SPREADING RAPIDLY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 368, 9 March 1932, Page 7

SPREADING RAPIDLY.

Menace of Fireblight in Canterbury.

INSPECTORS AT WORK

Inspections of back-yard and commercial orchards carried out in Christchurch by the Department of x\griculture have revealed that fireblight—the dreaded orchard disease—has been spreading rapidly in the present fruit season.

The department is continuing its intensive campaign for stamping out the disease, and at present has a staff of seventeen men assigned to this work, in addition to honorary inspectors appointed from among the orchardists themselves. The seventeen men regularly employed have been engaged under the No. 5 unemployment relief

scheme. Fourteen make the inspections, and the other three attend to the clerical work in the office.

Mr B. G. Goodwin, orchard instructor for Canterbury, said to-day that it was expected that the first inspection of the whole of the fruit trees in the city- area would be completed next week. The inspectors would then begin a re-inspection of the places where diseased trees had been found, with a view to ascertaining if the department’s orders had been carried out.

A cheque for £2O has been received by the Town Clerk from Christchurch Cinemas Ltd., as a donation to the Mayor’s Distress Fund. This sum represents a proportion of the Christmas Day takings at the theatres controlled by the company.