WESTERN NEW YORK HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 447 



all over the country, but especially in Western New York, the many hundreds of evap- 

 orators that afford a market for a great amount of apples (it has been estimated that in 

 an average year the value of evapoi-ated apples in the county of Wayne alone, is not less 

 than one million dollars); add to the above the thousands of cars of cider apples con- 

 sumed by the eight or ten great mills located in New York state, that produce pure cider 

 vinegar, and also sparkling cider for a beverage. If, therefore, every neighborhood in 

 Western New York had a cold storage house for barreled apples, that would protect 

 against frost and hold anywhere from ten thousand to twenty thousand barrels, run, if 

 need be, on the same cooperative principles and methods as the cheese factories of 

 this state, or the fruit associations of California or Michigan, would not the result 

 be very much more satisfactory to the grower than present methods ? Would not the 

 season of marketing be extended from October to April ? Would not the fearful gluts 

 be a "back number," a matter of the past? Would not well-packed apples, carry- 

 ing a well-known brand, a guarantee of honest worth, be sought after ? And would cot 

 buyers from Europe and our large cities come to our own doors, the same as they do in 

 the cheese markets of Little Falls and Utica. and in the prune, apricot, raism and 

 orange markets of San Jose, Fresno and Riverside ? 



Such a building may be of moderate cost and yet substantial and durable, and it 

 need not always be located at the nearest railroad station. How many have ever 

 figured or thought of the cost to the grower, of transporting his apples to the railroad 

 or canal station, from his farm during the months of September or October when there 

 is much work to do and time is of most value ? Say the grower is five or eight miles 

 from said station, I believe that for less cost per barrel the dealer located in Western 

 New York will deliver the same apples in barrels at Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth, 

 Philadelphia, New York or Boston. 



To return, there are quite a number of apple houses in Western New York owned by 

 dealers, but there are few that were built for tho express purpose of safely storing 

 apples. I have a building that I built for the storage of nursery stocK, and in which I 

 have had apples stored all winter. It is frost proof, built on a heavy stone wall twenty- 

 four inches thick and three feet high. On this wall were set up 2 x 4 scantling ; these 

 were sheathed with inch hemlock then covered with tarred building paper ; then 

 furred out with strips four inches deep and again covered as before, until the wall has 

 three air spaces ; the roof is constructed in the same way to protect against frost ; light 

 and ventilation come from two rows of windows at the top ; the roof is gravel ; the out- 

 side is covered with novelty siding ; the building has double or two sets of doors at each 

 end and a driveway through the center ; it is painted inside and out ; it is one hundred 

 feet long by forty feet wide ; the whole cost was one thousand four hundred dollars 

 and it would afford storage for ten thousand barrels ; the atmosphere is the same 

 inside as out, only that the building is frost proof and can be run in the winter months 

 with a variation of not over twelve degrees ; there is no smell of a cellar whatever and 

 stock always keeps perfectly. 



Such a house, or a better one, in a neighborhood would pay, four years out of five, at 

 least fifty cents a barrel over all costs of labor for handling, sorting, insurance, etc., and 

 this year, where there were apples, it would have paid one dollar to one dollar and fifty 

 cents per barrel. Some of us have thought, when we considered the immense planting 

 of apple orchards, the thousands of carloads of oranges that Florida and California can 

 supply now, with the prospect that a few short years will increase that production, until 

 the retailer will supply your table and mine with the best of oranges at a cost not to 

 exceed one cent each, that the days of a profitable apple orchard were numbered. But 

 let us consider this competition. In all the great markets of the world a good red 

 apple brings more money than an orange. In London you pay fifteen to twenty cents 

 for an apple and a few pennies for an orange. Florida imports buttermilk and kerosene 

 oil from the north to kill the scale on her orange trees, and California covers every 

 individual orange tree with canvass and then fills the canvass with a certain gas to kill 

 the Australian scale. It is said that there is not one orange orchard in Florida aside 

 from the few on hammock lands, that pays a profit and until the Nicaragua canal shall 

 be built, the overland transportation will wipe out the profit to California orange 

 growers. 



It was my fortune a few years age, while investigating a bee or honey ranch in Cali- 

 fornia, to stand on one of the foot hills. Back of me the San Bernardino mountains, 

 snow-capped, rose twelve thousand or fourteen thousand feet before me. the canon I 

 had climbed was covered with live oak ; but out on the plain beyond, were the gardens 

 of oranges, lemons, apricots, olives, and the broad Pacific in full view beyond ; I 

 thought of the tales I had read of the gardens around Grenada in Spain, and wondered 

 if anything could be more beautiful ? Again, I eat on a fence in the valley of the Kaw 

 river in Kansas, between Lawrence and Topeka ; before me on an eastern slope stood 



