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In a state of nature, one of the primary objects of the skin of a 

 fruit is to protect the inner tissues from injury until such time as 

 they may aid in securing that disposal of the fruit that will be useful 

 to its species; and of all the agencies likely to upset this result few 

 are more potent than parasitic fungi. 



A careful review of the species of fungi that attack ripe fruit shows 

 that very few of them have the power to penetrate the sound skin of 

 fruit. It appears that for the most part it is only after some injury 

 has made an opening for them that these fungi can gain an entrance. 



It follows that the orchardist should give close attention to the 

 various agencies that may injure the skin of his products be it ever so 

 slightly. An injury so small as to be quite invisible to the eye is 

 an ample gateway for these injurious rots. 



It is almost an axiom of the best fruit-growers, in the regions where 

 fruit-growing is most successful, that fruit should be handled like 

 eggs, and for precisely the same reason. The cracking of an egg- 

 shell is not more fatal to the keeping qualities of an egg than is a 

 similar accident to the skin of fruit. 



Beyond question the people of California are the greatest masters of 

 the art of plucking, caring for, and marketing fruit; and it is in 

 California that one observes the highest degree of attention given to 

 preserving the skin of fruit in a perfectly uninjured condition. This 

 is a matter to which I have given much observation in the half-dozen 

 different fruit-growing regions of the United States, and in nearly a 

 dozen other countries, in the course of tours devoted specially to the 

 purpose of seeing with my own eyes the methods employed in the 

 handling of produce. So far as such evidence goes, there can be no 

 doubt that the most successful fruit-growers, from the commercial 

 standpoint, are those that handle the fruit with the greatest care ; and 

 let it be understood that this care is usually exercised in the full know- 

 ledge that it is the rot fungi that constitute the danger. All their 

 precautions, such as utmost care in picking and sorting and grading, 

 careful wrapping, special vehicles to provide against jarring and 

 bruising, the use of ice in warm weather, are precautions based 

 firmly on a knowledge that the smallest break in the skin of a single 

 piece of fruit may mean the loss of an entire shipment. The fungi 

 that cause the rotting of fruit, of which the Gloeosporium is a 

 prominent example, are almost omnipresent, and stand ever ready to 

 take full advantage of the smallest opening. If they gain access to 

 one orange or one apple or one cherry, in a case, it is not long before 

 the entire case is doomed ; for the rotting of one piece creates 

 chemicals capable of so injuring the other pieces as to render them 

 accessible to the rot fungi. 



In the Orchard. A number of conclusions applicable to orchard 

 work are derivable from the foregoing pages. 



In the first place, it is evident that if the fungi responsible for the 

 occurrence and spread of the ripe rots are so indifferent to the nature 

 of their host, we must give attention to other matters than the condi- 

 tion of the fruits that are being raised for profit in the orchard. If, 

 for instance, we have a fruit that is subject to ripe rot and there is 



