XXII

RELATION TO THE PRACTICE OF FRUIT GROWING

ASIDE from the executive ability of the fruit grower himself, no other one factor has a greater influence on the success of the business of fruit growing than the selection of varieties. The improvement of our horticulture depends, first of all, on the introduction of better fruits, on their effective dissemination, and on the adaptation of particular varieties to special soils, climates, markets, and personal needs.

There are men, of course, who grow apples successfully, and who sell them at a profit, without knowing any other variety than Ben Davis or Baldwin. But you, my amiable reader, are not that kind of a man. Ignorance is no part of your capital. For you success is conditioned on knowledge. The better you understand your business the better it will pay. Also, the better you understand it the more you will enjoy it.

Both these things are important. Fruit growing must pay some dividends in the first

place, and, in the second place, you must take some interest, some pride, and some pleasure in it.

A man who takes no pride nor pleasure in fruit growing or in farming ought not to be a farmer. If his work is pain and drudgery he might as well be a galley-slave outright. The result is the same, and the responsibility is less.

Now, the man who enjoys fruit growing, and who expects to make a success of it, must study varieties. He ought to study them thoroughly and systematically. And the systematic study of varieties of fruits is systematic pomology.

Systematic pomology has been severely neglected in North America during the last thirty to forty years, quite to the detriment of the business of fruit growing. The two Downings, Dr. John A. Warder, John J. Thomas, Marshall P. Wilder, and most of the other men whose names shine so gloriously out of our horticultural past, were all systematic pomologists. Above everything else they studied varieties, and on their work in that systematic study were the foundations of our pomology laid.

Then came a period of development along

lines of horticultural practice. Spraying was the popular problem, the popular interest— one might almost say the popular fad. Next came cover crops, and every bulletin was full of peas, clover, and hairy vetch. Along with these came cultivation, fertilization, pruning (including Stringfellow), pollination, thinning the fruit, and every other scheme for making fruits and gardens more productive. The improvement of the practice of fruit growing developed almost into a fury.

Then came 1896. In that year there were more apples grown than could be sold. Men saw at once that the means of production had outgrown the machinery of distribution. Thus the public attention was turned to the science of fruit marketing, where again the popular interest and enthusiasm have been as intense and as effective as at a college football game.

All this while the field of systematic pomology has laid fallow. Nothing was done, or next to nothing. Only very recently have a few men essayed to study varieties broadly, to describe, name, and classify them properly. Thus have practical fruit growing and scientific fruit marketing outgrown systematic pomology-the real basis of all the rest.

Now we are just beginning to realize how we have suffered from this neglect of the old study. We are beginning to see that we must have a more intimate knowledge of varieties. If it was important for men of Prince's, Cole's, and Kenrick's times to know varieties it is ten times more necessary for men of to-day.

It is more necessary, because we have more varieties. Fruits have multiplied, and replenished the catalogs over and over again since that day.

It is more necessary because we have a larger country. There are hundreds on hundreds of new localities opened up to fruit growing, in each of which the varieties best adapted to soil and climate have to be determined.

It is more important because competition. is sharper. In Kenrick's time Early Strawberry, Red Astrachan, and Belle de Boskoop would sell almost as well as anything else; but now only the very best varieties will answer, and they must be selected so as to suit exactly the particular customers to whom they go.

In fact, the two lines of development which our pomology has followed, almost to the ex