566 



THE PRUNE D'AGEN. 



from which he has obtained 105 livres of 

 dried fruit; (52^ kilograms, or about 115 

 lbs. avoirdupois ;) and another individual, 

 in the environs of Machetaux, sold, last 

 year, (1832,) 750 francs' worth of dried 

 prunes, — the produce of a space of about 

 the fourth of an hectare ; (rather more than 

 half an acre.) 



Our author recommends, from his own 

 experience, that this tree should be propa- 

 gated by offsets from the roots, — a method 

 generally adopted in its own district; as- 

 serting that grafts are not lasting, worked 

 upon the peach or almond stocks ; it thrives 

 for a time, and makes great shoots for 

 several years, but after that, languishes and 

 dies. 



As to the process of making the prunes, 

 they are placed on hurdles made of straw 

 or weeds, raised two or three feet from the 

 ground, and are left there to wilt for about 

 48 hours, when they are shifted to other 

 hurdles, and put into an oven, the heat of 

 which is but a third of that required for 

 bread. The mouth of the oven is closed 

 with damp straw. This operation having 

 been repeated thrice, the fruit is ready for 

 consumption or sale. Those to be used in 

 the house are stored away in rather a dry 

 than damp quarter ; and those to be sent 

 abroad are packed in boxes of proper size, 

 lined with brown paper. A leaf or two of 

 the Bay tree put into each box, gives the 

 fruit an agreeable perfume. 



M. TouKRES concludes, by remarking, 

 that if the inhabitants of Provence pride 

 themselves upon the possession of the " Tree 

 of Minerva," (the Olive,) his district has a 

 great reason for glorying in the possession 

 of this finest of prunes. He also declares 

 that if the author of the Essay upon the 



Statistics of Provence, (to be quoted direct- 

 ly,) had ever tasted their first rate prunes, 

 (" de nos belles primes de premie choix,") he 

 would have taken good care not to compare 

 with them the prunes of Brignolles. From 

 the last mentioned essay, — " Statistique 

 Horticole de Provence," suffer me to ex- 

 tract from the article on the plum tree the 

 following : "The cultivation of plum trees 

 was more attended to than that of any 

 other fruit tree in other countries, princi- 

 pally on account of the trade carried on in 

 prunes, dried in the sun, and known as the 

 'Pruneaux de Pistoles.'" "The Prunes 

 of Brignolles," (a small town of Provence,) 

 deserved their celebrity ; but at the present 

 moment, it has lost its former plum planta- 

 tion. The prunes, now sold as such, come 

 from the environs of Digne, especially from 

 Estoublon. They are packed in boxes, 

 covered with a paper, stamped with the arms 

 and cypher of Brignolles. These prunes 

 are superior in quality to those of Tours, 

 and even to those of Agen, but still are not 

 equal to those of the district whose name 

 they have assumed, where, however, a 

 few plum trees are still left, justifying 

 their title to the distinction they have ac- 

 quired." 



My apology for this long and, perhaps, 

 tedious article, must be the conviction I 

 feel, that in our every year increasing fruit 

 tree cultivation, the making of prunes wilj 

 become an important branch of our horti? 

 culture, especially in this district of coun- 

 try, where the plum succeeds so well, and 

 under our serene and resplendent autumn 

 skies, which almost supersede the neces- 

 sity of artificial furnaces. 



J. W. Kneyels. 



Fishkill Landing, N. Y , May, 1843. 



