6o 
AMERICAN POMOEOGICAE SOCIETY 
quite popular to discredit this variety. This attitude has been developing 
for twenty-five years or more, until at present many people really think 
the Ben Davis is a poor apple. If the name were changed we should 
get away, to a certain extent, from this ungrounded prejudice. Then again 
the character and quality of the Ben Davis from the Ben Davis Section, 
is injured, in the markets of the East and of Europe, by the reputation 
of the variety as it is grown in Michigan, New York, New England and 
Canada. I do not think it is because their soil is not good enough to 
produce the fine flavor and delicate texture of the Ben Davis (laughter), but, 
as I understand, it is because their season is too short. It takes time to 
produce a Ben Davis properly. 
I say the Northern grown Ben Davis has established the reputation 
for the variety in the East and in Europe, so that when our Bens from 
the Middle West are sent East or exported,; they are affected adversely 
by this reputation. These facts are so well known and established, that 
exporters of Western Ben Davis usually mark them something else. It 
appears, therefore, incumbent upon this society to say what new name 
shall be given to this variety when grown in its own section as above 
designated; and it should also be made a penitentiary offense for any 
New York or other Northern grower of Ben Davis to use the new name 
(laughter). 
We cannot and do not grow the varieties of the Baldwin Section. They 
should not attempt to grow our variety, — the Ben Davis. 
Discussion. 
President Goodman: The question is the renaming of the Ben Davis, 
not varieties in general. I remember, if you will excuse me a moment, of 
Mr. Hale of Connecticut berating members of this Society and all of those 
who grow the Ben Davis, terribly, for ever growing it. That was out in 
the West, while he was visiting the Missouri State Pomological Society. 
I asked him if he ever grew a peach called the Elberta; he said he did, 
and I told him the same reasoning applied to the Elberta peach as he 
applied to the Ben Davis apple. No man who grows the Elberta peach 
can throw any stones at the Ben Davis apple grown in the West The 
whole thing calls up the question of adaptability. Mrl Perrine has struck 
the note when he says where it should be grown — it is a question of adapta- 
bility. Had you heard Mr. Henricksen, of the West Indies, you would 
have gotten three or four ideas of adaptability along this line; and that 
should be taken into consideration perhaps in this discussion of the Ben 
Davis apple. 
Mr. Scott: Is the Ben Davis grown easily in your section? 
Mr. Perrine: That is a leading question, Mr. Scott. We have large 
orchards of Den Davis at our place; like the typical commercial western 
orchard, we have had ninety per cent of our trees Ben Davis. We have been, 
and are now, cutting down some of those old solid-block Ben Davis orchards. 
We have too large a per cent of Ben Davis in the West and at our place. 
We would not want to grow all Grimes Golden, or all Jonathan, if a drug 
on the market; just so with the Ben Davis. We can grow too large a per 
cent of Ben Davis. 
