STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 117 



Davis which I have exhibited here were apples that came from 

 the last plowed section. And the orchard which I kept in 

 grass has been well fertilized. I have fertilized it with hard 

 wood ashes, with stable dressing, commercial fertilizer, ground 

 bone and potash fertilizer, but it is impossible to keep up that 

 high quality of fruit. 



Now the mere statement of the number of barrels from each 

 orchard does not tell all the story. The rest of it is this : When 

 the first plowed section bore the one hundred and fifty barrels 

 of apples, just before we picked the fruit there was a severe 

 gale. On that section of orchard I picked up about forty bar- 

 rels of dropped fruit that I put by itself in the cellar. It hap- 

 pened that I shipped this dropped fruit from that orchard in 

 the same shipment, the same day and in the same sale with a 

 full carload of as good Ben Davis as you can buy through the 

 country — a fair quality of Ben Davis, No. i and No. 2. They 

 sold the same day, and the dropped apples from this cultivated 

 orchard sold for eighty-seven cents a barrel more ihan the 

 number ones and twos from the other lot. The cultivated 

 orchard produces fruit that will sell for a full dollar more per 

 barrel than the Ben Davis that are grown on my sod land, and 

 they will keep better. There is only about half the shrinkage. 

 Then, if you compare the expense of producing this high grade 

 of fruit with the expense of producing a low grade of fruit, I 

 can assure you that the high grade of fruit can be produced, at a 

 moderate estimate, at fifty cents a barrel less than the other, as 

 you produce so much more upon the same ground. It has 

 cost you the same to set out one tree that it has the other. You 

 have that whole investment to be borne by your crop of fifteen to 

 sixty barrels a year, while you have the same investment to be 

 borne by the crop of a hundred and fifty barrels a year. That 

 may seem a little doubtful, but it is an absolute fact that you 

 can produce this high grade of fruit cheaper than you can the- 

 lower grade. 



I am going to say just one word in regard to the Ben Davis. 

 I am perfectly willing that everyone should remain silent in 

 regard to the Ben Davis. I am not anxious that other people 

 should set out Ben Davis orchards, because it could easily be 

 overdone. But today in the United States there are more BerL 

 Davis raised, in my opinion, although I have not the figures,. 



