1896 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
549 
THE VALUE OF NEW VARIETIES. 
ARE THEY WORTH HIGH PRICES ? 
Last year a reader said that he was trying the 
Koonce pear, and Triumph peach, and that the 
nurseryman fills his pocket with our cash, for the ex¬ 
orbitant prices charged for these new fruits, while 
the growers wait for years to realize whether they 
are of any value or not. Does he realize that some 
toiling originator or experimenter has, prior to this, 
spent years of hard work and study, and considerable 
money, in many instances, to produce these fruits, 
and that failure more often than success, has been his 
reward ? Mr. Husted, the originator of the Triumph 
peach, has, for years, tried to produce a yellow free¬ 
stone peach as early as Amsden or Alexander, and 
after numerous crosses, and waiting for years to see 
the result of his labor, it has come. Now, does any 
fair-minded fruit grower believe that it would be fair 
for Mr. Husted to grow and sell the Triumph trees 
for five or six cents, the price usually paid for peach 
trees ? If so, what is to pay him for his time, trouble 
and cash expended in producing what must become 
one of the most valuable varieties of peaches yet in¬ 
troduced ? The nurserymen who bought this variety 
from him for propagation, had to pay $1 per tree, and 
take a certain number besides. Can they afford to 
grow and sell these trees at the same price they get 
for standard varieties ? Besides, they must advertise 
it, and must have many trees left unsold, because it 
is a new thing, hence the price must cover all these 
contingencies. 
It is but a few years since Crawford’s Early was 
our earliest yellow variety; but now the St.John 
comes ahead of it, and here is the Triumph still 
earlier. Whether it will succeed generally, is yet to 
be decided ; but wherever Alexander is a success, it 
is likely to he. My opinion is that originators and 
introducers have been poorly paid for what they have 
done for American horticulture E. W. Bull, the 
originator of the Concord grape, died a poor old man, 
as R. N.-Y. readers know, when the discovery of *this 
valuable variety, which made grape growing what it 
is to-day in this country, should ha7e given him a 
comfortable fortune at least. Luther Burbank has 
expended, in five years, $25 000 in his experiments to 
produce new and valuable varieties ; and is it any 
wonder that he asks from $500 to $2 500 for a single 
tree of them ? Or is it any wonder that a nursery¬ 
man buying these fruits for introduction, is compelled 
to ask a big price in order to meet expenses ? 
The Wilson and Bubach strawberries, Elberta 
peach, and Ben. Davis apple, were untried novelties 
a few years ago. The inventor of a harvesting ma¬ 
chine or an electric motor dies a millionaire, while 
the originator of a new fruit can never obtain much 
more than a fair competency for what it has required 
just as much brains and labor to produce. An injus¬ 
tice is often done the tree-planting public by unedu¬ 
cated and unprincipled tree agents who sell old 
varieties as novelties long after they have ceased to 
be such. Agents are still canvassing this country 
selling the Keiffer pear, Elberta and Globe peaches, 
and Abundance and Burbank plums, as new varieties, 
at big prices, when any of these may be bought from 
the average nurseryman for a fair price. Riding out 
a few days ago, I saw a row of apple trees, and asked 
the man what they were. He said, “ I bought them 
of Mr. H-for Red Astrachan, but they turn out 
Yellow Transparent.” He had set some pear trees, 
and I asked what he paid for them, “ Fifty cents 
apiece,” he said. “I got them from an agent.” He is 
within two or three miles of two first-class nurseries, 
where he could have seen the trees growing, advised 
with the nurseryman, and got the same trees for 10 
or 12 cents. Such cases are common, and many of 
these are the men who get taken in on new varieties, 
and say that they don’t amount to anything. 
Every fruit grower should, certainly, test such new 
varieties as he thinks might suit his conditions, and 
if he find some of them good, he can tell then how 
many to plant. If he neglect to do this, some years 
after, he will be told by some one that he ought to 
plant such and such a variety, and may go into it on 
a big scale only to find it not suited to his needs, 
when, if he had tested a few trees in the beginning, 
even at an “ exorbitant price,” he would have saved 
many dollars later on by knowing that it is really 
worthless. 
There are those who believe that fruit growing is 
not beyond the point where our forefathers found it. 
These are pessimists of the worst sort, and they con¬ 
stantly contend that it is overdone and can never 
pay in the future. There is, and always will be, an 
overproduction of a common quality, and of those 
sorts that are easily produced by the careless grower. 
Of the finer varieties that it requires some skill to 
produce, there is hardly ever overproduction, but 
often a lack of proper distribution. With the enor¬ 
mous apple crop this season, good apples sell readily 
in our local market for 35 to 40 cents for a %-bushel 
basket, and I am told that the Olden Fruit Co., of 
Missouri, had recently 20,000 barrels of fine Ben 
Davis, for which they had refused $2 per barrel. 
