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CHAPTER VII 

 FRUITS 



APPLES. We buy over three million hundredweight of fresh 

 apples every year, about half of which come from British 

 possessions, Canada supplying by far the largest quantity. 

 In Ontario apples thrive everywhere, and at present there 

 are about seven million trees in bearing, each of which ought 

 to produce one barrel of apples a year, and though they are 

 not skilfully enough cultivated to produce quite so many as 

 this, still the number they do produce is enormous. The 

 Lake Peninsula between Lakes Huron and Erie is the chief 

 fruit-growing district of Ontario. ' These are my babies ', 

 said a farmer whom I was visiting a few miles north of the lake. 

 We were standing on a hillside ; behind us, running up to the 

 summit, was a dense wood of maple and elm ; before us, 

 sloping down to the farmyard was a great undulating stretch 

 of brown earth dotted at wide intervals with little trees. 

 They looked so small and insignificant and helpless that 

 ' babies ' seemed the only fitting word to describe them. 



' Now come and see the grown-ups ', he continued. We 

 struck across the baby orchard and presently found ourselves 

 among their adult relations. The trees were not tall or 

 imposing in size, they had purposely been kept down in height, 

 so as to avoid difficulty in picking the fruit from the topmost 

 boughs, but they were all strong and in perfect health. 

 From some the fruit had already been picked ; others were 

 loaded with big apples till the branches almost touched the 

 ground. 1 



Not only is the fresh fruit exported, but also tinned and 

 dried (or evaporated) apples. It is interesting to read in this 

 connexion that before the war the very peelings and cores of 

 the apples were dried and sent over to Germany in the form 

 of pulp or chop for use in making cheap jam, and that millions 

 1 B. H. Kennedy, The Heart of Canada. 



