JSbrticultural JVotes. 191 



A.'pricots. 



W. C. Flagg after experimenting ten years with apricots, finds the Early Grolden 

 and Breda hardiest and healthiest. The latter is rather smaller, and some days 

 later than the other, and, to our taste, not quite so good. Much larger and finer 

 flavored is the Moorpark, but it tends to blotch, apparently with some kinds of 

 fungus, and in wet weather to crack open and conduct itself like some of our white 

 peaches. 



In the Prairie Farmer, Mr. Flagg gives a list of apricots ripening in succession : 



This list covers two months, during one of which the peach is hardly a com- 

 petitor, and suggests the possibility of covering the period from the latter end of 

 June until the end of July with this delicious stone fruit. With special culture, it 

 seems to us that it can be made profitable. 



Du Breuil recommends the growing of them as seedlings, because he finds the 

 seedlings more vigorous and longer lived, and states that the Red Masculine, Mon- 

 tagamet, and the Peach re-produce themselves from seed. 



Profits in Small Fruits. 



At the Pennsylvania Fruit Growers' Convention, Mr. A. S. Fuller spoke as 

 follows: — "Competition is brisk, and this leads me to believe that there are but 

 two classes of small fruit growers who can make the business very profitable. The 

 first are those who have an abundance of capital with which, in a measure, to con- 

 trol unfavorable circumstances. If they only make a profit of a penny per basket, 

 and sell enough, it will amount to considerable in the aggregate. Cultivators with- 

 out a large capital having to come in competition, would be ruined with prices which 

 gave the extensive producer a small margin for profits. 



" The second class are those who have a home market, and raise their fruit without 

 any considerable outlay for labor. A man who works in the field himself, and has a 

 family to gather and market his fruit, will find small fruit culture quite profitable, 

 inasmuch as he receives an immediate return for his labor ; but should he attempt to 

 extend his operations until a number of hired laborers have to be employed, he will 

 ver/ likely find the profits growing gradually less. It is just here that so many 

 persons have made a most serious mistake in the culture of small fruits. At the 

 beginning they have probably produced a few hundred quarts of fine fruit upon a 

 small plot of land, and this being disposed of at a home market, they resolve to ex- 

 tend operations in the same direction, without taking into consideration the amount 

 of capital necessary to purchase baskets and crates, as well as the extra amount of 

 labor required in production. Even if these things are considered, the fruit grower 

 is very liable to forget that there is sometimes a run of bad weather during the 

 harvest season, also low prices and short crops. Perhaps some may accuse me of 

 drawing too strongly on the negative side of this question. I beg them to remember 

 jhat for many years there has been a strong team on the other side. I do not wish 



