222 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



feet condition. Tiiey must not be sluikeu while frozen. People 

 ask why fruit does not keep as well as it used to, but the}' are 

 thinking of old-time cellars in the country, where there were no 

 furnaces, and the cellars had to l)e banked uj) to keep out the 

 frost. He thought the opinion of dealers is that houses where ice 

 is used are apt to be damp from the waste of the ice, and that con- 

 sequently the flavor is not as good and the fruit does not keep as 

 well as where chemicals are used. In the cold storage house on 

 North street, which is five stories high and a hundred and fifty feet 

 dee[), with an engine in the attic, and kept cool by the use of chem- 

 icals, it is so dry that matches laid an3'where will light with perfect 

 ease, and he was under the impression that fruit comes out of such 

 a house with better flavor than from an ice house. Cold storage is 

 a great convenience to fruit growers ; Bartlett or other pears can be 

 stored when there is a surplus, and put on the market as it will 

 bear them, thus producing a very beneficial effect by equalizing 

 prices and preventing the gluts that were so common Ibrmerl}-. 

 The Vicar is the only kind that was carried through to the first of 

 Fel)ruary this year. 



Mr. Hills said that fruit from different soils will vary in keep- 

 ing ; he watches his fruit and picks that of trees on warm soils first ; 

 if he followed the oi)posite course, those on warm soils would be 

 all ©n the ground before he got to them. 



Joseph H. Woodford said that all depends on the time of pick- 

 ing ; if fruit is left on the tree till fully ripe it will not keep. The 

 sooner a i)ear is picked, after it attains its full size, the better. He 

 was latel}' in Central America, and when he went to buy some 

 bananas to bring home the dealers asked him whether he wanted 

 full ripe, or two-thirds, or three-quarters. They said full ripe fruit 

 would not keep but two days, while two-thirds ripe woidd keep till 

 lie got home ; and it did, but did not have the flavor of fully grown. 

 The interru[)tion of tlu! rii)cning process is what keeps fruit, but 

 the temperature nuist be uniform after this interruption. 



]\Ir. Flint said that he once kept nine or ten barrels of apples 

 on the trees till the S)th of November, when his neighbors thought 

 they were spoiled, but he piled the barrels up on the north side of 

 a building until Christmas, and then put them in the stable and 

 covered with straw, and they kept finely till A|)ril. 



Mr. Wood said that Mr. Flint's ai)ples probably kept cool on 

 the tree. He once i)icked some Iloxbury Russet apples very 



