196 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



have realized fully the danger of finding a sufficient number of customei'S 

 to talie the crop that would be liliely placed upon the market at certain 

 seasons of the year. It is known that some colors and sizes sell more 

 readily than others, and when a variety drags somewhat, the middle man 

 is quite likely to lose his margin in handling. 



The canned article has not proven satisfactory when kept in tin, and 

 for that reason the housewife is not partial to a kind of fruit that is so 

 acid-like in its keeping processes, and naturally refrains from purchasing 

 as generously of the plums as of other fruits, especially the peach. 



The advent of the cold storage system has been an important factor 

 in growing fruits commercially, and has largely solved the prospec- 

 tive keeping and shipping of fruits. This has enabled the fruit men to 

 compare the keeping qualities of the different varieties of the various 

 kinds of fruits, and ascertain the value of cold storage in shipping the 

 same to parts often remote. By these shipping facilities the orchardist 

 with his arduous labors and natural drawbacks can cope with his com- 

 petitor who can grow the plum in its greatest perfection, and the differ- 

 ences in the distances of shipment are of but little significance as com- 

 pared with former methods. 



The main trouble experienced in handling and using cold storage fruit, 

 is that it does not hold up very long after being exposed to the outside 

 air. So long as kept at a fair uniform temperature, the keeping qualities 

 are better secured, but in changing from ohe retort to another, to dii^^rent 

 latitudes or placed on the open market during sultry weather, the fruit 

 immediately shows signs of decay. 



The color, flavor and solidity of the fruit often determines the sale 

 very largely, but the individual tastes of the ladies usually govern the 

 selection of the plums for the home. An apple is an apple, a peach a 

 peach, but a plum is not always a plum, and once a variety is used, the 

 ladies forever either admire or disdain its qualities, and will veto any 

 variety that they choose. For, of all fruits, the plum undergoes a change 

 in cooking that is peculiar. One with many of the essential salable 

 qualities becomes through heating, insipid and astringent; another with 

 perhaps inferior appearances, with the same treatment, makes a dessert 

 that is most delicious and desirable. 



These changes undergone in canning, dessert preparations and jellies 

 have determined largely the tendency in the propagation of newer sorts. 

 This should be liberally encouraged, as the possibilities in the field of 

 development of the plum appear to be as extensive as in any other of 

 the ti'ee fruits under cultivation. 



From the northwestern states we find more progress made in this line 

 than the remainder of the Union combined. Doubtless due largely to the 

 soil and climatic conditions of that latitude, as well as the minimum 

 depredation of the curculio and black knot that are so troublesome else- 

 where. The results obtained in this plum belt in originating seedling and 