This doesn’t look much like overproduction. 
Delaware. _ chas. weight, 
APPLES AND APPLE BARRELS. 
FIRST-CLASS FRUIT, AND FULL-SIZED PACKAGES. 
In The R N.-Y. of July 4, an answer was given to 
the question, What is a barrel ? The loss experi¬ 
enced by shippers, and the trouble undergone by 
dealers, by reason of the small-sized barrels many of 
them persist in using, were pointed out. A barrel 
isn’t a barrel with many shippers, when it is re¬ 
garded as a unit of measure. The grower of fruits or 
vegetables loses much more than he gains by using 
these inferior sized packages. But it is the hardest 
work in the world to make many of these people be¬ 
lieve so. They seem to imagine that they can pack 
their apples, potatoes, etc., in barrels holding a peck 
less than they should, sell them as regular sized pack¬ 
ages for full prices, and no one be the wiser. There 
never was a greater mistake. The dealers in these 
articles are no fools. They know a standard barrel 
when they see one, and they also recognize a pony 
barrel without any difficulty when one of them 
comes into view. 
Dealers and different organizations have been 
doing their best to bring these facts home to ship¬ 
pers, for years. One year, many went so far as to 
say that they would not buy apples packed in small 
barrels, but that was a year of a short crop of apples, 
and the competition was so keen, that buyers ended 
by taking everything they could get, regardless of 
the size of the package. Not so, this year; the crop 
is large, and the probabilities are that buyers will be 
more particular. A meeting was held in Boston a 
few weeks ago, which was largely attended by the 
apple dealers and buyers of that city and vicinity. 
They unanimously adopted the following : 
We, the undersigned, feeling that it is for the mutual interest of 
buyers, dealers, and growers of apples to have the fruit packed 
in barrels of uniform size, hereby, 
Resolve , that we recognize as the standard barrel for apples, a 
barrel which shall not be smaller than the capacity of a flour 
barrel, which is 17*4 inches in diameter of head, 28*4 inches in 
length of stave, and of regular bulge, being the same as adopted 
by the National Apple Shippers’ Association, and we hereby 
agree not to buy, directly or indirectly, apples that are packed in 
smaller barrels. We recommend that the heads be of hard wood. 
This is good advice, and is well worthy the atten¬ 
tion of apple shippers. Messrs. Lawrence & Co., of 
Boston, extensive handlers of domestic and foreign 
fruits, send us the following : 
On account of the very heavy quantity of apples that promises 
now to be marketed the coming season, we would strongly advise 
that only the No. 1 fruit be shipped to local and foreign markets. 
In this way, the business will be done with less trouble, and be 
more satisfactory and remunerative to farmer, shipper and 
dealer. It looks now as though it would not pay to handle any 
inferior apples this season. The farmer will be better off to use 
them as fertilizer or feed them to the stock. 
" MUSCLE-MAKERS” “ FAT FORMERS,” 
" PURE FAT.” 
ANOTHER SCIENTIST TO THE FRONT. 
The R. N.-Y. submits with more grace to the 
hypercriticism of Mr. Morse, page 506, than my own 
polemic spirit is prepared to accord him. When I 
studied chemistry, I was taught that the term carbo¬ 
hydrates was not well chosen, for the reason that it 
is a misleading expression, and that there is, as yet, 
but little known about the atomic structure of carbo¬ 
hydrates. We know that they contain carbon, hydro¬ 
gen and oxygen, and always two atoms of hydrogen 
to one of oxygen, but the proportions of these two to 
carbon vary greatly. How, then, can this uncertain 
term express, with a certainty, exactly what we are 
feeding ? The term, protein, is worse still. Proteids 
contain carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and 
sulphur, but no living chemist has, as yet, ventured 
to write out a formula that will more than represent 
about their average composition. The two words, 
protein and carbohydrate, convey to the chemist a 
certain “ shorthand ” general meaning similar to the 
symbols he uses in his formulas, all of which are as 
unintelligible to the masses as the printer’s “slug” 
outside of his own office. What would the farmer 
think if The R. N.-Y. were to advise him to apply 
100 pounds of “ K Cl ”, instead of muriate of potash ? 
Both mean the same, with the difference that the 
chemist would see that to every 39 pounds of valu¬ 
able potash, are hitched 35.4 pounds of worthless 
chlorine. According to Mr. Morse, however, The R. 
N.-Y. should use the formula, K Cl, because it ex¬ 
presses “ the exact meaning of the chemical composi¬ 
tion of the substance named.” Every man has a right 
to use expressions and abbreviations that are under¬ 
stood by his class, but when he speaks to the masses, 
he must use the language of the masses, or he might 
as well keep his mouth shut. 
