(Ks THE COXXECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



pear. That which nature prepares for food is daily bread. 

 If the da}'"s need leave it unconsumed, she unfits it for our use 

 and returns it to her laboratories or gives it to the bacilli. Her 

 l)ounty chooses its own seasons and regards not the hunger 

 of man between her har\-est times. 



But science inter\enes and takes within her care the food 

 that nature would destroy. She weaves her magic circle 

 around it and ordains that it know not the season's change, nor 

 rain or drought, nor growth or decay until in his more needful 

 time, man please to take it for his use. 



It is a far cry from the cache of the Esquimaux to the 

 frosty refrigerators of a now-a-day purveyor of fruits and 

 flesh. The brush-fire of the ancient cliff dweller has its 

 analogue in the radiator of his modern prototype, the flat 

 dweller, but we find no parallel in the domestic economy of 

 prehistoric man for the chilly tubes in the cold boxes of the 

 up-to-date cold storage plant. The storage of good by the cave 

 man was nearly represented by the cubical contents of his stom- 

 ach and wh.en that became empt}- the gods were implored for 

 more, — sometimes \ainly. Supply and demand were often out 

 of balance, and there were famines in the land. As population 

 l)ecame denser and the necessity for food preservation more 

 important and the arts gf civilized life began to unfold, our 

 grandfathers smoked and salted and our grandmothers pickled 

 and preserved. But "Salt Meats," for all times, were not 

 pleasing to the palate and pound for pound sweetmeats were 

 cloying. 



The art of maintaining temperatures above that of sur- 

 rounding" atmosphere is older than prehistoric legend, but 

 methods of maintaining temperatures below that of sur- 

 rounding atmosphere are comparatively modern. 



Popular notions of heat seem to start from the temperature 

 of the living human body as their initial point, ^^'hat feels 

 warm to the touch is readily understood to have heat, and 

 what feels cold is loosely thought to possess some opposite 

 propertv or quality. Science defines heat as a kind or form 

 of energ}-, of which nothing in the universe is wholly devoid: 

 for which each material substance has its characteristic and 

 definite capacity, referred to as "specific heat." The heat of 



