132 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



freeze, not in the open air or uncovered, to learn the effect. Let a. 

 hundred try the experiment, and something good may come from Mr. 

 Van Orman's experiments and experience. 



C. W. KEIFER, Kansas." 



Notice that his fruit, like mine, improved in flavor all the 

 time, as will be seen from the following testimony of 

 Professor Connell, of Farm and Ranch, and E. W. Kirk- 

 patrick, to whom I sent specimens for trial. Writing of 

 them, the editor says, under date of March 22: "Your 

 apples were firm, sound and good. Several persons tasted 

 them and declared they were better than any cold-storage 

 apples on the Dallas market." E. W. Kirkpatrick, who was 

 present and also ate of them, wrote me as follows : "Your 

 apple was most delicious, equal to the Northern Spy and a 

 better keeper. If we can grow and keep our apples like 

 yours, there will be great profit in it." 



I omitted to say above that my suggestion of opening the 

 doors of the cold-storage house at night for chilling pur- 

 poses, applies only to the southern or warmer part of the 

 country, there being no trouble to keep the temperature 

 down farther north. 



And now just two orange " feathers " for Florida and Cali- 

 fornia. Soon after the war, before Texas had railway connec- 

 tion with the world, I saw my friend, Henry Rosenberg, the 

 Galveston philanthropist, pack in the fall several barrels of 

 beautiful oranges from large trees growing on his well-kept 

 Bermuda grass lawn, for shipment to relatives in Baltimore, 

 sending them by way of New York, in the hot hold of one of 

 the old-time side-wheel steamers. It must have taken two 

 weeks to make the trip. He told me afterwards that he was 

 greatly surprised the next spring, on visiting his friends, to 

 find some of his oranges still on hand and in excellent con- 

 dition. The other "feather" is that about the same time I 

 was in an old Italian's grove of about fifty orange trees, also 

 in Galveston, all of which were trimmed up to clean, straight 

 bodies six or seven feet high, not in sod, for the grass had 

 been shaded out, but uncultivated. I was admiring the 

 beautiful trees with their branches bending under the load 



