HOME FRUITS AS EDUCATORS 207 



responsibility for curbing public appetites for Apples and Peaches, 

 respectively, it seems safe to declare that no one fruit variety has 

 played such havoc with public taste as has the Kieffer Pear. The train- 

 loads of this whited sepulchre of a fruit that for the past twenty years 

 or more have flooded the large city markets have led the public to 

 believe that Pears in general are inferior fruits, fit only for canning, if 

 that. Even the Rartlett has had its skirts soiled by the commercialism 

 that prompts California growers to gather it too green and ship it to 

 Eastern markets where its consequently flat flavor belies its fine color 

 and thus begins what the Kieffer finishes, the suppression of the public 

 appetite. Thus the rising generation has had little chance to learn 

 the truth that the Pear is one of our richest, most luscious and delec- 

 table of fruits. 



To be sure the reaction against such bar sinister influences has set 

 in; men who have learned that the public is willing to eat really fine 

 Pears have begun to risk the difficulties of Pear culture and to plant 

 the choicer varieties, especially those that reach the market after the 

 California Rartlett season has passed. The rising generation may 

 therefore fare better than the present one. 



While this commercial growing of fine varieties speaks well for 

 the prospective improvement of public taste, it is just as much to 

 be desired that the family plantation should become as prominent as 

 in days of yore. In such plantations should be at least some of the 

 choice varieties too difficult to grow or too sparsely productive to be 

 considered for commercial ventures. For they certainly minister to 

 the aesthetic admiration of color, form, fragrance and flavor, to say 

 nothing of the pleasure of achievement in their production. Rut 

 they exercise a still more subtle and important influence: they main- 

 tain and pass on to the rising generation high standards of excellence 

 towards which commercial fruit ventures should always strive. 



Refore passing to our conclusion it seems necessary to criticize 

 adversely much of the present-day literature and many of the fruit 

 specialists of the agricultural colleges and experimental stations. The 

 great majority of the writings on fruit growing within the past twenty- 

 five or thirty years have too strongly emphasized commercial phases 

 and given too little heed to the stigmatized "amateur" features of fruit 

 growing as if these were of an inferior instead of a potentially superior 

 order. Amateurs are frequently connoisseurs. The writers seem to 

 have the dollar so close to their eyes that they can see nothing else. 

 As a matter of fact, the great authorities on fruit growing Coxe, 

 Kenrick, Prince, Wilder, Hovey, Rarry, Thomas, Manning, Lyon and 

 the two Downings were all amateurs, yet what does not the American 

 public and especially the fruit grower owe them? They made fruit 



