384 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



QuKS. A neighborhood could bii}- the machinery together, and 

 one machine evaporate for the whole? 



Ans. I don't know why thej" could not, like any other machine. 



Geo. E. Bkackktt, Belfast. I believe there is an evaporator 

 established in Waldo county, where a good many thousand bushels 

 of apples are purchased and put through the process of evaporation. 

 The price paid is about fifty cents per bushel. The larger portion 

 of those apples were natural fruit. They were in as good demand 

 as grafts, when large and fair. So far as I know, the market price 

 did not change with respect to the quality of the apple. The3' used 

 natural fruit or an}- other that would come in at the same price. 



Merrill. I went into an evaporating establishment to learn the 

 pi'ice of evaporated ai)ple. Thej' told me that the price depended 

 upon the fruit. The cheapest was the natural. Baldwin, Northern 

 Spy, Roxbury Russet brought the highest price ; although manu- 

 facturers might make as much margin on native as on Northern 

 Spies, which brought the highest price. One man I talked with, in 

 New York, told me that he made as much mone}' from the Northern 

 Spy that he paid four shillings a bushel for, as he did from natives 

 that he got for twenty cents. There must be more waste in using 

 small apples. In New York State there is a great difference in the 

 price of evaporated apple. It is a staple article of foreign trade. 

 I was speaking with a New York commission merchant ; he told me 

 that the people who were manufacturing evaporated apple here were 

 getting large quantities of good natural fruit suitable to evaporate. 

 The}' can get a certain price for it and it maj' be better for them to 

 bu}' that surplus and use it up. I noticed that the manufacturers 

 commenced on natuial, and early grafted fruit until it is gone ; 

 sometimes evaporating into the winter, sometimes to the first of 

 February, buying out of cellars. One large orchardist in Limerick 

 stored them in his cellar for shipping purposes and evaporators came 

 and paid him four shillings a bushel for the apples, Northern Sp3' 

 and some other kinds. He said he availed himself of that oppor- 

 tunity as those apples turned for more than the others. 



Dr. W. B. Lapham, Augusta. I purchased of the American 

 Manufacturing Company last summer a small drier, to dry ten bush- 

 els of apples a day, l)ut I found its capacity was less than that. I 

 had it as an experiment. It was set up at my brother's in Litchfield. 

 We dried through the apple season ; used native apples and the 

 inferior quality of grafted fruit. We used No. 1 apples. We con- 



