these markets being widely extended. Our present
means of utilising our surplus fruits, by canning or otherwise
preserving same, are by no means as complete or up to date as they
should be, and before they can become so, it is necessary to greatly
increase our output. Small works cost too much to run as compared with
large canning establishments, hence we are not yet in a position to make
the most of our fruit. With increased production we will have an
increase in the facilities for utilising the fruit. This requires
labour, and there is right here an opening for many industrious
workers, a business that I have no doubt will pay from the start, a
business of which we have the Australian monopoly, and in which there is
no reason that I can see in which we should not compete satisfactorily
in the markets of the world.

[Illustration: Pineapple Plantation--Showing method of growing the
fruit, Woombye District.]

Queensland possesses many advantages respecting the growth of this fruit
as compared with other countries in which it is grown commercially,
which may be briefly enumerated as follows:--

1st.--Freedom from loss by freeze-outs;

2nd.--The ease with which the fruit can be grown, and its freedom
from disease;

3rd.--The large area of land suitable to its culture, and the low
price at which suitable land can be obtained;

4th.--The fine quality of the fruit;

5th.--The superiority of our fruit for canning purposes;

6th.--The low price at which it can be produced, and the heavy
crops that can be grown.

These are enough reasons to show that in the pineapple we have a fruit
well suited to our soil and climate, a fruit in the cultivation of which
there is room for great extension, and which will provide a living for
many industrious settlers.

[Illustration: Rough-leaved Pines, Redland Bay District.]

[Illustration: Pineapple Plantation--On virgin soil, showing scrub land
at back being cleared for fruit growing, Woombye District.]

THE MANGO.

This magnificent fruit, which is practically unknown outside of the
tropics, has become as hardy as a forest tree throughout our eastern
seaboard, wherever it is planted out of frost. It has been named, and
well named too, the apple of Queensland, as it stands as much neglect,
and can be grown with as little care and attention as, or even less,
than that given to the apple-trees in many of the Somerset or Devons