42 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



been able to find the motor to run the turn-tables, nor secure power 

 for its operation. Before coming away, however, the motor was 

 found, having been delivered by mistake at the Idaho building, and 

 connections were made so that as soon as the power was turned 

 on to Horticultural Hall the tables could be operated. On 

 May 7th I returned home and have not since visited the fair. 



Judging by the way the first shipment of cold storage fruit to 

 St. Louis turned out it was evident that there would not be a suffi- 

 cient quantity of apples to maintain the exhibit as we should de- 

 sire. To remedy this shortage, in part, Mr. J. M. Underwood had 

 put up at his place at Lake City about 100 additional jars of fruit, 

 which were sent to St. Louis early in June, and preparations were 

 made looking towards a larger exhibit of small fruits than would 

 have been thought necessary if the apples in storage had been 

 found to have kept well. There were stored about 120 bushels of 

 apples, something like twice as many as were stored for our ex- 

 hibit at the Chicago exposition, and this, it was thought, would be 

 a sufficient quantity, as the St. Louis installation required only about 

 one-fifth more plates of fruits to cover it. 



The original purpose was to have shipped small fruits to the 

 World's Fair by express in ordinary cases, but as the time of ship- 

 ment drew nigh and the urgency of the situation developed it be- 

 came apparent that there was too much risk in undertaking to 

 transport sufficient small fruits such a distance in the ordinary way. 

 Refrigerator cars could not be obtained, and the next recourse was 

 small refrigerators, which might go back and forth. There were no 

 refrigerators in the market that could be bought adapted to this 

 purpose, and so ten were constructed from a special design made to 

 hold forty-eight quarts each. While these refrigerators were not 

 perfect in the results obtained by their use, in the main they an- 

 swered the purpose well, and most of the fruit that went to the 

 fair in them arrived in fairly good condition, some of the time 

 in excellent shape, and, I believe, at no time was the fruit actually 

 spoiled. After sending these refrigerators ofif at the first, I never 

 saw them again, with a single exception, and had no opportunity 

 personally of correcting defects. Mr. Wedge made a radical im- 

 provement in one or two that were passing between Albert Lea and 

 St. Louis, and others between Excelsior and St. Louis were also 

 changed in a similar way. The shipments of small fruit were 

 mainly from Albert Lea, Owatonna, Lake City, Faribault and Ex- 

 celsior, although smaller quantities went from a large number of 

 places in ordinary cases, as the refrigerators were not available 

 for use for the many smaller shipments that were made by our con- 



