482 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



some ripen no further when detached therefrom, while others need to be picked before 

 fully ripe in order that we may finally have them at their best. As to the grape, the 

 best authorities find no after-ripening, or no chemical change taking place that makes 

 the fruit better; others find some diminution of the acid, without any loss of sugar, 

 which would make the fruit sweeter. But I do not know that any one will 'affirm that 

 the grape is ever better than when fully ripened on the vine, or that the strawberry, 

 raspberry, or blackberry is improved by keeping in storage. But. on the other hand, we 

 all know that the pear is spoiled if allowed to pass a certain stage of maturity on the 

 tree. What this deterioration consists in has not, so far as I can learn, ever been ascer- 

 tained. The apple comes in between these two extremes, ' We can enjoy it in summer 

 or fall, if freshly plucked when fully ripe, and can store our winter varieties, quite 

 uneatable when picked, to go through a process of after-ripening in our cellars or fruit- 

 houses. 



This after-ripening of the apple has been somewhat extensively investigated. The 

 most reliable results show that there is no increase in the sugar; that is, no new sugar 

 is formed, in addition to what was in the fruit when picked. There are many kinds of 

 sugar, with two of which all of ue are acquainted— ordinary cane sugar and glucose. 

 The latter is much less sweet than the former. In this after-ripening of the apple, 

 much over half of the cane sugar was, in one series of tests, changed to a less sweet 

 sugar, not entirely glucose, but a mixture of that with still another sugar, levulose. 

 This was an average result obtained on twelve varieties of apple, kept six months. 

 While some other investigators found a slight gain in sugar as a whole, all agree that 

 the acid diminishes, and hence the fruit may in any case become sweeter. As to the 

 sugar and acid in the pear, the changes are about the same as in the apple, so far as the 

 very meagre investigations of the subject inform us. 



Now we have reached the point where we wish to keep our fruit, either as it is, in 

 the fully ripe condition, or in a condition somewhat short of full ripeness, till a little 

 while before it is to be consumed; or. thirdly, in some artificially prepared form, as 

 when dried or canned. As we all know, an immense amount of care must be bestowed 

 on the fruit in order to keep it unspoiled, whether it be one or another of these three 

 conditions that is to be fulfilled. 



There are two general reasons for this. First, those same agencies that have worked 

 within the fruit to produce the chemical changes involved in the ripening, a part of 

 which changes 1 have briefly explained, are still in full force in the ripe fruit; ferments 

 they possibly are, still active since nothing is done, except when the fruit is canned, to 

 make them inactive; and their action on fruit which has reached its best stage of ripe- 

 ness can be only harmful. Any change in fruit which is already at its best can not make 

 it any better, and can only make it poorer. 



Second, living organisms stand ready, great armies of them, to attack the fruit from 

 without, settling down all over it and starting decay and rotting wherever there is a 

 weak or broken skin. Those of you who have attended these meetings regularly have 

 heard a good deal about bacteria; those exceedingly minute living beings which are, 

 accordingto their kind, friends or enemies of the farmer and horticulturist. His friends 

 when they help to convert all the nitrogen of dead animal and vegetable matter into 

 nitrate, the most useful form of nitrogen-food for new plants that arise out of the ruins 

 of the old ones that have done their work and died; his friends when, working in the 

 growing clover, or pea, or bean, they give to the farmer or gardener the power to draw 

 upon the unlimited stock of free nitrogen of the air, for the making of nitrogen-manure 

 for other crops which must get their nitrogen from the soil or not get it at all; his ene- 

 mies when he must flght them all the time to keep his meat, or his milk, or his 

 vegetables and fruit from spoiling. 



Nothing is safe from them, for the dust of the air is charged with them, the dust on 

 our clothes, and on our furniture, on the shelves in our closets and cupboards, is charged 

 with them, and they are always ready to begin work afresh whenever, in the traveling 

 that they are forced to do as they are borne hither and thither by currents of air, they 

 settle down on any dead vegetable or animal matter. Fruit, when once separated from 

 its vine or shrub or tree, becomes dead vegetable matter, and therefore is open to the 

 attacks of these unfriendly bacteria. 



A short time ago an English chemist, and at the same time a good bacteriologist, 

 undertook to determine approximately how many bacteria there were in the dust that 

 settled out of the air under various conditions in a given period of time. This number 

 ranged all the way from about twenty up to eight thousand on a square foot of surface 

 in a minute of time. The highest figure was obtained in a barn where flail threshing 

 of grain was going on, and where the air was full of dust. In a museum, on a holiday, 

 when a large number of people were moving about, the number falling on a square foot 

 in a minute was one thousand seven hundred and fifty: and I might give many other 

 interesting details of the results that were obtained. 



