52 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



A. We have not grown it long enough to be sure what its 

 characteristics are going to be. We have trees in the station 

 orchard which have been planted twelve years — trees set in 1891, 

 three-year-old trees at that time. That tree bore a barrel of fruit 

 last year ; it is a large, vigorous tree, and very healthy. 



BEN DAVIS AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR. 



By F. A. Waugh, Burlington, Vt. 



It is hardly necessary that I should introduce Ben Davis to 

 this audience. He is already well known to most of you. I 

 have no doubt but that many of you already regard him as a 

 friend. Personally, he is to me more than a friend. He was, 

 in fact, my school-fellow. Every day at noon-time when I 

 opened the little tin dinner-pail I found Ben Davis smiling up at 

 me. He nearly always came to dinner with me, and though he 

 usually fared the worse for it, he was there on hand the next 

 day, as bright and ruddy as ever. I ought to say that my school 

 days were spent in Kansas, — that sunny southwest land which 

 is known everywhere as the home and peculiar province of Ben 

 Davis. It might not be surprising, therefore, if I were some- 

 what prejudiced in favor of my old school-fellow. At any rate 

 I shall not accuse him needlessly. What I want to do is simply 

 to tell you a few things about him which you already know, and 

 then to enter on the greater and much more important question 

 of what he stands for. 



Ben Davis is regarded as a westerner, belonging especially to 

 the central Mississippi states, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, but 

 we all know that Ben Davis is cosmopolitan. His range is 

 almost as wide as the total range of apple culture. Within the 

 last six months I have eaten specimens from the state of Wash- 

 ington, from Kansas, Oklahoma, New York, Canada and all 

 the way to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Moreover 

 Ben Davis is being somewhat largely planted on the other side of 

 the world, in New Zealand and Australia; and in every large 

 European nursery one can find it and the Baldwin growing side 

 by side as representatives of the American apple industry. 



In spite of Ben Davis's cosmopolitan character it has been 

 repeatedly asserted that he was not especially at home outside 



