The plum crop is sent to market, for most part in New York, in six, eight and ten-pound grape baskets with the preference at present for the smallest of these baskets. Occasionally some fruit is packed in four pound baskets. Rarely, and always to the disadvantage of both producer and consumer, plums go to market in the packages in which the fruit is picked. Indeed, it is seldom advantageous to pack the fruit in the field, it being far better to convey it to the packing house where the preparations for shipping may be more carefully made, as the package and the manner of packing advertise the product. Plums coming to this State from the far West are often wrapped individually in tissue paper as a help in safe shipping and to add to their attractiveness but the fruit grown in the State is seldom, if ever, so treated, though it is possible that choice specimens could be profitably wrapped. Of the sorting, grading, facing and marking the packages, little need be said except that they are too rarely well done in present methods, though there is a steady improvement in attending to these important matters. Few plums are stored longer than a week at most in common storage and three weeks or a month is quite the limit for most varieties in cold storage. Late plums and in particular some of the prunes might well be stored longer than is now the custom if proper precautions are taken, as is shown by the experience at this Station where a considerable number of the Domestica and Insititia varieties are annually kept in common storage for a month or longer without unusual precautions. Some of the new varieties offered to growers, as Apple and Occident, are recommended as keeping for several weeks after picking. There is a most marked difference in the keeping qualities of this fruit and it is certain that varieties can now be selected for long keeping and that there is a fine opportunity for breeding sorts that will keep even longer than any we now have. Marketing, the actual selling, is a business quite by itself, and since it is one which has changed greatly in the past few years and is destined to change even more in the near future, a few observations on the subject are worth putting on record. A well developed local market is undoubtedly the best selling place for the plum producer, as in it the sales are directly to the consumer, eliminating expensive middlemen. The westward spread of manufacturing industries, the workers in which use up the western-grown fruit, is making better local markets for eastern plums, a point worth noting, for many New York plum-growers have ceased planting, indeed have been removing trees, fearing western competition.