Reddened Apples Some reference was made the other day to
the excellent pamphlets issued in Norfolk by the County Horticulturists on this and other subjects (from the Cornhall, King's Lynn). One of the experiments is curious and has helped trade ; but is perhaps not theoretically welcome. The public has many prejudices in regard to its food, most of them connected with colour. It prefers its hen's eggs brown, its potatoes with red dimples, its bread—and this is the worst prejudice—pure white, that is purely earch, and its apples red. The red Cox (produced of late years by aid of the strange phenomenon known as " bud variation ") is very popular, but much less widely spread than the greener Cox. The horticulturists have discovered that any Cox can be reddened after plucking, by exposure to sun and weather ; and many crops are now so treated. The treatment certainly does not improve the apple, at any rate as a " keeper" ; and it would be a good thing both for grower and consumer if the public would come to believe that a greenish apple may be at least as good as a red. One may indeed go as far as Robert Browning and say : " Where the apple reddens
Never pry."
For, as Mr. Spenser Pickering proved long ago, redness of skin in a green variety is a symptom of lessened vitality.
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