No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 387 



too, extra large specimens of tree or small fruits in this region in 

 which size is attained by high feeding or by such abnormal practices 

 as ringing, usually lack in quality. From all this we must conclude 

 that mere size is about the least needed quality for a good fruit. 



The dispute as to whether color is more desirable than quality 

 is just as warm as the one over size and quality. Each has stout 

 advocates and while both are necessary in a first-class market fruit, 

 why there should be any question about the supremacy of quality 

 over color, is unanswerable. We grow fruit to eat. What a para- 

 dox to grow that which is unfit to eat provided onlj- that it have high 

 color. Here again western fruit has a decided advantage over 

 that from the East, fot .the question of color is largely one of cli- 

 mate. The fruit from the Kocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast 

 is certainly more highly colored than that grown east of the Missis- 

 sippi. The sunlit AYest must ever produce fruits of brilliant hues 

 for, like the complexion of Shakespeare's dusky Moor, the color of 

 fruits "is but the burnished rays of the burnisher sun." Yet Ave of 

 the East make a fetish of color and often times laud it as being 

 quite equal or even more desirable than quality in a first-class variety, 

 not only a mistake in judgment, but an advertisement for the fruit 

 of our western competitors. 



Just now the fashion is for red apples and pears though red is 

 not necessarily handsomer than any other color and certainly does 

 not make the fruit taste better. J^ut fashions in colors of fruits 

 change in markets and countries just as fashions in colors of dresses 

 or coats or hats or ties change. At one time russet apples or pears 

 were in great demand. In some markets Y'ellow Newtowns, or 

 Bellflowers, or Ehode Island Greenings are still preferred. Some 

 markets like white fleshed peaches; others, the yellow fleshed. The 

 \alue of a black or a red or a yellow skin on a sweet cherry depends 

 upon the market to which it is sent. Color is for most part quite 

 aside from the intrinsic value of any of these fruits else we should 

 not have differences and changes in fashion. A hungry man should 

 be as truly thankful and should say grace with just as much unction 

 over a Y'ellow Newtown as over a Jonathan or a Spitzenburg. 



Is high quality associated with intensity of color? A popular 

 fallacy associates quality with color. Some sa}^ high quality is cor- 

 related with low color, hence the oft repeated phrase, "handsome 

 but poor-' ; others say high quality goes with high color. Baldwin 

 apples grown in sod are most brilliantl}^ colored. Nine out of ten 

 people will choose the highly colored fruit as the best flavored, but 

 it needs only a taste to convince to the contrary. The tilled fruit 

 is crisper, juicier and richer, a fact attested to by all who have had 

 to do with experiments in which the fruit is grown under the two 

 methods of culture. In this case the low colored fruit is normal 

 while the high color is the hectic flush of disease. So in every in- 

 stance, a seeming parallelism between color and quality may be 

 explained. Individual instances seem to show correlations, but a 

 general survey of all instances shows that there are no correlations 

 either between kinds of color or intensity of color and quality. 



T quite realize that it is necessary for a variety to have a vogue, 

 because of some chaiacter or characters to create or satisfy a spec- 

 ial demand, in order to "catch" the market. But need its reputation 



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