402 OPERATIONS OF GATHERING, ETC. 



the following process : The articles are suspended in a cask or jar, by 

 threads attached to cross-sticks, fixed immediately within the position of 

 the lid. This being done, pure white dry sand is poured slowly in till 

 it surrounds all the articles suspended, which become as it were immersed 

 in it. When the flowers or fruits are to be taken out, the plug is removed 

 from a hole in the bottom of the vessel, and as much of the sand allowed to 

 run out as uncovers as many of the fruit or flowers as it is desired to take 

 out at one time. This mode of preserving is given in some French and 

 Italian authors ; but we believe it is very seldom put in practice. Roots, 

 tubers, and bulbs are preserved in soil or in sand, moderately dry, and 

 excluded from frost ; and some kinds, which have coverings which protect 

 them from evaporation, such as the tulip and the crocus, are kept in cool 

 dry shelves or lofts, or in papers till the planting season. Potatoes, turnips, 

 carrots, &c., are preserved with most flavour by leaving them where they 

 have grown, covering the ground with litter, so as to exclude frost, and 

 admit of their being taken up daily as wanted. Towards the growing 

 season they should have a thicker covering to exclude atmospheric heat ; or 

 a portion should have been taken up in autumn, and buried in sand or soil, 

 in a cool cellar, in order to retard vegetation as long as possible. The 

 roots mentioned, and also onions, will keep upwards of a year without 

 rotting or vegetating, if mixed with sand and buried in a pit in dry soil, the 

 upper part of which shall be at least five feet under the surface of the 

 ground, so as effectually to exclude air and change of temperature. Hen- 

 derson, an eminent gardener at Brechin, makes use of the ice-house for 

 preserving u roots of all kinds till the return of the natural crop." " By 

 the month of April," he says, " the ice in our ice-house is found to have 

 subsided four or five feet ; and in this empty room I deposit the vegetables 

 to be preserved. After stuffing the vacuities with straw, and covering the 

 surface of the ice with the same material, I place on it case-boxes, dry- ware 

 casks, baskets, &c., and fill them with turnips, carrots, beet- root, celery, 

 and in particular potatoes. By the cold of the place, vegetation is so much 

 suspended that all these articles may be thus kept fresh and uninjured, till 

 they give place to another crop in its natural season." 



058. Keeping -fruits, such as the apple and pear, are preserved in the 

 fruit-room, in shelves, placed singly so as not to touch each other ; the finer 

 keeping-pears may be packed in jars or boxes, with dried fern, or with 

 kiln-dried barley-straw ; and baking apples and pears may be kept in heaps 

 or thick layers on a cellar-floor, and covered with straw, to retain moisture 

 and exclude the frost. But the subject of keeping fruits will be recurred to 

 in treating of the fruit-garden. 



859. Packing and transporting plants and seeds. Rooted plants and 

 cuttings, and other parts of plants intended to grow, may be preserved for 

 weeks, and, under certain circumstances, even for months, in moist live 

 moss, the direct action of the air and the sun being excluded ; and in this 

 medium also they may be packed and sent to any distance within the tem- 

 perate hemispheres, but not in tropical regions, on account of the extreme 

 heat. Plants that are to pass through these regions are planted in soil, in 

 boxes with glass covers, and being occasionally watered, they are transferred 

 from India to England with a very moderate proportion of loss. Seeds are 

 in general most safely conveyed from one country to another in loose paper 

 packages, kept in a dry airy situation, so as neither to be parched with dry 



