New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 453 
STATEMENT OF RESULTS. 
‘The relative merits of different methods in orchard manage- 
ment are best gauged by the crops of fruit obtained. In com- 
mercial fruit growing in New York the amount of fruit is the 
most important criterion of merit, since buyers discriminate 
little as to the character of the fruit itself except as to 
blemishes; nevertheless it is important that all of the prop- 
erties of the fruit, as size, color, time of maturity, flavor, flesh 
characters and keeping quality be noted. It ‘s of course highly 
important that trees grow well; and for the measure of tree- 
vigor several characters are available. ‘Those we have chosen 
are: Diameter of tree; amount, color and size of foliage; 
length, color and amount of annual growtia of branches; and 
the root system. We come now to a discussion of these cri- 
teria of the merits of the two methods of orchard management 
in this experiment 
Amount of fruit—The five years during which this investi- 
gation has been in progress have been seasons of abundant 
apple harvests. In no one of the years has there been an apple 
failure or a condition approaching failure in this orchard. 
In considering the data as to amount of fruit it must be re- 
membered that while the quantity of the crop is the most im- 
portant criterion of orchard management, yet it is impossible 
to use it aS an exact index of the performance of ‘the trees; 
for the total quantity may be great, vet owing to the small 
size of the apples the value may be small; or, if the quantity 
of apples be small and the size of the fruits large, the crop 
may be of comparatively high value. There seems to be no 
satisfactory way of establishing an exact measure of value 
which will include these conditions and we are forced there- 
fore to make use of total quantities of commercial grades as 
the nearest approach to the true value of the crop. Table II 
gives these data. 
