THE MODERN BEAR-QUICK APPLE 297 



form a bulk considerable enough to give the big tree a 

 stiff task in making up leeway. 



The small Bear-quick fruit tree is cheap, handy and 

 easy to manage. It will thrive in nearly every garden. 

 It likes least a bleak situation on shallow soil, for there 

 it is short of food and over-full of rough tumbling by cold 

 winds. It enjoys most a sheltered but not shady place 

 where the soil is deep and fertile. 



The Bear-quick tree is of several kinds Apple, Pear, 

 Plum, Cherry. Each has the same traits of compact 

 habit, surface rooting and early bearing. It takes its 

 character mainly from the stock on which it is grown. 

 Trees from seeds and cuttings rarely have the qualities 

 desired, and none but raisers of new varieties should 

 enter on the ill-requited task of handling them. 



The Bear-quick Apple is the king of garden fruits. It 

 is at once delicious and wholesome, stimulating and 

 sustaining. The small boy may groan over the green 

 Apple, but the chemist would groan over an empty shop 

 if a sound ripe Apple passed down his gloating gullet 

 morning and night till his life's end, which would be 

 long deferred. The boy and the green Apple form an 

 old, old jest. The man and the ripe Apple are becoming 

 dead earnest. 



The Apple, which is a naturally slow bearer, may be 

 quickened by a hustling stock, but there are some 

 varieties which will never allow themselves to be prodded 

 into early bearing. They are not necessarily bad Apples ; 

 they are only bad from the quick-bearing point of view. 

 You cannot call Blenheim Orange a bad Apple because 

 it is a slow bearer ; you can only say that it is out of 

 place in the Bear-quick collection. Intrinsically it is a 

 good Apple, but it is a plodder. It is not a piecework 

 variety ; it is one of the old school which believes in the 



