ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. . 129 



A Member : I would like to ask Prof. Powell, or j\Ir. Hart, 

 if they can tell what degree of humidity is advantageous for cold 

 storage ? 



Prof. Powell : At this time I do not know^ anything about 

 it, and I do not know as there is anybody that knows anything 

 about it. I believe that we shall come to know by experiment 

 just how much humidity is advantageous. We can gain a little 

 idea of it by the feeling of the people who have had experience, 

 but we shall probably gain a great deal more knowledge on that 

 by actual experiments. It is a subject upon which it is impor- 

 tant to gain much accurate information ; more than we have at 

 present. I have seen a cold storage man take a hose and just 

 wet the rooms right down at the bottom for a short time. It 

 is something which experience in a cold storage man enables 

 him to handle. He seems to know instinctively. It is a ques- 

 tion which the experience of the cold storage man may give 

 a little light on, but it is a question I cannot answer. If there 

 is any storage man here he may be able to tell you how he 

 determines when the room gets too dry. There has been no 

 scientific work as yet to determine what degree of humidity 

 is advantageous. 



A Member : I have a friend in New Jersey, who for many 

 years was in the habit of putting his pears into cold storage 

 at once, as fast as picked, and his method of cold storage was 

 to put them in a shed where ice was stored overhead. There 

 was a constant drip of cold w^ater all the time down into the 

 room where the pears were, and the result w'as that they were 

 kept wet as well as cold all the time. 



He practiced that with entire success for many years. As 

 soon as he got through picking, then he began to take out, 

 taking out two or three loads a day all the time, and, so far 

 as I know, his losses were very small, even nothing to speak of. 

 That is a method which could not be generally adopted, and 

 it is not in accord with the ideas of modern cold storage, but 

 it was successful in his case in keeping the fruit in good con- 

 dition for a short time. 



Mr. Hale : Right along in that line, I think myself that the 

 cold storage men have been trying to get too dry an atmos- 

 phere. I think a good many of you gentlemen can look back 

 to your boyhood da}-s, when you went around among the 

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