consider cheese-making either an inferior or unprofitable branch of the dairy business; on the contrary, we place it before butter-making, not only because a good maker is able to realise a higher price for his milk, but because foreign competition to-day is, and is likely to be, in the future, less keen where the finest quality is in question. There are several permanent schools where cheesemaking is taught. The most important of these is the British Dairy Institute near Aylesbury, where, in addition to the best English systems, the methods of making the leading varieties of foreign cheese are demonstrated. There are several kinds of foreign cheese which have come to England to stay, and there is no reason why they should not be produced in England-as we have practically shown they can be thus adding largely to the possibilities of an extended cheese-making industry. The inferior price of British cheese is largely, almost entirely, in fact, owing to lack of knowledge on the part of some of the makers. All this, it is hoped, will be rectified when the County Councils, having concluded their buttermaking campaign, have seriously taken cheese-making in hand. Extensive as dairy farming is in Great Britain at this moment, it is in one sense in its infancy, for in spite of the enormous influx of foreign butter, butter is being made at home in immensely larger quantities every year, and the prices are not only maintained, but in many instances, owing to superior quality following upon successful teaching, increased. Our people are yearly increasing the quantity of butter they consume per head, and there is little reason to think that this yearly increase will soon be checked. Just Just as the inferior type-butters with their strong flavours and their high percentage of salt and water-have been practically driven out of the market and replaced by the mild butters which we

import, and which we are now making at home, so will the strong, dry, inferior cheeses with which dairy farmers and consumers have alike been too closely acquainted, be supplanted by the mild, nutty, mellow and more digestible cheeses, which modern teaching will enable every manufacturer to place before the public if he chooses. We write with no optimist views, but with a sound belief in the prospects of British dairy farming in the future, so long as it is conducted by practical men who do not expect to reap abnormal profits from an industry in which there is keen competition, and whose grasp of knowledge of crop growing and of the capacity of the soil, entitles them to handle arable as well as pasture land.

JAMES LONG.

CHAPTER XLIX.

FRUIT AND ITS CULTIVATION: FALLACIES AND FACTS.

BY JOHN WRIGHT, F.R.H.S.,

Assistant Editor of the "Journal of Horticulture"; Editor of "Garden Work"; Author of "Mushrooms for the Million" (171, Fleet Street); "Profitable Fruit Growing for Cottagers and Small Holders" (Gold Medal Prize Essay, 171, Fleet Street); the "Fruit Growers' Guide" (Virtue's, 294, City Road); Lecturer on Horticulture for the Surrey County Council; Member of the Fruit Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, &c.

IN treating on the important subject of fruit cultivation, for improving the value of land, endeavour will be made to avoid the error into which writers, without cultural experience, so often fall, of showing, with the aid of the multiplication table alone, how golden harvests can be insured by all who plant trees. Fruit growing by arithmetic is a very easy and interesting exercise. Fabulous profits can be shown on paper by taking as a basis of calculation the highest prices obtainable for selected fruits, and exceptional crops grown under specially favourable conditions. It may be quite true, and, indeed it is true, that the choicest of apples and pears grown in British gardens find a ready sale, not only at sixpence a pound, but sixpence a fruit for fruiterers' windows; also it may be true that a precocious young tree here and there has produced half-a-bushel of fruit two years after planting; but to take this tree, and those prices, as typical of what any person may accomplish who will plant fruit trees

of particular varieties, is what no experienced cultivator with a reputation at stake would think of suggesting.

Here is a formula for showing the prodigious profits attainable by fruit cultivation. A three or four year old apple tree bears twenty pounds of fruit, priced at threepence a pound: value of crop, five shillings; plant dwarf trees on French paradise stocks, six feet apart, or 1210 per acre, and the gross value of the crop from them, as demonstrated by figures, is upwards of £300! Of all such teaching beware, for it is fallacious. The case can be made clear to the uninitiated by analogy. Take the high prices of prize animals at a Smithfield show as a basis for appraising the value of the flocks and herds in our pastures, and it becomes obvious how utterly false the result must be-a veritable fabric of exaggeration. Prize animals and prize fruits must be judged as such, and with each other. Both show what can be accomplished by capital, skill and selection, but neither represents the average that is attainable under the best possible management in commercial routine.

Practical men, who desire to increase the value of the land by the cultivation of fruit, wish to know what can be accomplished in gardens and orchards by enterprise, labour, and the best cultural skill they may possess or can acquire. And now to pass from fallacy to fact; it is undoubtedly a fact, firm and immovable, that only those persons who have been engaged in the work of fruit production over a series of years can guide safely along the path that leads, if not to fortune, at least to a reasonable measure of success.

LANDMARKS FOR GUIDANCE.

As the mariner is guided to the harbour he seeks by the lights and landmarks on the shore, so will the prudent

husbandman who is essaying the cultivation of fruit, but cannot see his way, look for the light of experience provided by others to determine him in his course.

Fortunately landmarks in fruit-growing are wanting, and they show with great clearness that when wisely-chosen fruit trees and bushes are well managed in suitable soils, and appropriate situations, they materially enhance the value of land. There is not the least need for over-estimating the yield of fruit trees and the value of their crops, because, after making all reasonable allowances for adverse contingencies, such as inclement seasons and insect attacks, which frequently injure and sometimes spoil some of the crops, the fact is established that a well considered and well conducted system of fruit culture is advantageous to landowners, occupiers, and labourers, while consumers must also of necessity be benefited if they can obtain, as they should, superior fruit for the same price they have too often had to pay for inferior.

This suggestion of selling superior produce at a comparatively low price may appear to tend against the interests of cultivators, but such is not in reality the case. There are thousands of trees in this kingdom, if not in every county, which bear trashy and practically unsaleable fruit only, while much more space is occupied by them than would suffice for healthier trees of better varieties, capable of affording crops of ten times greater value. But that is not all, for it is a fact that fruit of the best market quality can be grown, and is grown, at less cost than is incurred in the production of relatively worthless crops. If this were not so, it would be impossible for apples to be grown and brought three thousand or four thousand miles to our markets and sold so cheaply. Only large or well-grown fruits could be thus