THE RIPENING AND PRESERVATION OF FRUITS. 223 



caref all}' and left them in piles on the ground until they were covered 

 with a foot of snow ; they were afterwards packed in barrels in 

 coal ashes and opened the middle of June, when the}' were very 

 nearly perfect — plump, with the fiesh crisp and juicy, and of fine 

 flavor when others had lost their flavor. The air was excluded 

 from them and the temperature was even. Fruit rooms in 

 dwelling houses, even though separated from the furnace cellar, 

 do not compare with farmers' cellars for keeping fruit. 



Mr. Wilder said that the last season was one of the worst he 

 had known for keeping fruit. The opinion that fruit, when kept 

 in houses where cold is produced b}- chemicals, comes out with 

 better flavor than that kept in ice houses maj' be correct, but there 

 is difference of opinion on that point. 



Referring to this being the last of the series of meetings 

 for discussion, Mr. Wilder said that he could not allow the 

 occasion to pass without expressing the great interest he felt in 

 these discussions, and the pleasure and profit he had derived 

 from being able to attend so man}' of them. Next to the exhibi- 

 tions of the Society, nothing has conduced so much to its popular- 

 ity and usefulness as these weekly discussions. The bringing 

 together of persons, interested in the same objects, to compare the 

 results of their experience, is the most powerful agency in advanc- 

 ing progress and improvement in our age, and so it will continue 

 to be in all coming time. The knowledge obtained at these meet- 

 ings is valuable to all those who attend them, and moreover is very 

 widely disseminated by the publication of our proceedings. Many 

 of the papers read have been printed in full, not only in our 

 American journals, but also in the horticultural journals of Eng- 

 land. He therefore felt a deep interest in the perpetuation of these 

 meetings, and hoped that they might be continued from year to year, 

 and that the Society might go on, with increasing prosperity, long 

 after he should have been consigned to the bosom of mother earth. 



The meeting then adjourned without day. 



The following letter from Parker Earle, President of the 

 American Horticultural Society, was received by Mr. Wilder too 



