SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 32? 



ing finely. If it had not been such a dry summer, I think it would now be 

 full of fruit, and I should probably have potatoes at one end of the vine and 

 tomatoes at the other end. It has been grafted four months, and is now (Oct. 

 15th) full of blossoms. It is the most singular piece of grafting I have ever 

 done. I have grafted white currants on black currants, and on red ones, and 

 a gooseberry on a currant, which bore a gooseberry the first year. But grafting 

 the tomato on the potato gave me more trouble than any grafting I ever did. 

 The tomato vine looked sickly for a long time, but I shaded and watered it, 

 and it finally grew and produced blossoms, as I have stated. 



STOCK AND GRAFT. 



As breeders improve animals by breeding "in-and-in," so, no doubt, varieties 

 of fruits may have their faults reduced, and better qualities increased by graft- 

 ing in-and-in on suitable stocks. An experimenter used to be very careful 

 where he cut grafts of the Fallawater, for of two trees in the orchard bearing 

 it, one was an Autumn sweet, and on that, the apples ripened and colored up 

 in the fall, looking then like a different apple from the green, hard fruit on 

 the other tree. These were finer and fairer, having a longer season of growth, 

 and would keep till April. Mr. Talbot reported to the Massachusetts Horti- 

 cultural Society a curious transformation of the Hightop Sweet through being 

 grafted on the Eed Astrachan. The fruit passed for Astrachans at the 

 exhibition, having assumed their color and figure; and the judges were only 

 undeceived by finding them as sweet to the taste as the original Hightop. Mr. 

 "VV. Weston, of Winthrop, originated — so to say — an acid variation of the 

 Porter, by grafting it on a vigorous tree which bore large and very sour fruit. 

 The new strain is called the Cook's Favorite, and, no doubt, very fitly, for the 

 typical Porter, while unsurpassed in its season as a high-flavored, handsome 

 dessert apple, is equally admirable for cooking. It is the Spitzenburg of its 

 season. — A r . Y. Tribune. 



PRESERVATION OF APPLES. 



Prof. F. H. Storer, in the Rural New Yorker, gives the results of experi- 

 ments performed by Sorauer in Germany, in keeping apples, as follows: 



Three separate lots of the apples having been weighed out, one lot was spread 

 on shelves in an ordinary fruit cellar, another lot was kept in air from which 

 moisture had been pretty thoroughly removed by means of chemicals, and the 

 third lot in air that was completely saturated with moisture. On re-weighing 

 the several lots after the lapse of some time, it was found that the apples kept 

 in the air of the cellar had lost three and a half per cent of their weight; 

 those kept in dry air almost eight per cent; while those kept in air satu- 

 rated with moisture had lost but little more than one-half per cent. It 

 could not be perceived that any advantage was gained by using the dry air; 

 on the contrary, the apples kept in the dry air shriveled more than the others, 

 and manifestly ripened more rapidly, so that in the later months of the 

 experiment they were less sweet than the others, and a larger proportion of 

 them decayed. Not a few of them became rotten-ripe, and this in spite of the 

 fact that, as was naturally to be expected, rather less moldiuess appeared, as 



