192 American Horticultural Society. 



FRUIT EVAPORATION— THE HANDMAID OF HORTICULTURE. 



BY DR. J. F. SIMONDS, OF ARKANSAS. 



The fruit and vegetable grower, like the producer of nearly all other farm 

 crops, or, like the worker in mines, who brings to the surface the hidden 

 treasures of earth, has done but part of the needed labor to prepare and 

 utilize for the sustenence or wealth of mankind the products of his industry. 

 Though a larger proportion of the value of fruits can be converted directly 

 to the use of man without manufacture or preparation than that of any 

 other product of his labor, it is equally true that they are the most perisha- 

 ble of all his wealth, and require additional labor in manufacture to save 

 them from loss or preserve from decay. 



While grains, grasses and minerals are comparatively or entirely exempt 

 from waste, it has been estimated that one-third of all fruits and vegetables 

 produced are lost by decay, and it is, as a process of preserving fruits for 

 food, adding to the safety and economy of their production, that evaporation 

 becomes the handmaid of horticulture. 



The census of 1880 values the orchard products of the United States in 

 1879 at $50,876,154; market garden products, $21,761,250; Irish and sweet 

 potatoes at 202,837,232 bushels, which, at an average of fifty cents a bushel, 

 would be $101,418,616, or a total of $174,056,020, representing in truth but 

 two-thirds of the actual product of that year, leaving the enormous waste of 

 $87,028,010, which, by true evaporation, can be and ought to be saved to the 

 wealth of the country and the comfort and sustenence of its population. 



While the horticulturist produces many of the most valuable and whole- 

 some articles of food, containing in rare combination the nutritious ele- 

 ments with extractive substances, aromatic principles and vegetable acids, 

 which serve as tonics and antiseptics, correcting the putrefactive tendencies 

 of nitrogenous food, averting scurvy and strengthening digestion, they are 

 at the same time, from the nature of their composition, the most perishable 

 products of his industry, and he is next annoyed by the untimely waste of 

 fruits which for months have claimed his labor and his care. 



It is now that the evaporator steps in, and by the application of the 

 natural laws which govern heat and evaporation, and a few of the simpler 

 chemical combinations, he rescues from decay the otherwise perishable 

 products of man's labor and saves them as food-wealth for the comfo t and 

 sustenance of thousands. 



Fruit drying is coeval with fruit growth. The fig and grape, together 

 with the historic apple, were undoubtedly the first products of Adamic 

 horticulture, while Mother Eve, with the industry and thrift of a frugal 

 housewife, which traits have so fortunately been perpetuated even unto this 

 generation as striking characteristics of all her sex, no doubt dried the fruit 

 as our own mothers since have done. 



