WINTER MEETING. 291 



Cold Storage for Apples. 



One important point has been settled by the experience of exhibi- 

 tors of apples at the Columbian Exposition, that deserves attention. 

 Cold storage has been a success in the preservation of apples in prime 

 condition, from picking season until July. All of the apples were held 

 in cold storage. The method of packing adopted by substantially all 

 the exhibitors was the same. When the fsuit was picked from the trees 

 in the fall, each was immediately wrapped in a piece of thin paper, and 

 then packed in tight barrels with loose cooperage, such as flour barrels, 

 and thus shipped by rail to Chicago, where they were stored in cold 

 rooms, and held until their removal in May and June, at a temperature 

 of 33° F. They would, no doubt, have withstood 32° degrees without 

 freezing; but 33° has been found satisfactory in everyway. There was 

 no attempt to ventilate the fruit. All the apples so picked and stored, 

 whether they came from New York, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, 

 Michigan or Wisconsin, came out in prime condition, bright in color, 

 sound, and fully as rich in flavor as they were in the fall. This was 

 conspicuously true of Pound, Sweets, Fall Pippins and other varieties 

 of fall apple which are classed as poor keepers, and are usually gone 

 before Christmas. In a few instances the skin showed in May and 

 June a slight scald, but the pulp below was perfectly sound under the 

 scald, and when the breaking down came, two to three, and even four 

 weeks later, the signs of rotting were as likely to appear under the 

 bright skin as under the scald. 



In the New York exhibit of apples were one lot of Nellis and one 

 of Fall Pippins, which were treated, in picking and packing, the same 

 as the other fruit, but were, by accident or carelessness, frozen solid 

 in a cold storage house at Rochester, where they were temporarilly 

 stored. Yet when these were carefully thawed out, by a slow eleva- 

 tion of the temperature to above freezing, they were then shipped to 

 Chicago and held, like the rest, at 33° until April or May, when they 

 were put on the exhibition plates. When I saw this fruit. May 24, it 

 was perfectly sound and good, though an expert could detect a slight 

 depreciation in the richness of flavor, due, no doubt, to the freezing. 

 All of this fruit shown by the states named kept in good condition 

 from two to three, and some even four weeks on the exhibition plates 

 before it began to brealrdown, showing conclusively that the system of 

 cold storage is amply able to carry over apples from one season to the 



