376 STATE nORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



not be offered to human beings as food or drink in any form whatever. We 

 supposed that the evaporator offered a fiuitable ^\'a3' of disposing of second class 

 fruits, sucli as the farmer is tempted ro put into the middle of the barrel, full 

 grown but a little wormy, bruised, or slightly specked witii rot. In bearing 

 years when fruit is so low as hardly to pay cost of handling, we have thought 

 that it might pay to evaporate good, marketable fruit and hold until a year of 

 scarcity, and thus prevent such large amounts being thrown upon the market 

 to unnecessarily depress it. 



We find in market dried fruit not only from such as should never have 

 been dried, but that which was not properly prepared; bits of core, rotten 

 and wormy spots left in, requiring nearly as much labor to prepare it for 

 cooking as it would to prepare the green fruit. All these things are calculated 

 to render evaporated fruit unpopular and hinder its sale, and it is certainly to 

 the interest of honest evaporators to band together and see if they can not 

 devise some means of preventing dishonest ones from ruining a business so full 

 of promise. 



KEEPI^'G GRAPES. 



The Kural New Yorker says that Mr. Powell has kept Isabella grapes until 

 March without difficulty, preserving the flavor perfectly. They are picked 

 after they are thoroughly ripe, and alter the end of the stem next the wood has 

 become ripe, hard, and woody, so as not to bend. They are left in bulk in the 

 open air two or three days to sweat and then put in boxes — a layer of perfect 

 grapes alternating with a layer of good, clean cotton. The lids of the boxes arc 

 put on and left partially up. They are then set in a cool, dry room, where an 

 equable temperature is secured. These grapes so kept were late ripened. He had 

 not found the early ripened to keep so well. A member suggested that the success 

 in keeping them was due to the fact that they were perfectly ripe, and that 

 early and perfectly ripened fruit would keep just as well if the same condition 

 of temperature were secured. Another member had found the Isabella to keep 

 well, but he does not succeed well with Concord and Catawba. It was urged 

 that the thick-skinned varieties, other things being equal, kept the best. 



EDUCATING THE MARKET. 



President Lyon believes we should work toward a higher standard in the 

 quality of market fruits. He is sorry to see societies taking action concerning 

 varieties that is not a look forward, and instances the efficient and time-honored. 

 Montgomery county horticultural society of Ohio, which at a recent meeting 

 is reported to have recommended not only the planting of the Wilson straw- 

 berry, but also to have coupled with it the Crescent — a variety the very 

 opposite of the Wilson in all the qualities said so strongly to commend that 

 Arab among strawberries, to the popular fancy ; and one whose only and 

 peculiar recommendations are, that the plant will take care of itself, in spite of 

 neglect or hardship \ while the poor, soft, sour fruit is produced in such abund- 

 ance that, even at diminished prices, it can be profitably crowded upon a reluct- 

 ant market at a profit. 



