r trees which have died out. Scarcely a season passes that
hundreds of these old veteran trees are not blown down or badly
broken. Every wind takes its toll. After one of these windstorms in
Southern New York the writer estimated that at least twenty per cent
of all the standing old apple trees had been destroyed or badly
broken. In the commercial regions only a small part of the new
plantings have yet come to bearing and even here these probably do not
much more than make good the losses of old trees. So that on the
whole, heavy as our plantings have been, it is extremely doubtful if
they have very much more than made good the losses of the older trees
throughout the country. It is a fact worthy of note that this talk of
over-planting the apple has been going on for over thirty years, and
while the timid ones talked those who had faith in the business and
the courage of their convictions planted apples and reaped golden
harvests while their neighbors still talked of over-planting.

Whether or not it is true that we have over-planted the apple, it must
be admitted that at the present time the demand is so much greater
than the supply that the poorer of our people cannot afford to use
apples commonly, and that no class of farmer in the Northeastern
States is more prosperous than the fruit growers. The new plantings
must of necessity begin to bear and become factors in the market very
slowly. Meanwhile the great opportunity of the present lies in making
the most possible out of the older orchards which are already in
bearing. Practically all of these old farm orchards which can present
a fairly clean bill of health, and in which the varieties are
desirable, can with a small amount of well directed effort be put to
work at once and during the next ten years or more of their life time,
they may be made to add a substantial income to that of the general
farm. Now is a time of opportunity for the owner of the small farm
apple orchard.

FUTURE OF APPLE GROWING.--In the writer's opinion the future of apple
growing in the United States is likely to shape itself largely in the
great commercial regions. As these become more and more developed and
as the industry becomes more specialized the farmer who is merely
growing apples as a side line, except where he is delivering directly
to a special or a local market, will be crowded out. Here as elsewhere
it will be a case of the survival of the fittest. In the production of
apples co