THE FRUIT GROWING INDUSTRY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10264, 6 February 1899, Page 3

THE FRUIT GROWING INDUSTRY.

TO TTIE EDITOR OF THE PBESS. Sir.—Surely the paragraph in yesterday's "Press" cannot correctly represent-Mr Blackmore's statements. Mr Blackmore lias so much to say on any fruit topic that one cannot expect all his utterances to be characterised by the accuracy, sobriety, and good sense natural to a Government pomologist. but he could never have gone so far as to say that an order had been received in Christchurch for 200 tons of Canterbury grown plums for shipment to Melbourne. The wild absurdity of such an idea is obvious to every practical fruitgrower. The publication of such statements would be amusing if it were not so mischievous.

The rosy pictures of the happy lot of the fruitgrower has been so often thrust upon the public by Goveinment officers that numerous credulous persons have been induced to embark in a pursuit which they

do not understand with disastrous results. Is it not a fact that apples, plums and apricots are unsaleable tliroughout the colony at remunerative prices , ' Beautiful fruit wellpacked in new cases and carted long distances to market will not realise a penny a pound for the grower. Is it not also true that not 10 per cent, of the fruit trees planted in the colony ever come into bearing at all. Sick of the years of weary waiting and of the incessant expense and labour necessary to preserve fruit trees from the countless pests that assail them, the majority of would-be orchardists chuck up the sponge in disgust and abandon their plantation* to the ravages of sheep, cattle and codlin moth within a few years of planting. I notice that the Styx Apple Company is introduced in favourable terms by Mr Blackmore. Have the shareholders in that company ever received a penny of a dividend, although it may be true that the company has shown great energy and spent very sums in cultivation and in trying to develop foreign markets for their produce? I may mention that the special new building erected by the company referred to in such grandiloquent terms by the pomologist is, in plain English, a small iron shed, in which are ground into cider apples for which the company can find no market in the colony. If the Government and its band of salaried pomologists would confine their efforts to developing our markets, home and foreign, to checking the spread of pests, and to saving us from foreign competition, we should thank them, and they might do the State some service, but nothing but mischief can result from the publication of such absolutely misleading statements as that in yesterdays "Press." —Yours, &c. PRACTICAL FRUITGROWER.