No. 4.] VARIETIES OF APPLES. 61 



sprayed would produce more fruit than the rest of the or- 

 chard. Some good varieties have not been mentioned this 

 evening-. There is the Porter, grown on every farm. It has 

 the railroad worm, and so on, but spray it a little, and there 

 is no trouble in selling it. We should get authority from the 

 Legislature to make owners look after their old trees, or cut 

 them down. Take the Baldwin on the old stone wall, fertilize 

 one side, and you will have beautiful Baldwins for a few 

 years, until the grass takes the nourishment from it. I was 

 out west this summer in the apple country, and the conditions 

 they have to contend with and the places they have to live in 

 are terrible. In an automobile you have to keep your hands 

 over your eyes to prevent them being filled with dust. But 

 there is a market for all the apples grown, enough for each of 

 us to get our share. Nearly all the varieties mentioned to- 

 night, together with several others, are certainly, with proper 

 care, very profitable indeed. 



The CiiAiKMAN. We all know that early apples are usually 

 annual bearers, and I want to ask if this is not because the 

 crop comes off so early that the tree has a chance to recuper- 

 ate ? Also, if by thinning the later varieties so that they 

 would not bear so heavily we could throw them into annual 

 bearers ? 



Professor Seaes. I do not know about that first theory ; I 

 never heard it advanced, but it certainly seems reasonable. 

 As to the second, the tendency in thinning any kind of fruit 

 is to make it bear the next year ; if you reduce the crop one 

 year, you increase the crop the next year. Any of our crops 

 that pretend to be annual bearers will run lighter and heavier, 

 like the biennial bearers. 



Professor Rane. I tried some experiments in New Hamp- 

 shire on that line, and they were very unsatisfactory. We 

 took young, fruitful trees, about fifteen years of age, and 

 picked off all the fruit when small one year. The next year 

 they came into active bearing, but the following year we had 

 a frost when the trees were in bloom, and there they were 

 right back in the same year. 



The Chairman. I think if the experiment were tried with 



