At any rate the experiment is well worth
trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble to run a chalk
line down the south side of each tree, when lifting them, as a guide
for the purchaser.
As showing how conservative is the popular demand for apples, Cox's
Orange Pippin, which is absolutely unapproached for flavour, and is
perfectly sound and eatable from early in November till Easter if
carefully picked at the right moment and properly stored, was
cultivated thirty or forty years before the British public discovered
its extraordinary qualities! I find it described as one of the best
dessert apples in Dr. Hogg's _Fruit Manual_, and my copy is the third
edition published in 1866, so it must have been well known to him some
years previously, though we never heard much about it until after the
twentieth century came in. Though the colour, when well grown, is
highly attractive to the connoisseur, the ordinary buyer did not
readily take to it as it is rather small. In 1917 Cox's Orange Pippin,
however, really came into its own; I myself, here in the New Forest,
grew over 3,000 pounds on about 120 trees planted in 1906, each branch
pruned as a _cordon_, and very thinly dispersed, and the trees
restricted to a height of about 14 feet. The apples were mostly sold
in Covent Garden at 6d. a pound, clear of railway carriage and
salesmen's commission.
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