No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 175 



apples a specialty ; they do not make the crop a special crop. 

 As I stated in the paper, they grow some other crop on the 

 ground as the principal crop, and then they take what apples 

 they can get. To give a good illustration, I will say that I 

 attended an institute meeting in Mr. Cruickshanks' neigh- 

 borhood in 1888. That was one of the most abundant years 

 for apples in Massachusetts, and the apple was the subject 

 for discussion, and after I had spoken half a dozen men were 

 on their feet at once. They said, " You have told us how 

 to grow the apples. Will you be kind enough to tell us 

 how to sell them? We have our cellars full, and we cannot 

 sell them for enough to pay for packing, barrelling and mar- 

 keting." Dr. Fisher was in the audience, and I said, "I 

 have been talking an hour, and there is a man here who has 

 had experience and can answer that question better than I 

 can," and asked the Doctor to respond to that inquiry. The 

 Doctor was a very modest man. He said, " I do not know as 

 I am prepared to do it. I have not sold my fruit. I usually 

 sell it the first or second week in February. I have about 

 two hundred barrels of winter fruit which I propose to sell. 

 We hear a good deal about the price being very low, but I 

 shall be disappointed if I do not get a fair price for my fruit, 

 for I have been growing it here now for thirty-four years. 

 I have never had occasion to complain of the price I got for 

 my fruit, and I never had better fruit than I have this year. 

 I have been over and thinned my fruit." Some of the farm- 

 ers smiled, and he said, "I notice some of the farmers 

 smiling at thinning apples, but I have always done it, and I 

 have always found it to pay. It does not make much differ- 

 ence whether you pick them in June or October. You will 

 pick them in October if you do not pick them in June. If 

 you pick off one-half in June, what you leave for October 

 will be worth picking." Well, some time after that, — I 

 knew the parties that were selling the Doctor's fruit, and I 

 stepped in and asked them what they were paying for apples. 

 One of the proprietors said, " Well, we are paying from 

 seventy-five cents to $1 a barrel for what we get. The apples 

 are very poor." He knocked the heads out of two or three 

 barrels and showed me their condition. I told him of Dr. 

 Fisher's confidence that he should get a fair price for his apples 



