BETTER FRUIT 



AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE PUBLISHED MONTHLY IN THE INTEREST OF MODERN, PROGRESSIVE FRUIT GROWING AND MARKETING 



The History of the Apple 



Hon. Curtis Guild, iif Boston, Massaihusetts, before National Apple Shippers' Convention, 1914 



ACCORING to Boston's own history 

 of itself, the first apple tree 

 planted west of the Atlantic was 

 planted within the city limits of the 

 City of Boston, on Governor's Island. 

 The land was assigned by the General 

 Court of the colony to Governor Win- 

 throp, the first governor of Massa- 

 chusetts, on the special condition that 

 he should plant it with an orchard of 

 apple trees, and also — shades of the 

 prohibition Puritans look down upon 

 us — with a vineyard, that the new 

 colony might not be lacking for intoxi- 

 cating stimulats. You may be inter- 

 ested to learn the exact language of the 

 act: "On the 3d of April, 1632, at a 

 Court of Assistance, the island called 

 Conant's Island, with all the liberties 

 and privileges of fishing and fowling, 

 was demised to John Winthrop, Esq., 

 the present governor; and it was fur- 

 ther agreed that the said .John Winthrop 

 (lid covenant and ])roniise to jdant a 

 vineyard and an orchard on the same, 

 and that the heirs and assigns of the 

 said .lolin Winthrop for one and twenty 

 vcars pay yearly to the governor the 

 lil'th part of all such fruits and growth 

 as shall be yearly raised out of the 

 same, the lease to be renewed from time 

 111 time by the heirs and assigns of said 

 .lohn Winthrop, and the name of tlie 

 said island is changed and it is to be 

 called The Governor's Garden." The 

 name has since changed to Governor's 

 Island. It seems the governor carried 

 out his pledge and did plant the apple 

 trees, though be seems to have made 

 rather a failure in regard to vines. 



The vineyard, it is to be feared, 

 failed, but as a matter of fact the yearly 

 dole of apples amounted to two bushels, 

 which were handed over every year, 

 not to the taxpayers but to the legis- 

 lators who, in those wicked days of 

 graft, openly consumed this property 

 of the people during the sessions of the 

 General Court of Massachusetts. In 

 other words, the legislators, and not the 

 people, received that magnificent in- 

 come of the commonwealth. 



To go back from the origin of apple 

 culture in the United States to the 

 origin of apple culture in the world is 

 perhaps the longest step that any man 

 was ever asked to take, for it would be 

 necessary, almost, to go back to the time 

 of the pterodactyls and dinosaurs to 

 arrive at the blossoming of the first 

 apple tree. One of the most interesting 

 ways to study history is through ety- 

 mology, through the most enduring of 

 monuments, human speech, which car- 

 ries down in every word we speak 

 some remote fact of history, even in 

 prehistoric times. Apples and pears 



have been found with relics of the 

 stone age. Apples and pears, dried or 

 preserved or petrified, have been found 

 among the relics of the Swiss lake 

 dwellers, who formerly lived, as you 

 remember, on large platforms built on 

 piles over the large lakes of Northern 

 Switzerland. Apples and pears go back 

 to the very beginning of civilization as 

 does the oldest of known vegetables, 

 asparagus, the name of which, of 

 course, is Greek, meaning simply 

 "sprouts," probably the first vegetable 

 known to man. The Chinese, you will 

 remember, cook bamboo sprouts today. 



Features of this Issue 



THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE 



OBSERVATIONS UPON STEMS OF 

 APPLES 



THE PRUNING OF TREES IS AN ART 

 RATHER THAN A SCIENCE 



PRUNING AND SHAPING THE YOUNG 

 TREE 



PRUNING FOR FRUIT EVERY YEAR 



SOME FACTORS IN THE CONTROL OF 

 PEAR BLIGHT 



CULTURE AND HANDLING OF 

 SHIPPING PLUMS 



Now the word "pear" is of Greek 

 origin. But the origin of the word 

 "apple" is lost in mystery. Nobody 

 knows who first invented the name, 

 what its original significance was or 

 what it means. We only know that 

 "apple" is found in the German lan- 

 guage as well as in the Engli.sh lan- 

 guage, and also, in a slightly changed 

 form, yabloco, is found in the Russian 

 language. The more familiar Latin 

 name is pomum. It really doesn't mean 

 apple; it means fruit. 



In seeking to discover what were the 

 earliest fruits known to men we find 

 that many of the more common fruits 

 have no remote ancestry, but appeared 

 in comparativeh' modern times. For 

 example, you will find no mention in 

 the Bible of the word "pear" or the 

 word "plum," which is a corruption of 

 "prune." Pruntim is the original form 

 and plum was corrupted from prunum. 

 You will find no mention of the word 

 "peach" in the Bible in either sense of 

 (hat much abused word. You will find 

 no mention there even of dates, which 

 is very peculiar, as the Jews were very 

 dose to the Arabs and one might have 



supposed they would have been familiar 

 at least with the fruit of the palm tree, 

 but you can search your concordance 

 through and you will find none of 

 those fruits mentioned. In the times 

 of the Old Testament, the Jewish people 

 were in the enjoyment of grapes, which 

 by the way is not the proper name of 

 the fruit, grape simply meaning a 

 cluster. Melons were also known to the 

 Jewish people; so were pomegranates, 

 meaning apples with seeds in them; so 

 were apples — apples themselves. Of 

 course you will remember a dozen 

 familiar quotations in the Bible refer- 

 ring to apples: "Apples of gold in 

 pictures of silver," and all sorts of 

 references to the sweet scent of the 

 apple and its curative properties: 

 "Comfort me with apples for I am sick 

 with love," and so on. Not merely 

 among the Swiss lake dwellers, there- 

 fore, but among the Jews for hundreds 

 of years before the coming of the 

 Saviour the apple was a well known 

 and much appreciated fruit. 



As I said a moment ago, the most 

 durable monument is human speech. 

 For example, very few people who eat 

 cantaloupes, at this delightful season 

 of the year, know the origin of that 

 name or where that kind of melon 

 arose. The name tells every time you 

 utter it. It came from a small village 

 in Italy, Canlaloupa, where they were 

 first raised, and in similar fashion 

 cherries commemorate their Asiatic 

 origin. They were not known in the 

 days of the Bible, but were known to 

 the Greeks and the Romans, and were 

 originally produced and raised in and 

 about the town of Kcrasos in Asia 

 Minor. The name plum conies from the 

 Greek. The orange is a Persian fruit. 

 There is only one nation in the world 

 today that gives to the orange its orig- 

 inal name, the Spanish. In the Sjianish 

 language the word is naran.ja. Naran.ja 

 is a Persian name given to the orange, 

 which originated in that nation. The 

 peach also came from Persia. The 

 name in Latin, persicuni, means simply 

 the Persian fruit. Nectarines were 

 named from nectar, the food of the 

 Gods of Olympus, being the kind of 

 peach that was supposed most nearly to 

 approach in taste that divine diet. Apri- 

 cots — I scarcely suppose any of you 

 would connect apricots with the word 

 precocious, but the apricot was so 

 called because in the early limes and 

 today it comes on the market earlier 

 than the peach or the plum. 



The tipple, as I have told you, in the 

 English langutige and the German lan- 

 guage, has been given that name for 

 such an enormous period of time, long 



