342 Report oF THE HortTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF THE 
that the above points of merit are to be found in varying degrees 
in varieties which have strains within themselves. 
New York apple growers are not wholly unacquainted with the 
arrangement of apples in groups. In “ The Apples of New York” 
(1903), Beach has made 12 groups containing 54 varieties; at the 
State fair at Syracuse (1905), The New York State Fruit Growers’ 
Association showed 14 groups with about 60 varieties. This Sta- 
tion has shown at the several State horticultural meetings of the 
winter of 1905-06, 32 groups with about 110 varieties. All of 
these lists have been worked over and added to in making the 
groups presented here, 36 in number and containing 278 varieties. 
Mr. L. A. Goodman, President of the American Pomological So- 
ciety, is largely responsible for the Romanite, Ralls and Winesap 
groups given here. 
It cannot be hoped that the groups given are all perfect. Without 
question some varieties have been misplaced, some have been 
omitted, and we have not even attempted to classify the great 
majority of the sorts listed in the catalogue, having no fruits at 
hand nor definite data from which to work. Besides it is scarcely 
possible that a wholly satisfactory classification can ever be made 
because of the infinite variation in the varieties themselves. The 
groups must be taken, then, as tentative, subject to modification 
upon further study, and presented here only as a means of showing 
the adaptations of varieties rather than as a part of a system of 
classification. 
The groups are founded, for most part, upon the characters of 
the fruits, and all characters have been considered — size, form, 
stem, cavity, basin, calyx, color, skin, flesh, core, seeds, flavor and 
season. It has not been possible to make much use of tree char- 
acters, though, could it have been done, it would have been highly 
desirable. In giving a name to a group we have in most cases used 
that of the best known variety in the group, though in a few 
instances the name given is that of the variety which seemed to 
be intermediate in character between the other members of the 
group. 
