104 THE APPLE-TREE 



bag slung over the shoulders but this is not the best way 

 when the apples are ripe. In the packing-house, the 

 fruits are sorted into uniform grades if they are for 

 market. 



The better the trees are tilled, pruned and sprayed, 

 the more uniform will be the crop, and particularly if 

 the fruit is thinned on the tree; yet the second-class and 

 even cull apples will be many under ordinary conditions. 

 The purchaser, noting the price of extra-grade apples, may 

 not realize that he buys only the remainder in a long 

 process of grading, extending really over the season or 

 even throughout the life of the orchard. In all this time, 

 the grower has borne the risks of frosts and hail, insect 

 and fungus invasions, lack of help, and disastrously low 

 prices. A finished product of high quality is always 

 expensive. 



The usual apples on the open market are not the kind 

 I have here tried to describe. They are the product of 

 indifferent orchards or of careless handling. They are 

 purchased for cooking; and the eating of apples out of 

 hand because they are attractive and really good is an 

 unknown experience with great numbers of our people. 

 The polished shiny apples of the fruit-stands are a de- 

 lusion. The practice of burnishing the fruits produces 

 a most inartistic result, destroying the natural bloom and 

 violating the appearance of a natural apple. It is one 

 thing to clean a fruit if it is soiled (which is seldom the 

 case with boxed or barreled apples) ; it is quite another 

 thing to rub and furbish an apple as if it were a billiard 

 ball or glass marble and not a living object that grew on 

 a tree, — it sets false standards before the children. Yet 

 all this is in line with much of our practice whereby, in 



