134 THE YEAR-BOOK OF AGRICULTURE. 



and other vegetables, but the mistake in its formation was that it was not open at the top, to 

 create a draught and carry off the moisture. If such a chimney were very tall, with the 

 heat in an oven at the bottom to heat the air drawn in from outside, I think fruit would dry 

 very rapidly. Any and every farmer can have one of these drying flues ; and where fuel is 

 cheap and fruit plenty, I have no doubt that the profit would be very large. It is worth 

 trying. There is another plan of building a drying chimney that may be more effectual than 

 one with an open top, and that is the plan adopted in some foundries to dr the wet clay- 

 work of cores used in casting. There the current of heated air is introduced at the top and 

 draws downwards, and escapes at the bottom. But, after all, I do not think that we have 

 arrived at the true way of drying fruit. I have full faith to believe that the time will come 

 when fruit will be made into a pulp, and freed from skins and cores and seeds by machinery, 

 and the water evaporated by heat, somewhat upon the same plan it is now from pulp of rags 

 to make paper. What we want is an invention to facilitate this purpose. That it can be 

 done I know, for it is done in a rude way at the West in an article called " peach leather," 

 or, as the chairman suggests as a better name, we will call it peach marmalade. Peaches are 

 pulped and spread upon plates or tin platters, and dried in the sun or a slow oven. 



Pumpkin meal is an article made by the Shakers, and sold in this market to a limited 

 extent. The process ought to be better known, and more widely applied. And if so juicy a 

 fruit as pumpkins can be dried and ground into meal, I want to know why apples cannot be 

 treated in the same way. 



Adaptation of Trees to Economic Purposes. 



As in the case of metals, timber is provided in manageable masses. The size of trees is 

 adapted for human, not Cyclopean artisans. Had they generally approached the Gigantic 

 Sequoia, what could have been done with them with logs, one of which, laid along the pave- 

 ment of some streets, would fill them to the roofs of three-story houses ! The difficulty of 

 felling, transporting, handling, and slitting such into beams or into boards, would have been 

 seriously embarrassing, whereas the most useful trees are never too large for easy control, 

 rarely exceeding four feet in diameter, and a fair average would give from fifteen to eighteen 

 inches nearly. The mahogany-tree is remarkable for its magnitude, and yet the largest 

 recorded log was only seventeen feet long by fifty-four and sixty-four inches. Another fea- 

 ture of the world's timber is, the heaviest woods are not found in the largest bolls, but gene- 

 rally in the smallest a provision that vastly facilitates man's control over them. Fir is only 

 as heavy as oak, while ebony, lignum-vitae, and box are rather shrubs than trees. Hickory 

 is rarely seen a foot in diameter, and exceedingly few sticks of rosewood are met with as 

 large. Thus the largest trees are light and easily worked. Had they been light and porous 

 as the cork-tree, or heavy and dense as lignum-vitoo, they had been of comparatively little 

 use to man. But we are ordained to be elaborators in wood as well as in the metals ; and 

 hence the facilities for its acquisition, its varieties of masses, properties, and adaptations. 

 Ewbank, The World a Workshop. 



