The Canadian Horticulturist 233 



PACKINCx AND MARKETING FRUFF. 



ilCKING, marketing and selling are all factors so important and so 

 well understood that it would seem of little use to mention them, and 

 yet often choice fruit is so badly handled in picking and so neglected 

 in sorting and packing that it cannot be sold with profit to the pro. 

 ducer. The fact is, that many good men, conscientious as to every- 

 thing else, are exceedingly neglectful, to say the least, in handling 

 their fruit, and then complain bitterly because their commission merchant, or 

 whoever handles it, fails to render returns corresponding with quotations on 

 choice grades. My friends, " this ought not so to be." A man's name or num- 

 ber on a package of fruit should be a guarantee of its quality, and instances 

 there are where such is the case, in which fruit, bearing such and such trade 

 marks, is sold every year far above market quotations. Such fruit, however, is 

 carefully graded, and everything at all imperfect is marked nuviber two on the 

 package. Better that all should be marked number two than that your character 

 should bear the stigma of that work. A few years since, early one morning 

 while looking over the markets in one of our eastern cities, and engaged in con- 

 versation with a salesman, a passing buyer enquired the price of some quinces. 

 The quotations given were one dollar per keg higher than the market rates. 

 This raised a question from the purchaser, which was answered at once by the 

 salesman as follows : " Those are guaranteed good, sir ; no imperfect specimens 

 in those packages. We never open packages that carry that mark. If they do 

 not bear our recommend, return them at our expense and we will return your 

 money." It so happened that I knew who they were from, and I should say 

 that the adoption of this careful plan of putting up their fruit has led to a large 

 direct trade as between the consumer and producer, by means of which 

 the party frequently saves the expense of middleman, and in addition gets 

 extreme outside prices for their fruit. The fruit grower cannot too carefully 

 guard his reputation for honesty and fair dealing, and I am sure a strict adher- 

 ence to such principles on the part of all would greatly aid to raise the character 

 and value of the products of Western New York fruits, to a point where they 

 would command the highest price of any upon the market. — S. D. Willard, 

 Geneva, N. Y. 



Cranberries in America. — Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Michigan, writes to the 

 London Garden, that " it is only thirty years ago that the Cranberry was known 

 in a wild state ; now it is much improved, and several good varieties have been 

 produced. He states that in New Jersey alone there are some 5,200 acres 

 under cranberry culture ; that the leading cranberry-growing States are Massa- 

 chusetts (near Cape Cod), New Jersey, Wisconsin and Connecticut, and that the 

 entire crop in the United States last year from cultivated plants was probably 

 not far from 600,000 bushels. 



