330 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cerned. It will be best to sacrifice as little as possible on this 

 most important point, as the demand is clear and unmistakable, 

 from the planter to the consumer, for a variety safe and reliable in 

 the matter of keeping-. 



Fourth. We must have an acid apple. There is no use talking of 

 a sweet or half sweet fruit, for it is certain to be debarred any- 

 large place on the market. At the late meeting- of the state so- 

 ciety we asked a practical apple buyer who was present, and who 

 has handled as many as fifty car loads in a season, in regard to the 

 relative merits of the Malinda and Repka Malenka as market va- 

 rieties, giving him good samples of each to see and taste. He 

 assured us that he would rather attempt to sell twenty-five barrels 

 of Repka than one of the Malinda. Although the latter were much 

 larger and handsomer than the former, as he sampled them, the 

 lack of acidity much more than compensated for the difference in 

 appearance. He said that his customers always found fault if he 

 put in more than two or three barrels of sweet apples, of even such 

 a standard sort as the Tolman, in a car lot. If it were not for this 

 fact we would think the Malinda approached very close to the apple 

 we are looking for, but, as it is, this variety should only be planted 

 for home use and select home trade, but never for the general mar- 

 ket. Many who have never had experience in marketing apples in 

 quantity do not appreciate the fundamental importance of this mat- 

 ter, and in choosing their varieties for a commercial orchard are 

 liable to set a kind that will-not meet the demands of the market. 



Fifth. The fruit must be either of high color or large size, or some 

 combination or compromise in these two matters. In this particu. 

 lar lies the weakness of the Repka Malenka, which in our opinion 

 approaches the nearest to the ideal winter apple of anything now on 

 our lists, as iX combines in a high degree all the good qualities 

 heretofore mentioned, and oftentimes colors up so as to make a very 

 pretty appearance in the barrel, and is fully as large as that assidu- 

 ously propagated thing called the Walbridge apple. 



Sixth. Quality should be good. It is of course the ambition of us 

 northern orchardists to excel in this particular; but, strange as it 

 may seem, when it comes to the matter of commercial importance 

 and profit we can afford to sacrifice more in the item of quality than 

 in any other above mentioned. In the apple, as in the matrimonial 

 market, beauty is always quoted high and in brisk demand, while 

 quality alone goes begging for notice, and is finally picked up by 

 the few knowing ones who have duly pondered the saying that 

 "Beauty is only skin deep." 



Having already exceeded the usual limits of your patience, we 

 will bring our paper to a close by urging the general and enthusias- 

 tic attempt to produce this much needed fruit by each and all of our 

 fraternity, never forgetting to work in line with the well established 

 laws of nature, that "like produces like or the likeness of some an. 

 cestor." Let us choose our seed with the greatest care, introducing 

 sufficient of our imported Russian blood to insure hardiness, and 

 with a strong infusion of good keeping ancestry we may hope at 

 some happy day to secure that nicely balanced product, "The Ideal 

 Winter Apple for the North." 



