74 STATE POMOLOGICAI, SOCIETY. 



Gardiner again," but he is very likely to say "I don't want any 

 more of these Maine apples. I will buy my apples next time 

 from Oregon, or California, or Colorado." We try and handle 

 our apples — this is a common-place, you see it in almost every 

 issue of every intelligent agricultural paper, but I don't think 

 it can be said too often — we try and handle our apples exactly 

 as if they were eggs. And it is not only for the sake of this 

 year's crop, but of next year's crop. When a man takes an 

 apple between his thumb and finger and presses it hard, he is 

 pretty apt to make a bruise ; and if he yanks it off, he probably 

 yanks off next year's branch. It ought to be lifted properly 

 where it will come off at the hinge which the Lord has provided 

 for that apple. At the right place, if the apple is taken in the 

 hand so there is no pressure of the fingers, and lifted, it will 

 come off in the proper place and it will leave next year's bud 

 in the place where it ought to be. I think most careful orchard- 

 ists have pretty nearly eliminated the off year on apples, and I 

 think it is very largely due to care in picking. I won't say 

 mostly, but I think it very often happens that the reason why 

 there is an off year in apples is because so many of the next 

 year's buds have been pulled off in picking this year's apples. 



Now the matter of bruises. We had a good lesson, I think, 

 a number of years ago. We cultivated our trees with manure, 

 thoroughly rotted manure with some soil mixed in it. It was 

 almost as soft as a feather bed, just as soft as anything could be. 

 We had a number of apples blown off in a gale and they fell 

 down on this perfectly soft bed, just as if they had fallen on a 

 feather bed, and we picked them up and we couldn't see that 

 they had been damaged at all, and we wanted to sell them to the 

 gentleman in Boston who was then buying my apples. I told 

 him about it. We put them up in separate barrels and marked 

 them. "Well," he said, "you can send them up if you want to, 

 but they are not worth sending." "Well," I said, "we can't 

 see any trouble with them." "Well," he said, "you send them 

 up and I will keep them for you." We sent them up. He kept 

 them, I don't know how long, some weeks, but sure enough at 

 the end of those weeks, those apples on which we could not see 

 any bruises whatever when we first packed them, in the course 

 of weeks those apples developed bruises all over them. Finger 

 mark bruises will develop in just the same way. A man can 



