State Agricultural Society. 325 



SUN-DRIED FRUIT A "FAILURE—NO ERROR, 



Something over a year ago we published, in the Agricultural Depart- 

 ment of* the Record, the following article on the subject: 



" Owing to the peculiarity of our climate — a climate in which fruit may 

 be dried as rapidly and with as little expense as in any other country — 

 the system of drying fruit in the sun is practically a failure. This may 

 strike those who have thought but little on the subject, and who have 

 had no experience, as a strange proposition; but to the practical man, 

 the man who has dried fruit in the sun, and kept the same any length of 

 time before disposing of it, and to the merchant who has been dealing 

 in sun-dried fruits, and had box after box returned to him, it is very plain 

 and easily understood. In whatever country you dry fruit in the sun, 

 exposed to insects, they will deposit more or less eggs upon it. If that 

 country be a cold one, like the Atlantic States, for instance, the cold 

 weather generally sets in so early that these eggs are not hatched out 

 in the Fall, and the fruit is consumed before the warm weather of the 

 following Spring; and the consumers are none the wiser for having con- 

 sumed with the" fruit millions of insect eggs. Jn this State, however, 

 these eggs hatch out in the Fall, and very generally destroy the fruit 

 before it is required for consumption. Our dealers generally understand 

 the danger of dealing in sun-dried fruit, and many of them have suffered. 

 by so doing; and we, in the line of our business, have also had a little 

 experience, which we will relate: 



" While Secretary of the State Agricultural Society, we made an exhi- 

 bition of some of the products of our State at the International Exposi- 

 tion at Paris. At the State Fair of eighteen hundred and sixty-six, 

 Briggs Brothers, the extensive orchardists of Marysvilie, exhibited a 

 number of boxes of dried fruits of various kinds, put up in good shape 

 for commerce. The fruit itself was in splendid order, and attracted gen- 

 eral attention at the Fair, and we solicited and obtained the whole to 

 send, among other articles, to Paris. After the Fair some two months 

 elapsed before it was time to forward the goods to New York, and the 

 boxes remained in a safe place, undisturbed. When ready to ship we 

 opened one of the boxes, and found that the fruit had turned to a mass 

 of worms. Not one box was found but was in the same condition. 



"The peculiarity of our climate, therefore, requires that our fruit be 

 dried by artificial means, or that all the sun-dried fruit, to keep or to 

 ship, be put through some process by which the insects' eggs may be 

 killed. Unless subjected to some process that will effect this, it is 

 neither safe to the individual, or good policy, to ship it out of the State, 

 or to sell it to those who desire to keep it for Winter use." 



In the San Jose Mercury of February twenty-seventh, a correspond- 

 ent, J. Q. A. Ballou, calls in question the correctness of the proposition 



