n bushels, thirty bushels, even to sixty
and seventy bushels on large sturdy old trees of some varieties. The
amateur, however, first prizes the quality and regularity of his
product for the sheer joy of it; then every added bushel is so much to
the good.

XVII

THE APPRAISAL OF THE APPLE-TREE

Now, therefore, in these sixteen little chapters have I tried to
explain what I feel about the apple-tree. It is a version to my
friend, the reader, not a treatise.

As the interpretation is in the realm of the sensibilities, so do I
aim not directly at concreteness. Yet as it is now the fashion to
"score" all our products by a scale of "points," I make a reasonable
concession to it. But I do not like the scoring of the fruit
independently of the tree on which it grew as if the fruit were only a
commodity. I know we cannot bring the tree to the exhibition-room, yet
the perfect measure, nevertheless, is the tree and the fruit together.
In these later times we have said much against the use of the museum
specimen to the exclusion of the living object in its natural place:
let us be cautious, then, that we do not forget apple-trees in our
studies of apples.

Here I shall not arrange numerical scales of points for the
apple-tree. Sufficient for this occasion is the naming of the points,
letting the reader place his own percentage-value on each of them; for
I am trying to teach, not to instruct.

Yet I must insert, for the reader's benefit, certain good rules and
scores that have been adopted for the "judging" of the fruit by those
experienced in these matters. This excellent exercise of judging
fruits at exhibitions has gained much headway. Students of schools and
colleges are trained for the "judging teams," and great technical
perfection has been attained.

To be exact is an exigency of science. I fear that we make exactness
an end, but that is neither here nor there on this occasion and I
shall not now pursue the subject further; I hope the judging trains
the judge to see what he looks at in other things as well as in
apples, that it leads him into the pleasant paths of causes and
effects, that it opens the eyes of the blind.

The customary judging of plants and animals and their products
consists in assessing the attributes against a scale of perfection.
Thus, if "form" or "conformation" is worth 10 points in the hundred
(by the estimation of good authorities), the judge must decide whether
the particular anim