viii Preface, 
distances and cultivated systematically with labor- 
saving machinery. 
For these and other reasons, as well as for the 
fact that our fruits and their manufactured products 
are attractive and of good quality, I believe that the 
American fruit-grower will find an increasing market 
in Europe. But the greater the quantity sent abroad, 
the more discriminating will that market become; and 
it must be true that the brands and the varieties of 
inferior quality tend to supply the inferior markets. 
But if I believe that American fruit-growing is in 
advance of the European in its general commercial 
aspects, I am equally convinced that the European is 
in advance in growing for special and personal uses. 
The narrowness of the enterprises, the competition im 
restricted areas, the respect for traditional methods and 
varieties, conserve the very elements which appeal 
to the discriminating consumer, while, at the same 
time, they develop great skill in the fruit-grower. 
The care which is bestowed on individual plants, the 
niceties of exposure and of training, the patient hand- 
work, may almost be said to develop personal traits 
in the fruits themselves. Such fruits may not find a 
place in the open market, but for that very reason 
they may have a higher commercial value. 
At the head of a little valley, closely shut in by 
the Alps, is a famous apple orchard. The trees are 
trained upright on the opposite sides of a double espa- 
lier or trellis, the sides of which are less than two feet 
apart. In each of these rows, the trees are two to 
four feet asunder. These trellises are perhaps ten feet 
