130 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
THE OLD BEN DAVIS. 
“ Bet a hen you don’t know what a Ben Davis apple 
is ! ” said a confident Steuben county man. “ Bet two 
hens! We people here in York State think we know a 
heap, but I’ll make it three hens that you can take in all 
the country between the Hudson and the lakes and you 
can’t find a man, woman or child that knows what a Ben 
Davis apple is. Leaving out me, of course. And I never 
knew what a Ben Davis apple was myself until I went to 
Egypt. That’s the country they grow the Ben Davis in, 
Egypt, Illinois. 
“ Say, we use up a good deal o’ wind talking about our 
apple orchards along the Hudson and out in Western 
New York, as if there hadn’t been any apples anywhere 
else since the crop Adam and Eve gathered, but I want 
to tell you we ain’t in it with Egypt No sir! Why that 
part of Egypt known as Clay county has got more than 
fifty thousand acres of apple orchards alone, and Wayne 
county has almost as many, with Richmond and Marion 
counties crowding Wayne’s heels pretty close. Was I set 
back when I went down into Egypt? Was I ? Well, it 
takes something to set a man from old Stooben back, and 
Egypt had it. 
“You see, I was traveling out that way, swelled up 
with the feeling that I was from the garden spot of all 
creation, if there was any garden spot, and I felt sorry for 
folks I met on the way that they were so far from old 
Stooben, and I s’pose I showed it. When I struck the 
prairies of Illinois a man who sat in front of me turned 
and said to me: ‘ Right smart turn of farmin’ land, 
stranger?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, almost inclined to tell the man I’d 
pay his fare if he’d go back with me and take a look at 
some real country, ‘ but there don’t seem to be much else 
but farming land. Now, where I live we bud and blos¬ 
som ! We bloom ! You don’t have any fruit out this 
way! You seem to be only of the earth earthy. Where 
I live we are of the fruit fruity! Ill fares the land, I said, 
to hastening^ ills a prey, where wealth accumulates from 
corn and hay! It used to be the caper, I said, but it 
don’t go now! Fruit! fruit is what you want and you 
ain’t got any.’ 
“‘Would apples come under that headin’?’ asked the 
man. ‘ I’m goin’ down into Egypt, now, to see some- 
Thar’s a few down there.’ I said I’d go, too, for I wanted 
to see what they called apples there. I hadn’t got far 
into Egypt before I heaved a sigh for old Stooben. I tell 
you right now that I’d never seen apples before. You 
could go for miles and see nothing but apple orchards and 
apples. And when they told me that they didn’t look on 
a man who only owned a ten-acre orchard as any account 
in the business, I didn’t say a word about that four-acre 
orchard of mine back on the hills of old Stooben. ‘Well, 
say ! I said, how long has this been going on ? ’ 
“ ‘ Tom Lowe planted the first orchard about thirty 
years ago, and when it come in with its first crop that 
measured up 3,000 bushels, and Tom cleared pretty near 
$2,500 on it, everybody pitched in for apples, and now 
these four counties is pretty much all apple orchard.’ 
Why a hundred-acre orchard ain’t anything in Egypt, and 
some of ’em cover 600 acres ! That apple belt beats all 
creation, and we folks in York State never knew a thing 
about it! And there’s where I got acquainted with the 
Ben Davis apple. It is big, and red, and solid, and pretty 
as a picture. But there’s no more taste to it than a door¬ 
knob, no more flavor than a chunk of clay, and ’no more 
smell than a piece of ice ! And yet they raise more Ben 
Davises than any other kind, and they’ve got as high as 
$9 a barrel for ’em ! 
“The Ben Davis ain’t an eater. It’s a cooker, and its 
crop never fails. And the Ben Davis never rots. Bruise 
any conventional apple, and that settles it. The bruise 
turns to rot, and the rot takes hold of all the rest of the 
apple. The Ben Davis doesn’t put up with any such 
nonsense. Bruise it if you want to, but that bruise will 
simply dry up, and that’s the end of it. The rest of the 
apple will stay just as round as ever. And the Ben Davis 
never freezes. • Or if it should freeze it don’t mind it. 
Freezing doesn’t affect it in the least. It is just as solid 
after it is cooked as it was before. It never falls to pieces 
under cooking, whether whole, halved or quartered. 
‘‘ Then, having no trace of flavor of its own, it readily 
takes any other flavor and becomes a novelty to the 
housewife and the fruit canner. Imagine having a big, 
whole apple placed before you, and, when you taste it, 
finding that its flavor is that of the most luscious peach, 
or juicy pear, or apricot, or orange or anything else the 
hostess has seen fit to make it! That’s where the queer 
Ben Davis apple comes out strong and metaphorically 
knocks the socks off all other apples on the Egypt apple 
belt. Chicago and the South and West are dead stuck 
on this apple and its genus and buy it at any price. It 
will keep sound from one picking season to the next.” — 
Kansas Farmer. 
FAILURE OF FRUIT SHIPMENT. 
Of an attempt in September to place Canadian fruit in 
the English market, the Canadian Horticulturist says: 
“ The experimental shipment of tender fruit to England 
was a grand failure, owing to the collapse of the cold 
storage. The provisions on ship board must have been 
wretched, for a cable has come to hand announcing; that 
everything was spoiled except the few cases of apples, 
which, of course, would have carried without cold storapfe. 
Surely something is wrong when California growers can 
ship their peaches safely across the continent, 3,000 miles, 
and then across the Atlantic, and land them in London 
in good condition, and we, almost at the coast, cannot do 
it! It is to be hoped that the Dominion Government, 
which provided the cold storage, will not allow the ship¬ 
pers to be at a loss, after offering cold storage and failing 
to provide it.” 
OF (OIKAT ISTEHEST AND VALUE. 
W. T. Hood & Co.. Richmond, Va. —“We consider your jounmlof 
great interest and value to the nurseiy trade.” 
