THE RIPENING AND PRESERVATION OF FRUITS. 217 



ten or twelve degrees below zero, a few degrees — three or four — 

 of frost get in, but the boxes and barrels are all covered with 

 straw mats and are never reached by the frost. 



When the late fall and winter pears are gathered they are put in 

 bushel or half-bushel boxes, and placed on the north side of a 

 building, outside of the fruit house and protected. They are kept 

 there as long as the weather will permit; b^' that time the room 

 has got thoroughly cooled and ready to receive the fruit. Thej' 

 have both pears and apples there now in perfection. 



In the report of the Michigan Horticultural Society for 1882 is 

 an account, by Mr. S. W. Dorr, of a fruit house constructed by 

 him, on the cold air system, without the use of ice. He lays down 

 the principle that, in order to keep fruit for anj^ great length of 

 time, the store-room must be frost-proof and kept at a low, even 

 temperature — three or four degrees above freezing — with suffi- 

 cient ventilation to carry off all moisture and impurities. He was 

 able to keep his house within three degrees of freezing for five 

 months ; and when the temperature outside changed sixty degrees 

 in twenty-four hours, the change in the fruit room was impercep- 

 tible. Again, when the thermometer fell to points varying from 

 six to twenty degrees below zero, five days in succession, the 

 temperature scarcely changed one degree in the fruit house. This 

 result was effected by building a house with triple walls, fifteen 

 inches in thickness, ten inches of which was filled with sawdust. 



One chief condition of success consists iu the state in which the 

 fruit goes to the cooler. It should be taken before any sound spec- 

 imen begins to show ripeness, and no single fruit should be stored 

 that has fallen to the ground ; for, however perfect it may seem, 

 sooner or later that dropped fruit will make its presence known, 

 and will often cause the decay of the whole package unless noticed 

 in time ; which rarely happens when, hundreds of bushels are 

 piled one above another for a month or two. The fruits intended 

 for cold storage houses should go directlj' 'from the orchard. 

 The cause of so many failures — iu storing pears, for instance — is 

 that the fruit is often bought of different parties, much of it im- 

 perfectl}' packed, and coming to hand in no condition to go to the 

 cooler ; perhaps it has been gathered weeks previously, or carried 

 long distances and become more or less bruised, and rendered in 

 all respects unfit for keeping in this way. The past fall hundreds 

 of bushels of Bartlett pears that were nearlj^ ripe were stored by 

 small fruit venders who knew nothing about the subject. 



