uniformity. Under the influence of this leadership, we are
losing many of the old products, varieties of apples among the rest.

Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many
folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he
wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use, running
from Early Harvest to Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the
privilege. Some place should be provided where he may obtain trees or
cions. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more points of
contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony.

The leading varieties of apples, that have become dominant over wide
regions, have been great benefactors to man. The original tree should
be carefully preserved till the last, by historical or other
societies; and then a monument should be placed at the spot. Monuments
have been erected to the Baldwin, Northern Spy, McIntosh and other
apples. We should never lose our touch with the origins of men,
events, notable achievements, outstanding products of nature.

I fear it is now a habit with many fruit-growers to minimize the
interest in varieties, placing the emphasis on tillage, spraying and
management of plantations. Yet, the only reason why we expend all the
labor is that we may grow a given kind of apple; the variety is the
final purpose.

In this little book we cannot discuss varieties at length. There are
special books on this fascinating subject. But we may have before us a
compiled list by way of interesting suggestion. The list is sorted
from the Catalogue of Fruits of the American Pomological Society,
1901, the last year in which the catalogue was published with quality
rated on a scale of 10. On such a scale, Ben Davis ranks 4-5; Baldwin,
5-6; Wealthy and York Imperial, 6-7; Rhode Island Greening, 7-8;
Northern Spy, 8-9; Yellow Newtown (Albermarle Pippin) 9-10. There is
no apple in the entire catalogue of 324 kinds (not including
crab-apples) rated wholly lower than 4 in quality except one alone and
this is grown for cider only, although several varieties of minor
importance bear the marks 3-4. Only two varieties are rated
exclusively 10, the Garden Royal, a Massachusetts summer-fall apple,
little known to planters, and the familiar Esopus Spitzenberg. Of
course judgments differ widely in these matters, as there are no
inflexible criteria for the scoring of quality; yet this extensive
list is probably our soundest appro