128 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



ripen up with as good quality as if left on the tree, and will 

 also hang tenaciously to the stem when ripe. Plain venti- 

 lated cars would carry them across the continent and back in 

 good order. The sod pear is much like the plum, but can be 

 picked even earlier. I have had LeConte windfalls, little 

 more than half-grown, if placed in a box and closely covered, 

 ripen up to excellent quality. This, however, does not apply 

 to Kieffer, which must be fully mature and well colored before 

 gathering. With this variety of pear the secret of good qual- 

 ity is thorough maturity and a close, confined atmosphere. 

 Never lay on open shelves to ripen, but pack in bulk and 

 cover well, and it will come out a juicy and delicious fruit. 



I will now give some interesting experiments made on a 

 small scale with apples last year, and some now in progress, 

 to test the keeping qualities of those grown on trees whose 

 roots have not been disturbed. In November, 1904, I picked 

 apples so grown, packed them in a box, placing it under my 

 house, which is elevated above the ground. It was covered in 

 freezing weather with hay to protect it, and on the yth of 

 April, 1905, they were all perfectly sound, and Professor Con- 

 nell, editor of Farm and Ranch, pronounced the fruit excel- 

 lent. But I was not satisfied, for the apples were rather dry 

 and slightly shriveled from loss of moisture. The question 

 then arose, how to prevent this and how to keep the fruit 

 cheaply in the grower's hands through the winter, with qual- 

 ity unimpared, and have it come out in spring with capacity 

 to hold up, a sound, good eating apple, until sold. That this 

 is hard to do with cultivated fruit kept at a low temperature 

 in cold storage is plain, for much of the fruit now, March 29, 

 exposed for sale, shows the bad effects of too low temperature, 

 the skin in places having the appearance of scald, after which 

 rot quickly follows. 



But, as I said, pondering last fall over this problem of 

 carrying apples through the winter cheaply, which must be 

 done if Texas or the South is ever to go into the business on 

 a large scale, all at once one day, I was carried back on mem- 

 ory's wings nearly sixty years, and lived over again events 

 that occurred when I was a little boy at a large boarding 



