The usual season for gathering winter fruits is October, before the access of severe frosts, and at a time when the wood-growth for the season has been completed, and the foliage is nearly ready to separate from its attachment to the tree. The fruits will then generally part readily from the twigs, without either breaking them or rupturing the fruit-stem, which should always be preserved, and from the apple especially, it should never be pulled out, as is apt to happen in certain varieties, when proper care is not exercised in picking them. Some of the apples that require to be gathered early, are, the Rambo, Pryor's Red, Hubbardston, Westfield, Rhode Island Greening, several Russets, and all those which evince a tendency to fall prematurely. There are others which may be left to a later period with impunity, some of these will even bear a little freezing without serious damage, but we should always endeavor to anticipate the exposure of our fruits to any great depression of temperature while they remain attached to the trees. An early and severe frost has often proved disastrous to a fine crop of apples, thus left too long upon the trees. For all fruits it is essential that the weather should be fine at the time they are gathered. They should be perfectly dry when plucked, and they must be handled with the greatest care to avoid bruising in the slightest degree. Each specimen must be taken separately in the hand and turned to one side, when, if it do not part readily from the twig, the thumb and finger must be applied to the stem, to aid the separation at the proper point; each is then to be placed in a gathering basket, which should be shallow, and for delicate sorts should be lined loosely with fresh leaves or with soft moss, or a little wilted grass. From the baskets, the fruit should be transferred to its permanent winter quarters, by a careful and judicious hand, who should select them and reject all that are bruised, specked, or otherwise defective, and place them on the shelves, or pack them in the boxes or barrels into which they are placed for preservation, or transportation to market. In packing, it is best to use no material but the fruit itself, which should be so closely placed that they shall not jostle and bruise one another when moved. Some persons use a bag, slung around the neck, when gathering the fruits from the tree; into this they are placed as fast as they are plucked, and successively transferred to the barrels, or poured in piles upon the ground. With very firm varieties, this may be done without serious damage, but the bruising that necessarily ensues will be very prejudicial to all the more delicate fruits, and will materially depreciate the value of such as are also of a pale color. A want of care in this matter of handling fruit is, no doubt, the chief reason for the popular preference of red apples in our markets, since those, that are well covered with a deep color, do not show the bruises that