MANAGEMENT OF APPLES. 27 



veuieuce, and the complaints against fruits are too often 

 derived from experience with such damaged specimens. 



Summer apples may be allowed to drop, or be gently shaken 

 from the trees on to a mat of soft grass, or a mulch of fine 

 hay or straw. Fruit for keeping must be carefully hand- 

 picked, and when large and fine, must be handled as tenderly 

 as eggs. When gathered, apples may be safely placed directly 

 in the barrels where they are to remain, if they are sorted by 

 a careful hand ; another way is to carry them in baskets to 

 the fruit-house, or a clean barn-floor, which makes a very 

 good autumn fruit- room, and allow them to remain in heaps 

 till sold or danger of frost requires their removal to the cellar. 



We adopt both methods. For our own use, the apples are 

 placed, when picked, of course in a dry day, in barrels in the 

 field and carried in a cart to the barn-floor, or some other 

 clean out-building, where they remain till in danger of freezing, 

 when they are carried to the cellar, which has been cooled 

 down as much as possible by keeping windows and doors 

 open. The barrels are not headed up, but placed in two tiers, 

 the upper, the earlier sorts, forming a cover for the later 

 keepers. 



We use the different sorts when the season of their matu- 

 rity arrives. We seldom have occasion to pick over a barrel, 

 except with late keepers ; perhaps in April or May. We 

 keep the cellar as cool as possible and not freeze. It is 

 usually wet or damp, — more or less water flowing through it. 

 No onions, turnips, cabbages, or other fragrant vegetables 

 are allowed in it ; kerosene oil and allied articles are also 

 excluded. Fruit is almost as susceptible to influence from 

 odors — losing its own peculiar and delicate aroma and absorb- 

 ing that of other substances — as cream and butter, the most 

 delicate and sensitive of all articles of food. It cannot be 

 kept in a common house cellar, with vegetables, without acquir- 

 ing an artificial taste. A mouldy barrel will as surely com- 

 municate its odor to the apples as will a musty cider-cask to 

 its contents. 



We keep in our cellar the Fameuse, or Snow apple, in per- 

 fection till December or January, the Greening and Seek-uo- 

 further till February or March, and the Russets till new 

 apples crowd them out. True, we lose a large per cent, in June, 



