206 HOME FRUIT GROWER 



The Ontario. village in which my boyhood was spent is typical 

 of hundreds from New England to Michigan and as far South as Mary- 

 land, if not of a much wider area. Practically every home had its 

 garden and fruit plantation, which often consisted of an acre or more. 

 Here I had unlimited free range in five fruit plantations, my father's, 

 my grandfather's and those of three uncles and a less restricted range 

 in many neighbors' gardens. Each of these had been planted to 

 meet the personal taste of the family and to furnish a liberal supply 

 of fruit throughout the whole year. Often the last of the Apples would 

 be taken from storage when the first of the Strawberries were gathered. 

 Again, since the smallest of these plantations was more than an acre 

 set in the interplanted plan, popular in those days, the aggregate was 

 a large list of varieties. Like many another boy of my day, while 

 still in my teens I knew intimately fifty or more varieties of Apples, 

 twenty-five or thirty of Pears, ten or fifteen each of Peaches, Grapes 

 and Plums, six or eight of Cherries and a goodly list of bush fruits and 

 Strawberries. This knowledge was fostered, supplemented and 

 extended by studying varieties at the county fair where many of the 

 boys, as well as their fathers, made exhibits. 



While a reasonable proportion of the boys in those days went 

 direct from school into some branch of farming and planted orchards 

 more or less like the ones I have described and while a few took up 

 commercial fruit growing, the majority went into other lines of business; 

 but among these last are many, the influence of whose boyhood led 

 them later in life to take up fruit growing either for business or pleasure. 

 So far as I have been able to discover, they have, with remarkably few 

 exceptions, chosen the varieties with which they were familiar during 

 boyhood. 



In those boyhood plantations fruits of low quality were con- 

 spicuous by their absence. Our fathers thought that what was not 

 good enough for them was not good enough for other people. They 

 turned deaf ears to the arguments that such varieties are robust, 

 prolific, have fine color and that the lowering of quality will not be 

 noticed by the public in general. They knew better perhaps than the 

 present generation of commercial fruit growers that nothing so tends 

 to develop an extensive demand as really fine fruit. For, to quote a 

 favorite proverb, "The remembrance of quality lives long after the 

 price has been forgotten." The man who eats a poor or indifferent fruit 

 will not be tempted soon to eat or buy again; whereas the man who eats 

 a good one wants another specimen right away. Not until money 

 making became the ruling passion in orcharding were low quality 

 fruits planted more extensively than for testing. 



Though Ben Davis Apple and Elberta Peach must bear much 



