46 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the Baldwin, it would be a very poor apple. The same is 

 true of many other varieties. They are only valuable when 

 grown under favorable circumstances, but if neglected, the 

 fruit is very poor. My advice would be to throw away all 

 your poor apples, and raise only good ones. If I were 

 afflicted with them, and could not sell' them, I would feed 

 them out. I have no doubt that they would make milk, but- 

 ter, and cheese. But I can tell you one thing : Baldwin 

 apples fed out before they are ripe, I don't think are worth 

 two cents a bushels. I would feed them out when they 

 mature, when they contain the greatest amount of sugar; 

 when you would eat them yourselves they are fit for cattle, and 

 when you would not eat them they are not. I know that, in 

 the case of the pear. I feed a great many Bartletts to my 

 dairy cows, and I find the Bartlett pears, falling early, are 

 good for nothing for a cow ; they dry her up. When they 

 begin to taste like pears, when they begin to be juicy and 

 sweet, when a man likes to get a bite out of one side for him- 

 self, then the cows will like them ; and when they become 

 mature, they will increase enormously the production of milk, 

 butter, and cheese. It is the same with apples as with pears. 

 You may feed fall Apples to your cows in the fall, and they 

 will like them, and produce a greater amount of milk and 

 butter. If you want to feed Baldwins, take them when they 

 are just ready to eat ; and the time to eat any apple is fif- 

 teen minutes before it begins to decay. It is not fit to eat 

 until it begins to decay, because it begins to decay as soon as 

 it is ripe. That is the time when it reaches perfection, and 

 then it is just fit to eat. Now, don't feed out apples next 

 spring with the expectation that they are going to make milk 

 as they did in November. 



Mr. Kinney. There seems to be one point which is not 

 settled, which I am very anxious to see settled, if it can be 

 intelligently, and that is in regard to the production of a crop 

 of apples on the odd years. The Hon. J. F. C. Hyde, last 

 year or the year before, you will recollect, gave us a very fine 

 address upon apples, in which he spoke of visiting an orchard 

 that he had heard had been brought into bearing on the odd 

 years by some artificial means, and the man made the busi- 

 ness of raising apples very profitable. He said the man did 



