122 SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



acid or inferior one among them. There is not one of 

 them that is not superior to all the seedhngs recently intro- 

 duced." Not one of these thirty-five "superior seedlings," 

 to my knowledge, is now in cultivation. They have disap- 

 peared in less than fifteen years ; and yet I have no doubt 

 that on the grounds of Prince & Co. they gave remarkable 

 promise. 



Again, a fruit grower sends out second and third rate 

 kinds from defective knowledge. He has not judiciously 

 compared his petted seedlings with the superb varieties al- 

 ready in existence. It is soon discovered by general trial 

 that the vaunted new-comers are not so good as the old ; 

 and so they also cease to be cultivated, leaving only a 

 name. 



The editor of the " Rural New Yorker " has adopted a 

 course which would be very useful indeed to the public, if 

 it could be carried out in the various fruit-growing centres 

 of the country. He obtains a few plants of every new vari- 

 ety offered for sale, and tests them side by side, under pre- 

 cisely the same conditions, reporting the results in his paper. 

 Such records of experience are worth any amount of theory, 

 or the half-truths of those who are acquainted with but few 

 varieties. I tested fifty kinds last year in one specimen- 

 bed. The plants were treated precisely alike, and permitted 

 to mature all their fruit, I being well content to let eight or 

 ten bushels go to waste in order to see just what each vari- 

 ety could do. From such trial-beds the comparative merits 

 of each kind can be seen at a glance. Highly praised new- 

 comers, which are said to supersede everything, must show 

 what they are and can do beside the old standard varieties 

 that won their laurels yeats age. I thus learn that but few 

 can endure the test, and occasionally I find an old kind 

 sent out with a new name. When visiting fruit farms in 



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