80 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 



for an outlet to our finest fruit and where we must look for 

 the greatest proflt on our finest varieties. Of course that 

 would not do with all varieties, we could only do so with the finest. 



Qaes. What sort of a barrel is best? 



Ans. Most fruit men would rather have good, clean flour bar- 

 rels for apple barrels than any oilier kind. Fill your barrel one- 

 third full and shake it down and fill up two or three times and put a 

 peck on top, and press in the head. Of course it bruises a few on top. 

 if you have large ones on the top and small ones in the centre they 

 will say that barrel will not run that way all through. ¥.\en if you 

 have to make two classes of No. I's, the largest size and another 

 size, doii't put thera in together. For you can make a barrel of 

 the largest size and call them fancy apples. Head them up and 

 press the head in and mark the other end of the barrel. It is well 

 to put a paper on both ends of the barrel Mr. Pope has a head 

 made of paper stuffed with excelsior I think, which protects the 

 apples. 



Mr. Pope: The cracker barrels come with pasteboard tops and 

 the apple packers in our portion of the State use them for laying^ 

 over the bottom of the barrel, then place the apples in and place 

 one over the apples before you put the head in I have been mak- 

 ing a head of pasteboard covered with one-half inch of excelsior 

 and putting one in for the bottom facing and then putting one on 

 the top which prevents a great deal of this bruising and the Hosloa 

 commission men said it was just the thing. If you are going to 

 get $0 00 or $7.00 per barrel instead of $2.00, it will pay you to 

 take considerable pains. You can make these at home and if 3'ou 

 are going to get $1.00 or $1 50 per barrel more you can afford to 

 take the pains. I think a peck is a little too many to put on top, 

 there is such a thing as pressing them in too hard. 



Mr. Knowi.ton : It is a curious fact to me that you may go 

 through our own State, I don't know how it is here because I have 

 had no o[)portunity of going to the stores here with respect to it^ 

 but almost everywhere in Maiue you go into our retail stores you can- 

 not find good dessert apples. If you find apples at all they are 

 very likt-ly to be of the kind Miss Harrows described, heaped into 

 a barrel, all sorts, not very good ones, twos and threes together 

 and perhaps two or three different varieties. Now it seems to me 

 that it would be wise for us as fruit growers and fruit sellers to 

 practice here at home some^of the doctrines we prej.ch, with refer- 



