302 State Horticultural Society. 



who were surprised when told that gooseberries are sweet when fully 

 ripened. 



Grapes. — Some varieties, like the Delaware, Catawba, Hartford and 

 Ives Seedling, improve in flavor if left to hang long; others, like Concord, 

 Niagara, ]\Iartha and some of Rogers Hybrids, are best when just ripe, but 

 if left to hang beyond that stage develop too strong a flavor. For 

 niaking into wine, however, grapes should be allowed to become "dead 

 ripe." 



Handsome, well ripened and attractively packed fruit always com- 

 mands high prices, as I have often experienced, and as the following- 

 examples (of which many similar ones could be given), show: My first 

 shipment of apples ( i86y, forty barrels Bellflower) went to St. Louis 

 where the highest market quotation was $2.75 per barrel. These apples 

 being large and highly colored, carefully handled, graded and packed, 

 and having written my commission firm that the contents of any one barrel 

 were equal to any of the others, I confidently expected them to sell for 

 $3.00 per barrel. Imagine my surprise when I learned they sold for 

 $4.00 per barrel, and that more were wanted. This was another eye- 

 opener for me. In 1901 I sold peaches here and in Kansas City for $1.25 

 and $1.50 per bushel net, -vvhen other growers found slow sale at 60 and 

 75 cents per bushel for similar varieties. 



How many dwellers in town and city ever tasted a really ripe, luscious 

 strawberry or blackberry, peach, pear or summer apple? A strawberry, 

 when its blushes, have gradually deepened to a crimson hue, when its 

 seeds — turned to a golden tint— have sunk deep into velvety recesses, 

 and its body easily parts from the parent stem, and when .finally one's 

 tongue wath gentle pressure extracts its nectar and ambrosia, what a con- 

 trast when compared with a "shipped-in" berry, with its faded complexion, 

 white nose, prominent seeds and the trade-marks left by the pickers' 

 fingers. Or a blackberry ; after hiding its ebony face three or four days 

 under a bower of leaves, until its body is rounded and swelled to fullest 

 proportions, its eyes glistening like black diamonds or polished jet, its body 

 tender and ready to drop at the slightest jar — ah me — no hard bitter 

 core, no acid, nor tannin there. 



And that queen of fruits, the peach, away up or out on a limb, where 

 sunshine floods it all day, its white or yellow cheeks gradually overspread 

 with carmine, its down disappearing as its body expands, when the wasp 

 begins to lacerate its softening tissue, when it at last drops, at gentlest 

 touch, into the carefully extended hand — then, ah, then — my mouth begins 

 to water in anticipation of the feast celestial. 



And, my frieiuls, did not some of you gather some overgrown 

 browaiies from a young,, vigorous Seckel tree, lay them away in a cool. 



