly every farmer in the colony now has experienced, I am sure that the 
locally-grafted trees true to name and on proper stocks will find the sale they 
deserve. With regard to fumigation: One gentleman suggested the Govern- 
ment should provide a plant and the orchardists should pay for the fumigation 
at so much a tree, or else that the Government should endow any group of farmers: 
or fruitgrowers who were anxious to purchase a cyaniding plant— endow them as. 
has been done in the case of other pests, such as the flying fox and cane 
grub. In Cape Colony, the last of these two methods is the one pursued, 
and the Government have an open offer to orchardists to endow them 
£1 for £1 towards the purchase of a plant for the eradication of 
scale insects and similar pests. Here we propose to take another course— 
namely, thes first one I haye mentioned. After a long series of experiments. 
which have been carried out, and which I may say have all been debited to the 
Redland Bay Experiment Orchard, which came in for a good deal of criticism 
when the last Estimates were on, we have now got to know the proper tents, the 
correct proportions, and the best methods by which to work this fumigating’ 
process as economically as possible. By those experiments we have got to know 
the strength of the cyanide, whether the trees should be dry or damp, and the 
various other circumstances under which it is best to apply the fumigation. 
Cyanide is an extremely dangerous article to handle, except to an expert man or 
to one used to dealing with poisons, and we propose to keep one or two cyanide 
plants going, under expert direction, for fumigating trees for orchardists who: 
believe in the process. The lowest cost per tree will be 4d., and for a big tree 
up to something like 1s. 9d. or 2s. That is notall. We shall supply the labour 
of 83 men. We shall supply 3 experts, but shall expect the orchardists to 
furnish the labour of 2 more men, and to help us so that we will not be put to 
the expense of carting the plant from one orchard to another. We have 
already started among a group of farmers in the vicinity of Redland Bay, where 
they have had more opportunity perhaps of seeing the effect of the cyaniding: 
rocess, and have consequently a greater belief in it than exists in some other 
Vistricts. At the Wellington Point Show, last week, we exhibited samples of 
oranges and lemons from trees in an orchard which had been much infested with 
red scale. These trees had been cyanided on the 24th February, the fruit then 
being just formed. The oranges from the cyanided trees were almost perfect, 
and fit to go into any competition; whereas the fruit from non-cyanided trees,. 
