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- 42 VICTORIA ILLUSTRATED.
barley, the best adapted to malting, are among the finest obtainable, and will always be in demand, the local consumption at the present
time being impossible to keep pace with by means of the home product. Good--indeed, high-class farming always pays, and it
has been fully demonstrated on Vancouver Island, where, moreover, the sheep and cattle ranchers have at the present time the grandest
opportunities before them. The number of fat cattle and sheep that are annually brought into the Province from abroad is enormous--not,
as will have been seen, because they cannot be profitably raised and fed here, but because this important department of industry and
enterprise has not been properly or adequately taken in hand. Hops are grown to a small extent only, but can be produced just as
advantageously on Vancouver Island as at Puyallup or other places in the United States, while the passed anywhere. Professor Saunders,
director of practical farming and fruit growing in connection with the Department of Agriculture at Ottawa, who is possibly the best
authority on the subject in the Dominion, and, indeed, is an enthusiast as regards his own specialty, has more than once expressed his
amazement at what he has seen and at what has been communicated to him officially on this subject with respect to British Columbia. When
here, not so long since, he made a special trip through the already celebrated fruit districts of the Mainland, which, he said, compared
most favorably with, and, indeed, exceeded the well-know " peninsula " of Ontario. He also explained what the Government was doing at the
Agassiz Farm in order to acclimatize what are regarded as the best qualities of fruits. To the production of these the climate, the soil
and the shelter of British Columbia element required to pick the product is plentiful upon the island.
FRUIT GROWING.
Probably in no country in the world can the business of fruit growing be more profitably prosecuted than in the Province of British Columbia.
The pursuit is a most enjoyable one. It is not accompanied by the heavy laborious work that is inseparable from the ordinary avocation of
farming. At the first, the land has to be care-fully selected ; for there can be no doubt about it that some sections of the country are
better adapted to the purpose than others. Then the ground has to be dealt with in such a manner as shall best fit it for the object to
which it is naturally adapted. Fruit farming has been most successfully carried on in portions of the Mainland, where it has been made a
specialty, the products, as regards both quality and abundance of yield, being unsur-are in every way adapted. For grape growing, he was
not disposed to say that this province possessed equal advantages with California, where the normal heat was greater ; nevertheless, for
the ordinary fruits--those that are not tropical British Columbia is exceedingly well suited. Furthermore, he advised the cultivation
of fruits of the very best qualities, contrasting the experiences of those who had pursued the opposite policy of continuing in the old rut
of growing the fruits which most readily came to their hand, and allowing them to take care of themselves. If such people had not fruit of
the very best quality, it was their own fault ; for unpruned and neglected orchards could not be expected to do the best that was possible
for them under more favorable conditions. Referring to the Island of Vancouver, it may be said that it is even more eligibly situated than
is the Mainland, since not only is it protected from easterly winds, but it has the
PROPOSED HOTEL AT OAK BAY
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