47 o Appendix. 



the market value of the rest as to cost the owner not less than twenty- 

 five or fifty cents each. The editor of the Horticulturist says that 

 a peach-grower, having discovered that his men brought in many 

 poor peaches, had them assorted carefully before shipping, and 

 forty baskets of cullings taken out of every hundred. The sixty 

 good ones were then sold for $1.25 per basket, bringing $75. The 

 unassorted ones would bring only sixty cents per basket, or $60 

 for the whole, while the freight on the forty baskets of poor ones, 

 mixed with the good, would have greatly increased the weight and 

 expenses. 



FRUIT-ROOMS (p. 118). After a good supply of fresh fruit is 

 raised, the next provision is a suitable apartment to keep it in. 

 It is here that the great deficiency exists with many cultivators. 

 Fruit decays rapidly if too warm, withers if too dry, and rots 

 when too damp. We have known some cultivators to lose all their 

 winter fruit by the end of March because only ordinary cellars were 

 provided for it, while others with no better crops, have kept a 

 good supply perfectly fresh till the ripening of strawberries and cur- 

 rants, by means of well-built and well-managed fruit-rooms. 



The same causes which spoil and induce early rotting in winter 

 fruit, prevent the keeping of late autumn fruit into winter. For ex- 

 ample, take the BeurrS d'Anjou pear, which if placed without care 

 in warm apartments when gathered, may not keep into December ; 

 while, with the best management, specimens have been retained 

 perfectly fresh into February and March. 



The best fruit-rooms are built above ground. They admit of 

 more perfect control of the temperature, and may be kept cooler 

 through autumn a matter of much importance. For such rooms 

 the walls must of course be double, and filled in with powdered 

 charcoal, ashes, tan, or similar substance, which is rather better 

 than to have the inclosed space occupied only with air. The ceil- 

 ing or roof must also be double, and well secured from the intru- 

 sion of frost from above. Such rooms may be made to open on the 

 north side, so as to be kept cool till the advent of the freezing 

 weather of winter. Fruit, in an apartment thus managed, will keep 

 much better than otherwise. We have experimented fully on this 

 point, and observed the difference between the keeping of winter 

 apples taken directly from the trees and placed on the shelves in 

 October, and others placed, when gathered, on the floor of an out- 

 building fronting north, and allowed to remain there nearly till the 

 first day of December. The latter, at a careful estimate, did not 



