66 ORCHARD FRUIT TREE CULTURE 



intelligent and reliable marketing as it does in freshness, flavour, 

 and quality. 



Quite obviously we cannot enter into a full discussion of this large 

 and interesting subject here, but we feel we cannot ignore it, and, 

 also, we have to redeem a promise we made when treating of tomatoes 

 in Vol. II. If we can do nothing more than arouse interest where 

 it has not yet been awakened, and directly lead to a closer study of 

 the matter, the little space we can here devote to it will be more 

 than justified. 



It will be most in keeping with the morale of this work if we 

 restrict our remarks to the methods of marketing the highest grades 

 of hardy fruit, rather than the grading and packing, in bulk, in 

 larger parcels. The barrel, the sieve, and the bushel box are very 

 suitable when ordinary graded crops are being packed, but are much 

 too large for the selected fruit we have in mind, for we are of the 

 opinion that the choicest selections of dessert, and even cooking, 

 fruit ought not to be sold by measure, but by count by the dozen. 

 If it pays the exporter of Tangerine oranges to wrap each orange 

 in silver paper, pack a dozen in a dainty box lined with laced paper 

 and send it several hundreds of miles, surely it would pay us to as 

 daintily pack choice dessert apples, pears, and gage plums ! Can 

 we suppose that the Tangerines would realize as much if they were 

 not so packed ? that the cost of packing was not more than covered 

 by the enhanced price ? The packers would smile if we suggested 

 the contrary. We argue, then, that if deft fingers and refined taste, 

 carefully trained and applied, are able to increase the net value 

 of our fruit to an appreciable extent and increase our sales at the 

 expense of our foreign competitors, then it is surely up to us to, 

 at least, give it a trial. The silver paper may stand aside as yet ; 

 but the dainty package, the wrapping of each fruit in tissue, wholly 

 or in part, and the artistic finish to the whole, is calculated to appeal 

 to buyers and would surely profit us. 



It has always appeared to us that the estimate we ourselves place 

 on the value of any produce finds its expression in the care we take 

 in packing it, and we have lived long enough to know that there 

 is more than a modicum of truth in the old adage, " The world 

 takes us at our own valuation." If by taking extra pains in the 

 packing of our fruit we prove to all and sundry that, in our estima- 



