THIRTY-THIRD BIENNIAL SESSION 
59 
and the larger the apples were and the sourer they looked the better they 
sold. A row of Russians, twenty or thirty varieties, has made me more 
money than Jonathan, S^weet Bough, Dyer, Celestia, Early Joe, Summer 
Pearmain, Bennie and the like, and not one of the Russians fit to eat, hardly 
fit to cook. 
A Kieffer pear has a rank flavor that unfits it for my eating, raw or 
canned, but it sells higher because of size and color than many superior 
kinds. 
WHY THE AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY SHOULD RENAME THE 
BEN DAVIS APPLE. 
W. S. Perrine, Illinois. 
Judging from the number of persons on the program for this session, 
the program committee evidently expected that a lot of us should either 
be absent or very brief. If they expect me to be absent, they and you 
are sadly disappointed; if they expected me to be brief, I will try to comply. 
I am not here to offer an apology for the Ben Davis for it needs none; 
nor am I going to apologize for being a grower of the Ben Davis. I feel 
ashamed only when we grow a crop of low grade Ben Davis or none at all. 
At our home, we use it exclusively for cooking, preferring it to any other 
variety we grow. For eating, we prefer, of course Jonathan, Grimes, Akin 
or Winesap. We do not need the name changed in order to sell our Ben 
Davis profitably, if they are good. 
A friend of mine, at picking time a year ago this fall, sent a quantity 
of his Ben Davis to the New York market on consignment and, even in 
that season of remarkably low prices, he received net at his Illinois shipping 
point, $3.00 per barrel. How many Baldwins sent to New York, on con- 
signment, at about the same time, netted the grower even in New York, 
$3.00? After all it is not so much a question of name or even variety, as 
it is of quality and grade and pack. 
I believe, however, that it would be of some advantage to the grower 
of the Ben Davis, in the Ben Davis section, if the variety were renamed. 
By the Ben Davis Section, we mean the strip of country that has a season 
long enough, but not too long, to properly bring the Ben Davis to maturity. 
In general I should say the Ben Davis Section lies between 38° and 41° 
latitude. In places the section may run considerably south, and possibly 
north of these lines. The Middle West is usually spoken of as being the 
Ben Davis Section, but I think it should be extended East to include West 
Virginia and Virginia and others, for I think they can grow about as good 
Bens as we of the Middle West, and no doubt they think better. You 
know there is a strong tendency among enthusiastic fruit growers in 
every section of the country to think and claim that their section produces 
the best fruit in the world. 
So much has been said against the Ben Davis, regardless of where 
grown, by prominent people throughout the country, that it has become 
