3(i6 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



away, and you have a new and important agent introduced, viz : the carbonate 

 of soda, which is a powerful solvent of vegetable fibre. — Farmer and Dairyman. 



STORING, MARKETING, AND PRESERVING. 



STORING APPLES. 



Two years ago this spring I advertised for 500 barrels of apples, and pur- 

 chased nearly that number, noting carefully the results of various methods of 

 storing. Those stored in damp, dark, cellars were brighter, firmer, and less 

 decayed. In one cellar in Woodstock, eighty barrels were stored above water 

 three inches deep in the cellar bottom, which emanated from a spring. The 

 barrels were not headed up, but stood upon stones and timbers just above the 

 water; they were Russets, Greenings, Baldwins, and English Beauties. In 

 some of the barrels there was not a specked apple ; they were the best of all I 

 bought ; and of the others, those in damp cellars proved the best. — Mass. 

 Ploughman. 



Dr. T. H. Hoskins, Newport, Vt., refers in the The Rural New Yorker to 

 the frequently observed fact of stray apples keeping well all winter on the 

 ground covered with leaves under the trees, and adds these suggestive remarks : 



A friend of mine living in Montreal says that seeing some very fine 

 Fameuses exposed for sale in that city, he inquired how they were kept. He 

 learned that they were part of a cargo of a canal boat which had sunk in the 

 canal and was frozen before it could be raised. When this was effected in the 

 spring, it was found that the cargo of apples, which would not have kept much 

 longer than January in the air, had been preserved perfectly in the water. An 

 old custom of burying apples in the ground the same as roots for winter storage 

 also demonstrates that moisture in contact with apples does not necessarily 

 cause rotting. In Russia I understand that apples are preserved in tight 

 barrels with water, in the way practiced in this country with cranberries. On 

 the other hand apples keep perfectly in dry cellars, as many fruit growers can 

 testify. 



What then is the essential requisite for the safe winter keeping of this 

 fruit? Simply, I believe, the preservation of a low uniform temperature as 

 near the freezing point of water as possible. This can be maintained in dry 

 cellars, but much more easily and perfectly, I think, in wet ones. The 

 presence of water has a controlling power over the variations of temperature 

 near the freezing point, as all know who have had to keep water in a cold 

 cellar to keep it from freezing. The moisture does no harm to the apples. It 

 may even be a direct benefit in preventing evaporation from and consequent 

 withering of the apples, though this evaporation is very slight at the low 

 temperature necessary in fruit cellars for success in keeping apples over until 

 spring. 



