The other important vine districts are arranged in accordance with number of stocks:-Malmesbury, Cape, Tulbagh, Oudtshoorn, Piquetberg, Ladismith, Caledon, and Swellendam, the number of plants in these. varying from five million to two million each.

The districts in which haanepoots form a large proportion of the stand are Worcester, Robertson, and Oudtshoorn, with 6,578,150, 3,315,072, and 1,520,635 haanepoots respectively, while in the Paarl, Stellenbosch, and all the other vine districts they form only a small proportion of the whole. This is reflected in the product of raisins already referred to, which are mostly produced in Worcester, Robertson, Oudtshoorn, and Ladismith.

Taking the Cape Colony as a whole, the vine stocks are classi

The oversea export of wine is entered at 73,655 gallons, value £18,457, while to the other Colonies in the Customs union it is :

Wine: Hermitage

:

£3,556

Constantia

226

The import of wine is 65,862 gallons, valued at £47,591.

The grapes produced in the Transvaal, Orange River Colony, Natal, and Rhodesia, are almost entirely used for local table use, wine forming at present only a very small product.

VEGETABLES.

The area under vegetables in Cape Colony has already been stated as 15,410 acres, and the distribution of this is shown in a previous page. With such an area in crop, and with much more

available, it is a standing disgrace that over 1000 tons of preserved vegetables should be imported annually into Cape Colony at a cost of about £25,000. Each of the other Colonies is also an importer, though possessed of much suitable land for growing vegetables. Beyond growing for the respective local markets, the only commercial vegetable culture is that of onions, and of a few cabbages and cauliflowers for Kimberley and Johannesburg. Vegetable culture, as it is known in the United States and the Channel Islands, is non-existent, but the import indicates that there is scope for many unskilled gardeners taking up this easy and often profitable work.

The onion product of Cape Colony amounted in 1904 to 123,175 muids (one muid=3 bushels), the districts supplying the largest quantities being :

All other districts producing less than 2,000 muids each.

The onions exported from Cape Colony during 1904 were :

value £1,713
£21,427

and of onion seed raised in the Cape Colony, £259,

while the import (not included above among vegetables) was 611,343 lbs., value £2,003 (784 tons less than in 1903).

Of other vegetables the overland export was £13,052 value, but an item of £10,713 appears for Garden, Vegetable, and tree seeds among the Cape Imports.

Generally speaking, vegetable culture for domestic use is neglected, vegetable culture for market is in the hands of a limited number, often Malay, Chinese, or Indian coolies, and the production of local seed from selected types has still to be begun.

PLANTS, FLOWERS, TREES, ETC.

A curious item in the annual list of exports from Cape Town is "Everlasting Flowers," which for 1904 were entered at 170,316 lbs., value £12,012. These 85 tons of flowers are not the result of cultivation, but the collection of many hands from indigenous plants on the South-Western mountains. Apart from this the demand for flowers is purely local, and has nowhere assumed large proportions. The florists' catalogues contain practically everything known to suit the local conditions, and domestic amateur floriculture is well practised, and often highly successful, but as a business floriculture has not yet caught on.

The same may be said concerning decorative plants, ornamental trees and shrubs, herbaceous plants, succulent plants, and even bulbs.

Suitable kinds do well, and the general effect is highly successful, but select strains of florists' flowers are almost absent, and such trees and shrubs as require propagation by cuttings are rare as compared with seedlings. There are practically no landscape artists, and there is no demand for such, and even European gardeners are few, and often unsatisfactory.

Horticultural information is not available, except from interested nurserymen's catalogues, or from foreign works or magazines, in which the seasons seldom correspond with ours.

PESTS AND OTHER TROUBles.

In regard to damage done by Phylloxera in the Western Province, after a prolonged and unsuccessful campaign against the pest by means of carbon-bisulphate or other treatments, some measure of success has been again secured by the introduction of American Phylloxera-proof kinds, and their use as stocks for the better kinds, but even now it is found that there is still something to be learned in regard to the continued success of certain kinds on certain stocks. This also applies to citrus culture, in which much has still to be proved in regard to suitable stocks and their ability to resist mal-degomma, a class of experiment which naturally takes many years before it gives final results with regard to any one place, and as it may be easily affected by some unnoticed local condition, has to be carried out at many centres before general success can be assured.

Horticulture is not without its troubles, both animal and fungoid pests being usually in evidence, as well as inimical local climatic and soil conditions in places. When Phylloxera appeared, stringent import regulations were imposed, practically prohibiting the import of all plants. These regulations, which did little good to viticulture, the disease being already present, did much harm to horticulture in general, all novelties being for the time excluded, except by smuggling. An Entomologist was appointed at that time for the Cape Colony, and later an Entomologist was appointed for each of the other Colonies; these gentlemen or others having also charge of the fungoid and bacteriological diseases of plants. Under their care regulations are now in force intended to prevent the importation of further pests into either Colony, to prevent the spread from nurseries of what pests already exist, and to prevent the spread of Codlin moth and certain other pests beyond areas already affected.

