Excerpt from Manual of Practical Orchard-Work at the Cape

At the suggestion of the Under Secretary for Agri culture this pamphlet upon Orchard practice has been prepared, as a precursor to a work of closer local applica tion for which the data do not yet exist. Time only can show how far it meets a present want. Throughout an effort has been made to avoid empirical rules without reasons, to state in the simplest manner such laws of vegetative life as particularly concern the fruit-grower, and from them to deduce as necessary consequences the correct rules of practice. It is not possible to produce a manual of universal application in a country like the Cape which has two distinct and conversely differing climates of west and east, and where the variations are further ao centuated by the rapid increase of altitude as one passes inland. The writers hope that by the observations and data furnished by intelligent cultivators in these very divergent intercolonial climates, it may be possible here after to define with more accuracy the climatic areas and approximate altitudes which demand variations in garden ing practice no less than in the objects of culture. The pamphlet will have fulfilled its purpose if it enforces attention to the points most neglected in fruit-culture. These are the incredible neglect of the mechanical con dition of the soil and general avoidance of deep trenching, the unintelligent use of irrigation, the absence of any effective system of sub-drainage, unscientific pruning both formative and in maintenance, and an easy satisfaction with seedlings that have thrown back, instead of growing only pedigree sorts propagated by bud and graft. Reform of cultural custom and practice on these five points lies at the foundation of all improvement in Cape fruit growing.

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