64 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



matter, is sugar, with salts in small amouut. No one could keep 

 warm and grow fat on a diet of apples, oranges or grapes, as he 

 would on baked beans with plenty of pork ; pears, berries and plums 

 could not be taken in quantities large enough or often enough to 

 make bone, fat and muscle, as would milk, meat and vegetables. 

 Notwithstanding this, there is demonstrated the fact, and great] 3^ 

 to its credit, too, that fruit has a place and fills it, that the meats, 

 the butter and milk cannot assume. 



The value of fruit as an article of food of supplementary useful- 

 ness cannot be gainsaid ; and if I have not already wearied you, it 

 is of some of these uses that 1 wish to speak. Let us first under- 

 stand what of the chemical constituents of fruit are utilized in the 

 body. First, the water, as when taken as a beverage, or as a part 

 of other food, is indispensable to give to the blood and secretions 

 the fluidity necessary to tlie performance of their functions ; it also 

 serves as a solvent to facilitate the introduction and discharge of 

 substances naturally solid. In all the tissues it serves to maintain 

 their special consistency, such as flexibility or elasticity. The 

 proteins, though very small in amount, contribute as well as they 

 may toward making new tissue of all kinds ; sugar helps create 

 animal heat, and adds a little to the store of fat ; the vegetable 

 matter the indigestible portion of fruit, when immature, predomi- 

 nates, and is diminished in proportion to the ingredients ; as ripening 

 progresses, this is almost Avholly thrown out as waste material. 

 The acids, sugar and salts are the elements which give fruit what- 

 ever value as a nuirient it may possess; how, we shall presently 

 see. To these components, combined with certain faint and little 

 known aromatic ethers, are due that which we recognize as the 

 characteristic flavor of various fruits. They are called malic acid, 

 found in the apple, pear and quince ; tartaric acid, characteristic 

 of the grape, and existing to a certain extent in other allied fruits ; 

 and citric acid, peculiar to the lemon, lime and orange. Now it is a 

 part of nature's system that nothing can be appropriated by the 

 body for its uses, except in the way nature has ordained ; so when 

 malic, citric and tartaric acids find their way into the body, in 

 the form in which they existed in the fruit, in combination 

 with sodium or potassium, as the case may be, nature utilizes them 

 as material to obtain the carbonates of soda and potassa, whose 

 office it is to keep the blood alkaline, so that its vital functions may 

 not be interrupted. Herein lies the great value of what are knowa 



