KEEPING OF FRUIT. 31 



north, than we are. That, also, has a tendency to make them 

 more enduring. 



Question. I would like to ask whether fruit keeps best 

 in a moist or a cool and dry cellar? 



Mr. Gold. I have never had any experience with a dry 

 and cool cellar. It is an impossibility, in our locality, to get 

 a dry cellar, unless you have a furnace in it. The nature of 

 the soil is such that the water rises up from below, and you 

 must have a drain to let the water run off from your cellar. 

 That is the rule, in nine cases out of ten, with cellars in our 

 part of the State of Connecticut. 



Mr. Ware of Marblehead. I will say, that I have been 

 in the habit of growing apples, more or less, all my lifetime, 

 and that my cellar is dry. It has a cement floor, and no 

 moisture whatever comes from the earth. I have kept the 

 "Kilham Hill," which is a fall apple, in that cellar all winter, 

 and carried it to market in April, in perfect condition. It is 

 well known that that apple, when it arrives at a degree of 

 mellowness, turns mealy, and becomes of little or no value ; 

 but, as I say, I have kept them until April and carried them 

 to market in perfectly good condition, without any mellowness 

 whatever. My cellar is arranged especially for the keeping 

 of fruit, and I had in view thorough ventilation. There is a 

 window on two sides, so that in a suitable temperature I can 

 open the windows and thoroughly ventilate it. If the weather 

 is warm and damp, I then shut the windows and exclude that 

 kind of air, keeping out dampness, and keeping the tempera- 

 ture as cool as possible in the winter, — very near the freezing 

 point. 



Question. Do you head your apples in ? 



Mr. Ware. No, sir. As a matter of convenience, for 

 the purpose of stowing a large quantity in a small space, I 

 have had bins made that will hold from fifty to seventy-five 

 barrels each. They are made about two feet and a half 

 deep, — about the depth of a flour barrel, — and when I harvest 

 my apples, I pick them carefully by hand, pour them into 

 barrels carefully, and take them in spring wagons to the 

 cellar, and pour them carefully out of the barrels into the 

 bins, — not pouring them from the top down, but putting the 

 barrel down on the side, and tipping them out very care- 



