16 AUGUST 1930, Page 15

VANISHING ORCUARDS.

This really beautiful farm carries also fine orchards of bigger fruits, in which most of the apple trees were planted a good many years ago by the landowner. The fear was expressed that the days were over when posterity would be so considered. Landowners were not rich enough and tenants fear that they would not stay long enough—ten years at a minimum—to reap the fruits. Very nearly the same thing was said to me, not by a tenant farmer but by a manufacturer in Herefordshire : the cider orchards were not to be extended or even kept up, because the landlord and tenant system had more or less broken down. Neither could face the capital expenditure which would benefit both, and the nation to boot, in the long run. After all, afforesting the plum, cherry, apple and pear counties with fruit trees is at least as necessary as planting Norfolk and Suffolk with pines ; and the fruit trees bring lligger returns in much less than half the time. * * •