DETERMINATION OE VARIETIES. OD’ 
in orchards. Smothered fires spread abroad huge clouds of smoke and 
ward the moths off, besides suffocating a few of them. 
The ministry of the birds should also be invoked to keep down 
nsect pests by devouring eggs and grubs. The tom-tits and woodpeckers 
are of great service in this matter, and the bullfinches and chaffinches 
that devour so many buds, possibly also season their vegetable diet with 
a few caterpillars, grubs, and maggots at times. 
But the best remedy against diseases and insect pests is superior cultiva¬ 
tion. Establish and maintain apple trees in robust health, keep the 
stems free of parasites, including even the beautiful mistletoe bough 
where these abound. Leave no residuum of dirt or decomposition on 
trunk or branch to afford a foothold or breeding ground for vermin. 
Avoid overcropping, over or under feeding, and the chances are that 
the apple trees in garden or orchard will continue in good health, and 
yield full crops for a generation or more. 
Determination of Varieties. ' 
No one who has grown an extensive collection of apples but must have 
longed at times for some sure and certain method of determining different 
varieties. Apples, as everyone knows, differ greatly in form, size, 
character. Are these differences sufficiently constant to enable a careful 
observer to determine one apple from another ? Various attempts have 
been made (chiefly by foreign pomologists or botanists) to seize upon 
certain characteristics of wood, habit, leaf, flower, or fruit, to form a 
basis for the determination of varieties. 
Dr. Hogg (to whom British pomologists are already under great 
obligations) has recently advanced the most feasible theory on this 
subject. Taking the most constant and structurally important charac¬ 
teristics of the apple—such as the stamens, the calyx tube, the core 
cells, and the eye—Dr. Hogg shows that these features are sufficiently 
constant to form the basis of a useful classification for the determination 
of particular varieties. Of course, they are modified by seasons and 
circumstances, and it is seldom that each distinctive characteristic is 
found in the same degree of perfection. But in many cases one or two 
of the features being constant may suffice to determine varieties. The 
primary object of all classification is sure certification and—if this can 
