state; pomological society. 69 



it attempts to bear, produce all the fruit it can grow and the 

 strength of that little tree is taken in developing the fruit, the 

 whole strength is gone into developing the fruit and none is left 

 for bud making. The next year, having no fruit, it has got 

 plenty of time to overdo itself in the line of bud development. I 

 want to state right here at this time that there need not be any 

 "off years" in apples except the tree is growing on the land of 

 an off man. That is a broad general proposition. There will 

 be occasionally failures from conditions that you cannot help, 

 but six years out of seven you can have annual crops of apples 

 if you will. By thinning you increase the size, beauty and 

 quality. The quality of the fruit is very much superior when a 

 moderate amount is distributed all over the plant. So with all 

 kinds of fruit, — you increase the quality, you increase the size, 

 you increase the beauty, — consequently you increase the value. 



When fruit has been grown to its best possible development 

 through culture, feeding, pruning and thinning, then comes the 

 question of spraying. Spraying is practically as much of a 

 necessity as culture or pruning. The man who plants an apple 

 orchard or an orchard of almost any kind today and does not 

 plan to spray the trees at the right time is taking a tremendous 

 chance of loss. It is essential that this should be done. Of 

 course you know as much about that as I do, and if you don't 

 the Experiment Station can tell you in detail. It is thoroughly 

 explained in their bulletins. 



After the fruit is grown the question comes up of packing it 

 in packages most suitable for the market, and there is where we 

 often miss it. We have missed our opportunity, it seems to me, 

 in this country to reach the consumer because we do not have our 

 fruit put in packages of convenient size. I got a tremendous 

 lesson this last year. There were two Belgians over here, bright 

 young fellows, graduates from a university, who had some means 

 and were looking for a new country and new opportunities. One 

 of them was an engineer and the other had some other profession, 

 but they came over to look America over and see what the oppor- 

 tunities were for young men of brains and energy. They 

 travelled up and down this country for five or six months and 

 they became interested more and more in fruit. They were 

 astonished at the consumption of fruit by the people of this 

 country ; they were astonished at the difference that was paid for 



