Specialty Fruit-Growing 33 



kinds of plants that machine-work is often impossible. 

 There are few orchards in most parts of Europe, as orchards 

 are understood in America, meaning an area devoted 

 exclusively to tree-fruits set at regular distances and culti- 

 vated 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, the American fruit-grower 

 should 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 American fruit-growing is in advance of the 

 European in its general commeBcial aspects, it is equally 

 true that the European is in advance in growing for 

 special and personal uses. The narrowness of the enter- 

 prises, the competition in restricted areas, the respect for 

 traditional methods and varieties, conserve the very 

 elements that appeal to the discriminating consumer, 

 while, at the same time, they develop great skill in the 

 fruit-grower. The care bestowed on individual plants, 

 the niceties of exposure and of training, the patient hand- 

 work, may almost be said to develop special 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 plantation. The trees are trained 

 upright on the opposite sides of a double espalier or treUis, 

 the sides of which are less than 2 feet apart. In each of 

 these rows, the trees are 2 to 4 feet asunder. These trellises 

 are perhaps 10 feet the one from the other, and between 

 c 



