1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 139 



will, of course, delight yourself with a large number of 

 varieties. But for the market the Baldwin and Greening 

 are standards most reliable here in New England. The 

 Baldwin has a habit of failure upon certain light soils, — upon 

 the gravelly soils in our valleys. Upon our hills, with their 

 heavier soils, it is as hardy as any of our forest trees. The 

 Greening is sometimes discarded in certain places, but I 

 think you will agree with me that, take it one year with 

 another, you can pick as many bushels of good Greening 

 apples in a day as you can of any other variety. The Bald- 

 win, under peculiar circumstances, will bear more abuse 

 and rough handling, and under certain circumstances you 

 will gather more bushels of Baldwins ; but the Greening 

 grows larger, fairer, less seconds, and less waste, and as the 

 market demand is this year, it stands better than the Bald- 

 win. The early apples — the summer apples that are so 

 often wasted when we grow them — find a very fair market 

 in some years. This last year was an illustration of that fact. 

 Our early apples — the William's Favorite and the Porter 

 and the Pippins, that variety of early apples suitable for 

 cooking — bore a price in our market that was better than 

 we are enabled to get to-day for the leading winter sorts. 

 We had no competition this year from New Jersey and Long 

 Island, a section of country that often spoils our early apple 

 market. It is often the case that these early apples won't 

 pay for harvesting and sending to market. This year they 

 have paid better than those that are going to market at the 

 present time. 



I would say a word to some of you that may not be famil- 

 iar with our system of selling apples ; that in our section of 

 the State of Connecticut the supply has been very abundant 

 on the hills this year, and apple buyers have taken advan- 

 tage of the fact, and they come and buy the fruit by the car- 

 load. The farmers agree to deliver the fruit just as it is 

 picked from the tree. They agree to pick it, not shake it off 

 and bruise it, but they do not reject many of the small ones. 

 They take pretty nearly all of them, and the farmer delivers 

 them at the car at eighty-five cents a barrel. He empties 

 his barrels into the car. Well, that seems pretty small com- 

 pensation, and the report that apples in such a section are 



