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no more ? I will tell you. It takes a nurseryman four years to raise one of these 

 trees four feet high. It is a little growing thing then. It is quite hardy, but it 

 grows so slow that farmers will not have them. If an agent came to deliver Cox's 

 Orange Pippin, such as the best nurserymen grow, the farmer would kick him off 

 his premises. Thus the farmers are destroying their own trade by wanting an extra 

 fine looking tree. They simply compel nurserymen to grow worthless varieties 

 because they make the finest tree. We want to do away with this idea. 



A Member — What is the season for Cox's Orange Pippin ? 



Mr. Dempsey. — December and January. It may be kept easily through Jan- 

 uary with care. It is a very fine apple in JSTovember. From all the accounts that I 

 have been able to gather, the fruits grown in the interior of Eussia are dwarf-grow- 

 ing. They gi'ow low. I have a tree in my garden that is very hardy. It origin- 

 ated in the north of Scotland and has been producing a good crop of apples everj- 

 year for the last 12 or 15 years; yet it is no bigger than a currant bush now. It 

 makes a healthy growth every year. It is a very hardy variety, and would grow in 

 Ottawa or anywhere in Canada. The snow protects it. Nearly the whole tree is 

 under the snow. The apple is also very fine; but we do not want to grow such 

 little trees. We can grow something that becomes larger and more profitable — not 

 more productive on the whole, because you could grow these trees four feet apart, 

 and I believe an acre of them would be remunerative. Now, I have it in my mind 

 that nothing would pay us better than to adopt the principle of packing our fruits 

 in these little boxes ready for the retailer to sell in this market or the Montreal 

 market, or in any other market in the world. I am satisfied we cannot get such prices 

 here for fancy pears and apples as in Covent Garden Market, London ; but we can 

 certainly get better prices by shipping them in that shape. The cost would not 

 exceed ten cents for a box that would hold a dozen Bartlett pears or a dozen Flemish 

 Beauty pears. Supposing that box would sell in our market at 30 or 40 cents, 

 would it pay us very much moi'e than the prices we receive by tlie barrel, even 

 by leaving out all our culled f''uit to feed to the pigs, such as we sometimes ship 

 in barrels? I fancy that these little boxes can be gotten up for perhaps four cents 

 apiece, because they can be made of a thin stuff, such as we make baskets of, and 

 cheaper than the crate basket holding the same quantity. Now, for shipping in 

 baskets I find invariably that the basket that is a little slanting keeps the fruit 

 better and stands shipping better than one that is perpendicular. It should be a little 

 slanting to the bottom and arranged some way that that part is always kept down. 

 The fruit is wedged in that way, and if that one side can be kept down, the 

 apples can never roll and chafe about. You can understand the advantage of hav- 

 ing a package a little slanting where there is more than one thickness or one tier deep. 

 Now something has been hinted about perforated barrels. I don't want to oppose 

 any enterprise of that kind. It may be proved to be of very great advantage to us 

 to use the perfor:ited barrel or the open package, but that is not in accordance with 

 my experience. I find that if our fruit is packed a little warmer than the temperature 

 is likely to be when it leaves our hands in a close package it invariably carries better 

 and is safer than where it is in open packages and the fruit cooler than when we 

 pack it. When the fruit is cooler than the surrounding atmosphere, j^ou will almost 

 invariably find condensing moisture from the surrounding atmosphere, and the pack- 

 age becomes wet, and the result is decayed fruit. Almost invariably, I fancy, if our 

 fruits could be packed in the same temperature that they would have when they are 

 put in the hold of the ship they would carry j)erfectly safe, but as a general thing 

 they go to the hold of the ship cool and they are put in this warm place. They 

 condense a large amount of moisture, and in a short time you will,find water running 

 out of the package on board the ship. I have seen this thing, and I know what the 

 effect is exactly. My friend, Mr. Allan, was speaking to you about delays in ship- 

 ping. Just here I want to give you an idea. The steamship companies are not all 

 to blame, and a practical illustration is better than any other way for you to under- 

 stand how these things work. A certain gentleman whom I know started out with 

 a carload of apples last fall to come to Ottawa with them. He had a stove in the 



