434 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



in this country in the canning of vegetables and tomatoes; probably it is also used in 

 the canning of fruits. 



Then we have two kinds of tin plates ; the " bright " and the "terne. " The latter 

 contains much more lead alloyed with the tin than the former. In Germany the law 

 requires that tin plate used for canning fruit shall not contain over one per cent of 

 lead. In the chemical laboratory of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, 

 the tin of some fifty cans, in which peas had been put up, was examined for lead. 

 Thirty of them were found to contain from 1.2 up to 13% of this poisonous metal. 

 Then, again, solder rich in lead is easier to handle than if poor in this metal. In Ger- 

 many canners are prohibited from using solder with more than ten per cent of lead in 

 it. The eolder of twenty-four cans, examined in the laboratory above mentioned, was 

 found to contain from forty-three to sixty-five per cent of lead There is no question 

 but that the use of lead, or of materials containing much lead, that are to come in con- 

 tact with articles of food, and especially of acid food, is to be strongly condemned. 

 And further, it is very possible that the poorer the quality of the materials put into 

 the cans and coming in contact with these alloys rich in lead, the greater the danger of 

 getting some of the lead, and the tin also into the contents of the cans. How far such 

 materials are used in the canning of fruits, I cannot say, but if used so often as they 

 are in the canning of vegetables, it is reasonable to suppose that they would often be 

 used also for fruits. 



In respect to the drying of fruit, we have again a temptation to depart from scrupu- 

 lous honesty in the use of sulphur, or of sulphuring to an excessive extent. You all 

 know that Dr. Hilgard, Director of the California Experiment Station, has for some 

 time been carrying on a crusade against so much sulphuring. He does not believe in 

 the bleaching any way, and calls the handsome light colored slices of dried apple 

 " whitened sepulchres."' He believes that this sulphuring may be used to cover up 

 dirty and damaged fruit, and that fruit excessively sulphured is less digestible, because 

 it contains so much of this antiseptic, all antiseptics whether borax salicylic acid or 

 sulphites being unfavorable to digestion when taken into the stomach with the 

 food. All fruit when dried darkens owing to the action of the oxygen of the air 

 upon certain constituents of it, and he thinks that this coloration which, is in 

 itself perfectly harmless, " should be looked for by every consumer as the 

 natural mark of an honest, unmanipulated article." In all this I must 

 allow that I am inclined to agree with him. At any rate, all honest men will 

 agree that only clean and perfect fruit should be used for drying, such as needs no 

 manipulation of any kind to cover up defects. All will agree that any form of manipu- 

 lation which can be used to conceal such defects, has its dangers, as long as there are 

 unscrupulous men engaged in every kind of business, and that where a large number, 

 honest and dishonest alike, are ecgaged in the production of any manufactured article, 

 the extensive trade in that article thus brought about may be seriously damaged by 

 any dishonest practice ; and that it is usual in such cases that a great many honest 

 people suffer for the misdeeds of a very few rascals. Even carelessness may bring 

 about a like result. Fruit dryers became careless in the use of the zinc trays in their 

 evaporators, and zinc got into the dried fruit that went to Germany. It may be and it 

 may not be. that the German government at about that time wanted an excuse for put- 

 ting some obstacle in the way of the importation of so much fruit, and pounced upon 

 this occurrence of zinc in it, as a pretext. But, at any rate, if the zinc had not been 

 there, the chances are that they would not have been able, on any other pretext, to 

 hurt the trade so much as they did. 



But the public has acquired a perverted taste, and demands the "whited sepul- 

 chres : " so till the public taste can be reformed, it is good business method, of course, 

 to conform to it. But let it be done honestly, by using and insisting that all shall use 

 only the best material, and only just so much sulphuring as is necessary to bleach it 

 to the desired point. Mr. Green of the Ohio Experiment Station stated in a paper 

 read before the Michigan Horticultural Society that some varieties of apples, such as 

 the Pameuse, need no sulphuring in order to get a white evaporated product ; and he 

 would not use sulphur at all in the evaporator itself ; he would merely expose the fruit 

 to the fumes for a short time as soon as prepared for the drying. Thus he would use 

 it, not to bleach out a dark color already formed, but as a preventive against any ^ippear- 

 ance of discoloration. 



Concerning the preservation of fresh fruit a rather singular method is proposed by 

 Monclar in a recent volume of the French Journal (V Agriculture Pratique. It consists 

 simply in bedding the fruit in lime. He gives the following general statement of the 

 results of his experiments: 



1. The lime does not in the least attack the skin of the fruit, even after prolonged 

 contact. 



