92 JOUENAL' CF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Then we ouglit to be able to purchase fruits by name as to 

 variety. To the farmer's mind not so many years ago everything 

 green upon the face of the field was grass. To the mind of the 

 average citizen or citizen's wife anything that is round, and that 

 has been plucked from a tree in an orchard, is an apple ; it 

 matters not whether it be a flavourless Crab or a Golden Pippin 

 — it is an apple ; but we want to initiate the public into a know- 

 ledge that certain apples carry with them certain qualities and 

 certain flavours, and we want then to show that precisely what 

 they want can be supplied. There are advertisements in con- 

 nection with domestic commodities which seem to suggest the 

 grave importance of your being sure you get somebody's starch 

 when you ask for it. The same caution should be applied in the 

 pomological department, and when the cook finds out that a 

 certain kind of apple can be depended upon for a certain quality, 

 we should find the beginning, too, of a more definite order of 

 things. 



Another great impetus to the home prqduct might be insured 

 if, at railway stations and other places where the public gather 

 themselves in masses, English fruit could be obtainable instead 

 of the everlasting French pears and American apples. And I 

 should like, if those ugly iron impedimenta called " automatic 

 deliveries," or some such wonderful name, are to be tolerated, 

 that they should, in response to the penny and the push, give 

 orchard plums instead of sugar plums, and apples ancl pears in 

 preference to chocolate or candy. 



Another idea that has long possessed me is the idea of the 

 selling of fruits from sample. According to present methods of 

 distribution a producer gathers his fruit and carries it away to 

 the markets, there to stand with a load of it until it is distributed. 

 Those who have learned the art of modern marketing have found 

 out that prices decline as the day wears on, for the grower does 

 not desire to cart part of a load home again. On the other 

 hand, there may be a system of " topping " — I may be excused if 

 I explain (for of this my present audience is doubtless ignorant) 

 that this implies a process, possibly accidental, by which the 

 larger, better fruits in a basket gravitate towards the top ! This 

 is, of course, open to the suggestion of unfairness on the other 

 side ; but if the grower submitted samples of his fruit just in the 

 way the farmer does who has grain or seeds to sell, an imme- 

 diate relief would result. 



A farmer does not think of carting the yield of his grain 

 fields to the open markets, but asks the merchant to buy upon 

 the sample placed before him in the market ; and he can sell or 

 hold as he then thinks best. He would then be in a less likely 

 position for the imposition of injustice. 



Then I think, in the interests of distribution, our leading 

 agricultural and horticultural societies — agricultural societies 



