* * * * New Apples All gardeners should realize
how very much they owe to Wisley. There is no other organization anywhere which makes quite such strict and prolonged tests of new plants and thus sets up standards. None of us need try novelties for ourselves and suffer the disappointment that follows. The latest candidates for the Wisley hall-mark are a huge variety of new apples, of which many score have been rejected. The few that have been selected for further trial include one apple that appears to be earlier than any we possess, and all the world is looking out for a July or early August apple of real quality. Neither Beauty of Bath nor Worcester Pearmain (at any rate in the view of apple experts) is quite worth its eminence. Some years ago on an experi- mental farm near Ottawa I was shown a new apple christened Melba, of which its creator expected great things. It is, I see, one of the few provisionally accepted by the R.H.S. experts ; but the apple which is quite a good deal the earliest of all is Laxton's Early Crimson, and it ripens in south and mid-England by the middle of July. But autumn seems a necessary influence for the higher flavours, for the Cox, or Ribston or the slow, shy and much neglected D'Arey Spice with other late russetty apples.
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