204 PROPERTIES OF MARKET FRUITS. 



too sanguine disposition of the cultivator, some 

 trees be permitted to bear a crop which exhausts 

 their strength, such will generally recover them- 

 selves easily, while others become diseased and die. 

 The variety should be prolific. This is such a self- 

 evident condition of profitable culture, that it is 

 needless to enlarge upon it. The fruit should be 

 large and beautiful, even at the expense of quality. 

 The importance of this fact is acknowledged by all 

 cultivators for the market. The great popularity 

 of the Bartlett Pear is owing, in a measure, to its 

 size and beauty. The Windsor, or Summer Bell, is 

 very large and handsome, but of poor quality ; yet 

 it sells in our market at a better price than many 

 really superior varieties. The size of the fruit is of 

 more importance to the producer than he may at 

 first imagine, not only on account of his imme- 

 diate profit realized from the sale, but also by reason 

 of the exhaustion of his trees. On a superficial in- 

 vestigation, one might decide that the production of 

 a larger fruit weakened the tree more than a small 

 one. But that which expends the strength of an- 

 imals and plants is the formation of the ofi'spring. 

 This is not the fruit, but the seeds contained in it ; 

 the flesh which surrounds them no more exhausts 

 the tree in its growth than do the leaves ; for until 

 the ripening process commences they perform much 

 the same functions. Those varieties, like the Vicar 

 of Winkfield, whose fruit has hardly any or no 



