A WORD OR TWO ABOUT FRUIT.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1517, 26 December 1872, Page 2

A WORD OR TWO ABOUT FRUIT.

(From a correspondent of the Gardeners' Magazine.) With a rapidly increasing population, and the means of living among all the working classes rapidly augmenting, the question of our fruit supplies becomes an exceedingly interesting and important one, and the means by which our supplies of the future may be increased, quite a national question. Fruit, especially among the working class, has too long been looked upon as a mere matter of luxury, and because sensible persons eat it from hygienic reasons, they are regarded as luxurious, if not extravagant. A hale and hearty sexagenarian, who for his eyeniug

meal eating a slice of bread and a good-sized apple, remarked, " This, or fruit of some kind, has been my supper from a child, and no man has seen less of the doctor and his medicines than I have." Certainly no one of the age could look better. Temperate people recommend fruit as an antidote to the drinking proclivities of the day; and certainly a handful of " berries " of any kind is a better thirst quencher than a glass of bitter or any other beer. One of our most learned and universally esteemed nobleman, not less known for personal abstemiousness than for friendly hospitality, eats daily, so long as they can be had, not less than a pound of strawberries, besides other fruit —and I am glad to know that the habit of eating fruit is rapidly increasing amongst the higher orders. Our American cousins certainly exceed us as fruit consumers, for there almost anything that has eatable juice in it is pressed into the service. They gloat over the juice of a ripe tomato : we most likely should require time to acquire an appreciation of this delicacy. Be this as it may, therecan be no question that properly selected fruit is not a luxury, but a necessary of life; and further, the more regularly we use it the better will it be for us. Well, then, regarding fruit in its place to be as much a necessary as bread or meat, the question naturally presents itself, how is* the necessary supply, the quantity necessary for the multiplying mouths to be produced? Already all temperate countries are shorn of their supplies, and still we cry " More, more."