STATE POMOLOGICAI, SOCIETY. 39 



too, it is handsome, or good looking. While it is a good keeper 

 and good looking, yet when you come to flavor it is the opposite 

 of "good," — it is inferior. Yet these properties combined make 

 up the quality of the apple. 



I use the term quality in a sense restricted to that which makes 

 it good, delicious, acceptable to the taste, or on the other extreme, 

 poor or midesirable. In the sense I use the term here an apple 

 of high quality is a good one — delicious, inviting to the taste, 

 acceptable to the senses. It is the property that enabled me years 

 ago to sell to a fruit stand thirty bushels of apples in one season 

 from a single tree for forty-five dollars. Tarrying in a fruit 

 store a few minutes, the other day, to gossip over election pros- 

 pects, the proprietor took up an apple, and biting out a piece, "I 

 declare," said he, ''that is a good apple; won't you have some 

 apples, gentlemen?" as he passed around the box. It was the 

 quality of that fruit that reduced the quantity in the box by a 

 considerable number. 



WHERE ARE WE AT? 



The English market is the outlet for the surplus fruit of this 

 statC; and in fact of all the country east of the Mississippi. As 

 a result, fruit specialists, fruit growers and fruit planters are 

 largely confining their interest to a consideration of the demands 

 of the foreign market. In the fruit journals and at fruit con- 

 ventions we hear or read little but discussion of the foreign 

 market and how to reach it with greatest success. For the last 

 ten years and more scarce a member of our society, or any other 

 planter of orchards in the State, as he held the tree in position 

 and covered its roots in the willing soil, has thought of any other 

 disposition of the fruits of the labor he was performing than the 

 European market. Throughout the breadth of the apple produc- 

 ing belt of our country, clear across and beyond the Mississippi 

 river, extensive orchards are being planted with the view to 

 growing fruit for shipment abroad. 



The standard of quality now being sought among us in a ship- 

 ping apple, is a red color, and the ability to stand the shipping 

 voyage. No other property seems to be considered desirable in 

 a shipping apple. The Ben Davis stands the shipping voyage 

 across the water as well or better than any other variety grown 

 on an extensive scale am.ong us. It also carries the other 