On the other hand, everybody has a right to coin 
words that convey to the masses the meaning intended, 
and this the words “ muscle-makers ” and “ fat- 
formers,” as used by The R. N.-Y., certainly do. A 
study of an unabridged dictionary ought to convince 
Mr. Morse that his objections to the words are far 
from well founded. I wonder whether his cows 
“ gave ” milk, or whether he took it from them. If 
he ever “ made ” money, it is strange that the Govern¬ 
ment did not punish him for it. To water, means “ to 
wet or overflow with water.” Is that the way he 
treated his thirsty horse? When he got “soaking” 
wet, how did his mother wring the water out of him ? 
When he “raised” crops, how high did he elevate 
them ? This is on a par with his objections. Even a 
careless reader of Primer Science must have under¬ 
stood the meaning of muscle-makers, fat-formers and 
pure fat. There was no need of such expressions as 
“hair-formers, hoof-makers,” etc., on the principle 
that the greater includes the less, unless one wish to 
be like the man who, after cutting a large hole in the 
door for the cat, also cut a small one for her kittens 
to pass. The three plain English terms express the 
points of most interest to the farmer, knowing, as he 
does, that, with these three exactly right, the rest 
will take care of themselves. It is not so much the 
analysis as the synthesis that the farmer needs. He 
needs to know how to put his feed together to produce 
the best results. This The R. N.-Y. has fairly taught, 
and its plain, expressive terms have aroused a greater 
interest than all the scientific terms put together 
would have done. A careful examination into the 
matter must convince anyone that the objec'ions 
urged against The R. N.-Y.’s terms apply with much 
greater force to the scientific (?) terms in vogue. 
Virginia. j. c. senger. 
The School of Agriculture of the Pennsylvania 
State College has a Chautauqua course of home rt ad- 
ing and study for the farmer. The course covers the 
general subjects of crop and animal production and 
horticulture. The books in this course have been 
selected with special reference to the needs of the 
practical farmer and his family, and arrangements 
have been made with publishers by which these books 
are furnished to members of the circle at reduced 
prices. But this college does not let the matter rest 
there. It has found that this course of reading must 
be pressed upon the attention of farmers, and has ap¬ 
pointed a superintendent, whose duty it is to visit the 
institutes and other farmers’ meetings and explain 
this system of home study, which includes some 
instruction by letter from the college when desired, 
and also examination and granting of diploma when 
the course is satisfactorily completed. The course is 
pressed upon the notice of the farmers. The result is 
that, frequently, 15, 20 or 25 persons at a single insti¬ 
tute point ask for certificates of membership. This is 
the right method for an agricultural college to pursue. 
The masses will not seek a scientific agricultural 
education unsolicited. These colleges are maintained 
by -the peoples’ money, and large sums are being ex¬ 
pended upon them. A little of this money cannot be 
more wisely used than in carrying a course of reading 
to the people. In no other way, can a college so 
surely impress upon the farmers the fact that agri¬ 
cultural science has helpful facts for practical men. 
Young men will be drawn to the college as students, 
and the college will get into closer touch with the 
masses. There is a prejudice in the minds of many 
against our land-grant colleges, and the charge has 
been freely made that the great majority of them are 
not doing anything for agriculture, and are not in 
sympathy with the plain, practical farmer. The 
scheme just noticed will do much to dispel the preju¬ 
dice, and to convince the people on the farms that the 
college can help them and desires to do so. This is a 
move in the right direction. 
BUSINESS BITS. 
The Star hame fastener is a very handy device to take the place 
of the hame strap. It is inexpensive and offers good induce¬ 
ments to agents. Write the Star Hame Fastener Co., 80 Dearborn 
Street, Chicago, Ill. 
Every sheep should he dipped some time in the fall to insure 
comfort by freedom from insects during the winter. The United 
States Government has just purchased a large quantity of the 
Cooper dip in preference to any other. The address is Cooper & 
Nephews, Galveston, Tex. 
Game may now be sold in New York during the year, provided 
it was not killed in the State, or within 300 miles. The open sea¬ 
son for many kinds of game in the State is also at hand. Wm. H. 
Cohen & Co., 229 Washington Street, New York, are ready to 
handle it and other kinds of produce. 
Until recent years, the development of labor-saving machinery 
for handling the potato crop has not kept pace with the growth 
of the industry. The potato planter and digger were the first to 
cheapen the cost of production. The Champion potato sorter 
promises to be another great labor saver, and relieves the potato 
grower from the tedious task of sorting his crop by hand. It is 
manufactured by the American Road Machine Co., Keunett 
Square, Pa., which will cheerfully send full particulars upon 
application. 
