PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

has been necessary to supply labour to carry on the work at home by importing‘ some of the surplus from the Mother Land, and the present spring has witnessed the arrival of about two hundred Scotch and English im- migrants. With the adoption of better methods and a tendency to greater liber-

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ality to the youth of the country, may we not hope for the time when the Province of birth may become the Province of allegiance. Through it all, will not—must' not— the climate, the soil, and the people of “beau- tiful Prince Edward Island” attract its ad- venturous children back.

HORTICULTURE.

BY REV. FATHER BURKE, President Fruit Growers’ Amociation.

Horticulture, which in the province of Prince Edward Island is understood to mean fruit growing, and more particularly the growing of apples, extends back as an organ- ized industry, at least, to no very remote pe- riod. Only within a decade or so has this Province thoroughly awakened to its possi- bilities, for successful apple growing espe- cially. True, from the days of French pos- session fruit trees, some of which are still pointed out to the student of history, were planted in some two or three of the more prosperous settlements; but cherished as they may be, as links binding us to the disturbed past, they have no immediate baring upon horticulture as we are now considering it.

With the English occupation came apple plantations, the stock for the establishment of which, was brought out from the Old Country, either in the form of scions or tree- lets, or grown from the pips of apples, com- mon to these days.’ The United Empire Loyalists, too, contributed several varieties to the older plantations, brought from the places they relinquished in the New Republic, whose flag they refused to recognize; or, rather with whose flag their national senti- ments could not allow them to displace the glorious ensign of Old England.

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We have of this old fruit-tree stock, plan- tations standing in many places today; and . whilst horticulture as a science seemed to be little known by their owners, and the product demonstrated to a verity that the art was almost among those lost, this attempt at ap- ple growing seemed to convince the country conclusively that it was out of the question to expect good fruit of this kind at least in our Island. “Shall we gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?” often as it sounded in our pious forbears’ ears, never , seemed to imply the possibility that with right varieties, rightly tended, the product might be very different. Cider apples then, considered too sour for eating, were about all anyone raised systematically. A number of those orchards or enclosures surrounded the old stone manor houses of the English settler, who for some time was the grand seigneur of our agricultural life.

In his address before the Fruit Growers’ Association last year, Senator Robertson, of Montague, speaking of the age of apple trees, and, therefore, of the advantage they presented over other crops, had this to say of some of the oldest specimens which the period we are speaking of can claim: “I went round to visit old orchards and I found that