Public opinion is gradually working toward the necessity for legislation against the breeding of pests by private growers to the detriment of their neighbours' gardens or orchards, a step quite as necessary as legislation against scab in sheep, or against other infectious stock troubles, but quite as difficult to attain, since it touches practically everyone's private garden, and means work.

No country is without its pests; South Africa is in no worse position than others, except that the lackadaisical habit is strong in humanity. The preventive or curative treatments are well known or

easily ascertained; the difficulty is to get them applied, except by compulsion, and until they are generally applied progress cannot be expected.

GENERAL.

Horticulture in South Africa is only on the threshold of progress. In every line there is scope for improvement; in most lines possibilities are enormous. The climate varies from tropical to cold temperate, the rainfall from nothing to 60 inches, and the soil and subsoil vary immensely; the range of available kinds is consequently very large.

But the population is small and scattered, and the literature altogether inadequate. The Departmental Agricultural Journals of the respective Governments are highly useful in so far as they touch on fruit-culture and viticulture, but they leave the other lines almost out, and even in these lines red-tape prevents free discussion where Government action or non-action is concerned. An independent, inter-colonial Horticultural magazine for South Africa would fill what is meantime an empty void, and do good not only to the commercial fruit grower, but also to the amateur and to the numerous class whose members claim to know by natural intuition much more than the professional man trained abroad, and sometimes show that they do SO. An occasional inter-colonial conference of fruit growers is also a desideratum, at which practical work rather than parish politics should be discussed, for it is evident that South Africa requires all to pull together for action in this as in many other matters, rather than lose time in petty jealousy. Cape Colony meantime has the lead in hardy fruit culture, and supplies the other Colonies after their supply is finished, but there is no inherent reason why Cape Colony should not be also supplied with fruit from the other Colonies months before its own supply is ready, and so by reciprocity allow each Colony to enjoy a longer fruit season and live upon fruit more than it does at present.

A Conference as proposed above, representing alike the affiliated Horticultural Societies of South Africa and the nursery and fruit trades, would soon take up the central position in South Africa meantime held in England by the Royal Horticultural Society, and would do more to stimulate horticultural work than any agency meantime in existence.

MANUFACTURING CENTRES.

BY ARTHUR H. REID, F.R.I.B.A., F.R.S.I.

I have for some time, both at Johannesburg and at Cape Town, watched the constant increase of smoke clouds, and as one who has given the matter of Public Health some attention, I have come to the conclusion that the cause of the same is preventable, and the effect both detrimental to health and wasteful. Any person who has eyes and uses them, must have noticed the clouds of smoke that hang about the environs of Johannesburg when a southerly wind is blowing, and in the early morning how the low lands north of Bellvue are hidden from view not by mist but by smoke clouds, held more or less in suspension by mist or atmospheric influence.

To be rational, I will take the cause of this nuisance or waste first, and in doing so it must be understood that I am not posing as an engineering expert, or as an authority upon the subject under review, but simply venture, as a commonsense individual, to attract the attention of other thinking people to a matter that strikes me as being wrong in every sense. Should my effort result in producing a discussion between our engineering friends who may lay bare facts that I hesitate to adduce, my reward will be secured.

It is surely only commonsense to submit that smoke fog is nothing more or less than particles of carbon or unconsumed coal, and that their presence is due to the imperfect combustion or consumption of coal from one cause or another. Commonsense will also allow that such fog is detrimental to the health and comfort of those whose lives have to be spent in contact with it, and I shall prove, later on, that its presence has much to do with the high cost of production and reduction of our gold ores, and, indeed, of industrial productions generally. I do not propose to touch upon the destructive effect of smoke upon animal or plant life, though I venture to hope that my remarks may produce some valuable evidence of the future danger its presence suggests if precautions are not taken to prevent its increase.

I submit, as nothing new, that the present system of having so many steam-power installations for the working of our mines and industries, instead of installing a few large power houses, is the primary cause of the trouble I have named. By centralising the electric or other power stations the production of smoke must be reduced, first, on account of the great distance between smoke stacks; secondly, because the methods of fuel combustion can be better supervised; and, thirdly, because less coal will be consumed. Electrical distribution of power, oil, hot air and internal combustion gas engines, naturally suggest themselves as smoke-reducing schemes, and it must indeed be a source of gratification and pride to our Johannesburg Municipal Council that they have been among the first to shew their appreciation of that fact by adopting gas engines for the generation of Electric Power for the Municipal Tramways and Lighting schemes.