Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text.
For a complete list, please see the end of this document.
In the preparation of this book I have tried to keep constantly beforeme the conditions of the average farm in the Northeastern States withits small apple orchard. It has been my aim to set down only suchfacts as would be of practical value to an owner of such a farm and tostate these facts in the plain language of experience. This book is inno sense intended as a final scientific treatment of the subject, andif it is of any value in helping to make the fruit department of thegeneral farm more profitable the author will be entirely satisfied.
The facts herein set down were first learned in the school ofpractical experience on the writer's own farm in Western New York.They were afterwards supplemented by some theoretical training and bya rather wide observation of farm orchard conditions and methods inNew York, Pennsylvania, the New England States and other contiguousterritory. These facts were first put together in [6]something liketheir present form in the winter of 1909-10, when the writer gave aseries of lectures on Commercial Fruit Growing to the Short Courses inHorticulture at Cornell University. These lectures were revised andrepeated in 1910-11 and are now put in their present form.
The author's sincere thanks are due to Professor C.S. Wilson, of theDepartment of Pomology at Cornell University, for many valuable factsand suggestions used in this book, and for a careful reading of themanuscript. He is also under obligations to Mr. Roy D. Anthony of thesame Department for corrections and suggestions on the chapters onInsects and Diseases and on Spraying.
M.C. Burritt.
Hilton, N.Y.
February, 1912.