The Canadian Horticulturist. 277 



SELLING BY WEIGHT. 



NDOUBTEDLY it would be much fairer, both for buyer and seller, 



if all fruit could be sold by weight, just as grapes and black currants 



are often sold. An agitation for this mode of selling has been 



stirred up in Chicago, but the question is yet an unsettled one. 



Some dealers seem to think it would be almost impossible in a very 



busy season to weigh everything. Here is the opinion of two 



Chicago commission merchants on this question. 



Joseph Spies, No. loi South Water Street, says : 



■' I don't think that such a scheme would do at all. In the busy time we have all we 

 can do to handle the packages of fruit that come from different parts of the country with- 

 out weighing them. Our line is fruits. Packages are put up one size in one place and 

 another size somewhere else. We can't compel the people who put up the packages to 

 make them of uniform size. People can see for themselves how much they are getting, and 

 if tliey don't want to buy they needn't. Suppose that everything had to be weighed in 

 the strawberry season. It would take four times the help that is required now. We 

 want something that will require less help, not more." 



Manager Watson, of Porter Bros., Nos. 97 and 99 South Water Street, says : 



"It will never be practicable to sell fruits by weight, and it would not be to the 

 advantage of any person concerned. It would take so much time, in the first place, to 

 weigh everything. Now by 10 o'clock in the morning we have fruit shipped and on its 

 way to a thousand places out in the country. If we had to weigh everything we couldn't 

 get through by 10 o'clock at night. The weighing system would be a benefit to the 

 growers of small and inferior fruit. A given quantity of fruit that is small will pack 

 closer, and therefore weigh more, than the same amount of large, fine fruit. The growers 

 of fine fruit are the ones that attend to their business, and the ones that ought to be 

 encouraged, not the drones that neglect their gardens and nurseries and raise a stunted 

 growth. For the same reason weighing would not be to the advantage of the consumer. 

 Potatoes and other produce that have always been sold by the pound, or by the bushel on 

 a bases of so many pounds to the bushel, will probably continue to be sold by weight." 



Professional Tree Pruners. — They usually do much damage to the fruit 

 trees they get a chance at. I know of one young orchard in which the " pro- 

 fessional " had full sway. I am doubtful if it ever will recover from the cutting 

 it received. All the bearing wood had been cut away, and the bare limbs and 

 trunks of the trees were good places for the flat-headed borer. A tree in health 

 is so well protected by leaves that the sunlight seldom strikes limb or body, A 

 tree naturally needs no trimming, if it has plenty of room, and not interfered 

 with in any way ; but transplanted trees are in artificial condition ; they are cut 

 back more or less, and in most cases are left with too many limbs when set in 

 the orchard. A neat, compact tree will do the best every time, but better never 

 trim at all than employ a so-called tree-trimmer. Trees that grow like the Bald- 

 win should be started with open heads. The Greening will rarely get much too 

 thick if started a little open at first. The Bartlett is sufficiently open ; but the 

 top should be taken out sometimes when inclined to run too high. It costs too 

 much to gather the fruit when it is too far from the ground, and the men who 

 can handle long ladders are getting scarcer every year- — -J. T. Blackivell, in Rural 

 Ne7i> Yorker. 



