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oi STATE rOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



to select fruit for furnily use, does not show good judgment wheu lie gives a 

 preference in choice, and many times in price, for the Baldwin, simply be- 

 cause of its liigli reputation. Even the Pennock — about the poorest of all 

 good-looking apples — I have seen selected for home use, because there was 

 stamped on the barrel head, *^ Baldwin.'' My object is not by any means to 

 decry this apple, but to show upon what foundation opinions and tastes are 

 formed. 



In grapes and other small fruits, it is well for us to consider wliich of their 

 constituents it is that gives them their luscious ilavor, their cooling and thirst- 

 allaying effects. Without going into the naming of the many simple elements 

 of which they are composed in common with all fruits, we may say that what 

 gives them their peculiar relish is a certain proportion of acids, sugar and 

 water. Admitting this to be true, we would suppose, as the office of water is 

 simply to dilute the other ingredients, that those varieties wliich contain the 

 most sugar and acid would be the most palatable and nutritious, the richest 

 and most satisfactory to the appetite. They certainly contain, per bulk, more 

 of the elements of nutrition, but I think they are not generally preferred as 

 table fruits— and why? 



Dr. Grant and Mr. Meade have much to say about the "education of taste," 

 and I must admit that there is much in it, for I have noticed that those per- 

 sons who have never been fully supplied with our common fruits, see little dif- 

 ference in the different varieties of the same kind. What constitutes the 

 sweet or sour taste of our fruits is not the absence of either of the compounds, 

 but the predominance of one over the other. Of strawberries I have never 

 seen an analysis of different varieties, but my own opinion, judging from what 

 I have seen and tasted, is that the Wilson is at about the height of richness in 

 sugar and acid, and that when you go above that in size, you get simply an 

 addition to the water, and if vou like the larsfer kinds better because they are 

 less acid, is it not because the sugar and acid are simply diluted? The Con- 

 cord grape, admitted to be *^ the grape for the million," but so far as the 

 fruit elements, sugar and acid, are concerned, it is weak, especially in the 

 former, consequently it lacks Ilavor, and, as compared with many others, it is 

 simply diluted. The Clinton is called by many a poor, sour grape, but in 

 these fruit elements it is one of the richest. I have the analyses of 38 varie- 

 ties of northern grapes, in which the Clinton contains the most sugar, almost 

 double that of the Concord, but it also contains over three times as much acid. 

 I do not wish to quarrel with those who cannot bear sour fruits, and who 

 think that excellence in them consists solely in their sweet flavors, but rich- 

 ness in these fruits is certainly a desirable quality, if we can educate our tastes 

 up to a relish f them. 



We gather and eat our fruits before they are ripe; the ripening process in 

 fruits consists largely in the transformation of acids into fruit or grape sugar. 

 We of the laity are not exi)ected to be chemists, but if we look into our child- 

 ren's school books on chemistry, we shall see that these fruit suo'ar and acids, 

 are composed of the same elements, differing only in their proportions. Nature 

 is a great chemist. In the green corn she puts sugar, in the ripening process 

 she changes this sugar to starch, but when you plant this corn for a new crop, 

 about the first thing she does is to change this starch back again to sugar, to 

 give nutriment to the new plant, which starch cannot do. So when we eat 

 this ripe corn, nature seizes upon its starch and changes it to sugar before it 

 can act as nutriment to the system. This fruit sugar, however, is not the 



