Pip Fruits: Apples 67 



Very many of them are fancy sorts, only suitable for private culture, 

 or for show purposes, and others are purely local varieties. As a matter 

 of fact, the number of varieties that are worth planting for commerce is 

 not very large, and would be smaller but that in order to obtain the 

 same class of apple on different soils and in different climates, several 

 varieties must be cultivated. A grower, however, must not lose sight of 

 the fact that many keen and able men are year after year patiently apply- 

 ing the wonderful laws of hybridization in the effort to obtain new and 

 improved combinations of characteristics. The same process that evolved 

 a " Cox's Orange Pippin " or a " Lane's Prince Albert " may yet produce 

 better varieties than either, and it is an occasion that calls for the exercise 

 of the highest powevs of sound judgment and discriminating foresight 

 when the grower is called upon to decide whether or not to admit a new 

 variety on to his list, and whether to admit it by increasing his range or 

 by discarding an old one. 



The difficulty facing one contemplating putting down a plantation in a 

 district where fruit is not already being grown, is that it will take several 

 years to prove what varieties are most suited to it. The general character 

 of the soil and the climate will afford some guide, but the only sure one 

 experience cannot be purchased with money. If someone else in the 

 neighbourhood has not made proof of it, the grower must exercise the 

 best judgment he can, and be prepared to remedy mistakes, when discovered, 

 with promptness and with as much philosophy as he can command. When 

 he visits the nurseries to buy his stock he must hold in check the natura T 

 propensity to try this, and that, and the other, strongly recommended 

 perhaps by the would-be seller, and confine himself to sorts of proved 

 commercial value. The market is strongly suspicious of new introductions, 

 and it takes time for one of even striking merit to get itself adopted; to be 

 a, pioneer is not just the role to be recommended for adoption by the starter 

 in the business. On a plantation of 50 ac. ten varieties of culinary Apples 

 and six of dessert will afford an ample range of variety. Under conditions 

 at present obtaining in the apple market it is advisable to confine one's 

 selection to such varieties as can be sent to market straight off the trees, 

 the returns for which can be snugly harvested in the grower's bank by the 

 first week in October. It may be good matter for the padding of a 

 political speech to talk of growing apples on English soil to oust those 

 imported from Canada and elsewhere, which form such a feature in the 

 winter in every fruiterer's shop; but the business man will recognize that 

 thought he home-grown "keeper" is easily first in quality, for appear- 

 ance and for cheapness there is nothing home-grown to touch the best 

 marks of the importer; and since only one crop of apples can be grown 

 on any given land at once, the grower is wise who selects only varieties 

 that will not come into competition with the imported ones. 



At the Kent County Commercial Fruit Show, held in December, 1911, 

 there was got together a remarkable collection of several hundred boxes 

 of apples all packed in standard non-returnable boxes; culinary variety 



