388 State Horticultural Society. 



ter of taking an interest in the experiment, also a matter of honor, as 

 the trees were given. He gave quite a Hst of nurserymen, with the trees 

 they would each furnish, varieties being designated ; also of men under- 

 taking the experiments, 



Mr. Hammond told how he handled, stored and sold apples in 40 

 lb. boxes. These boxes were taken to the orchard and iilled as picked. 

 They were taken to the storehouse before night, and when sold, sorted 

 and packed in the same boxes. The boxes were not exposed to the 

 weather more than a few hours, and left the storage house bright and in 

 good shape. 



Mr, Powell had at the present time 1,000 boxes of apples, Jonathans 

 and Greenings, in storage, part being in bushel packages and some of 40 

 lbs. He was hunting a market for them, but had no doubt of finding a 

 profitable one. New York commission men were opposed to bushel 

 packages or anything smaller than a barrel. Retail grocers sold almost 

 entirely by the quart in two or four-quart packages, the contracted 

 quarters of people in the city compelling them to buy in small quantities. 

 Probably less than three per cent of consumers would at present buy 

 as much as 40 lbs. at once. For this reason the retailers prefer to buy 

 by the barrel ; they do not have so many packages standing around, and 

 they measure out better, especially if the bushel is scant. The empty 

 barrel also had some commercial value, and the box has not. The price 

 of apples in boxes varied with the quality and care in sorting and pack- 

 ing. He knew of two carloads of bushels selling at 70 cents per box. 

 These were sold on commission. He has sold fancy apples at private 

 sale (bushel packages) at the rate of $7 per barrel, and the customers 

 wanted more. 



Mr. Van Deman said all Pacific coast apples were boxed, and they 

 were all sold without difficulty. However, they did not box such grades 

 of fruit as were often found in the middle of barrels packed in the east. 

 Such apples were fed to the hogs or made into cider. There was little 

 chance to work in culls into a box which contained but three or four layers 

 of fruit, and the fruit grower who packed in boxes would find that he 

 was, from force of conditions alone, marketing a better and more even 

 grade of fruit than he had done in barrels, and this superiority will natur- 

 ally command a better price than the former. This point should be given 

 due credit. Another important point was that it took skilled labor and a 

 barrel factory to produce barrels, and the empty ones have often to pay 

 quite a freight tariflf to the station where filled. They are bulky to get 

 from the station to the orchard, and about the only advantage a barrel 

 has anv wav is that one can roll it instead of lifting and it can be packed 



