130 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



her, and an examination today, March 29, shows every one of 

 the apples to be not only plump and sound, but of a delicious 

 flavor that carries me back to the "apple dens" of yore. In 

 view of this result, why could not small growers, everywhere 

 over the country, store sod-grown apples in earthen banks of 

 twenty or more bushels, just as potatoes are kept, the moist 

 earth preventing all shriveling, and imparting a most delight- 

 ful quality? But still another suggestion presented itself last 

 fall, when I buried those apples. If sod fruit, sixty years ago, 

 kept so well in moist earth, why not place the moisture in the 

 package, whether box or barrel? So, to test the matter, I 

 soaked a small box in water and placed more Terry in it, dip- 

 ping the apples also in water, and nailed it up tight, after 

 which it was covered with loose dry soil to prevent freezing. 

 Just as I expected, they are now as sound and fine every way 

 as the others, in fact, cannot be told apart ; and all of them, 

 box and earth stored, refuse to have anything to do with 

 the brown rot bacteria ; for, though I inoculated one of each 

 lot in three places, three weeks ago with a rotten apple taken 

 from a public fruit-stand, not a single one "took." But three 

 perfectly sound-looking apples from the same stand, inocu- 

 lated at the same time, did " take" in every place the second 

 day, and all rotted quickly thereafter. 



Now, while these experiments have been on a small scale, 

 it takes only one feather to show which way the wind is blow- 

 ing ; as it took but one falling apple to suggest the great 

 law of gravitation, and one boiling kettle the power of steam. 

 So these few apples demonstrate, just as surely as a hundred 

 bushels, that the conditions of the flesh in apples grown with 

 surface roots entire are such as to absolutely prevent the de- 

 velopment of the brown-rot bacteria. Of course, they will ul- 

 timately break down under the universal law of decay. The 

 second important fact shown is that, to afford such immunity 

 to sod apples, it only requires, at a guess, a temperature of 

 about fifty degrees, while with cultivated fruit it must go 

 nearly to the freezing point; the result of which is to so dis- 

 organize the tissues of the skin that when exposed to-a higher, 

 open-air temperature, the effect known as "scald" or a dark 



