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With the growth of apples soil and aspect have much to do, as is proved by 
the fact that while the selfsame kind will change with locality into a different 
colour, size, and flavour, some apples can be cultivated successfully only on certain 
soils, or under the influence of local climate. Thus, the Newtown Pippin belongs 
as much to America as does the true Ribston Pippin to England; and an apple 
which is a good bearer in one county is often good for nothing in another ; hence 
the importance of crossing varieties. The soil of Worcestershire is suited to both 
apples and pears, as they like a strong loam, with some limestone under; and both 
trees will grow there to the size of an oak, and bear thirty bushels of fruit—suffi- 
cient for two hundred gallons of cider or perry. Kent soil suits them too, as 
shown by its growth and produce ; and an apple tree may be seen there—belong- 
ing to the great grower and “‘shower,” Mr. Skinner—which, covering a space of 
140 feet, had, two years ago, on it 150 bushels of fruit. 
If the Worcester and Hereford men would but adopt the sensible Kentish 
mode of letting in air and light, their orchards would then pay cent. per cent. 
But bushed orchards in those counties are almost the rule, and so bushed are some 
that they are dim in daylight, and the lush grass in them of the deepest green, for 
the sun never shines upon it. What might, therefore, be good table fruit, keeps 
sour and harsh, as it cannot ripen, and is thus only fit for cider. If the Kent 
men in a good year can clear from fruit-land, as they say, £100 per acre—and it 
is believed to be a true statement, and not an assertion—it is a proof of what con- 
stant care will do, and growers elsewhere would do well to tread in their steps. 
Take but one county only—say, Hereford, where the orcharding is upwards of 
26,000 acres. Look at the extra gains men might make there if they would but 
open in every hollow those dense screens of apple leafage which meet the eye— 
there, and amongst their Worcester neighbours too. But as their grandfathers 
did, so do they, with but few exceptions, and thus they lose much money. 
“Why,” says a writer on English agriculture, “do we not turn fruit growers? “I 
was in Covent Garden Market yesterday, and there was £20,000 worth of fruit 
there, but all from abroad.” But then foreign fruit comes to market in good con- 
dition, and almost as fresh as when on the tree, the result of proper packing ; 
whereas home-grown, for lack of it, will not fetch paying prices ; and this fact 
brings us to the present time of year and “‘apple-picking.” 
With the advent of October, and the hops all in, what may be termed “‘ the 
last harvest of the year” begins—‘‘ the apple harvest,” as it is called in Canada. 
There all is order and careful management,—for their maxim is, that “‘ each good 
apple should be treated as a thin glass globe,”—and the orchards, with their heaps 
of best fruit colouring on the trees, are then a sight worth seeing ; the workers 
working to the ring of hammers, as the apples, as they are picked, are placed in 
casks and headed in for exportation. This export trade is so large that the total 
arrivals last season from the United States and Canada were 866,097 barrels. 
Washington Market, in New York, was, we are told, “‘literally blocked with 
barrels filled with choice fruit;” and the same cry came from Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, Boston, and Montreal ; so that, for‘many weeks, hardly a vessel left 
the Eastern seaboard without having a large consignment of American apples— 
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