ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 131 



Prof. Powell: How low will that work? 



Mr. Berry: At an atmosphere of 31 degrees. That is the 

 lowest. Anything below that is not shown. 



A Member: I would like to ask Mr. Powell this question: 

 How long have the pears been kept in storage that you say 

 liave kept up two or three weeks after being taken "out? 



Prof. Powell: Why, the last withdrawal I made was of 

 Kieffers, and was on the 15th day of January, and from an 

 atmosphere of 32 degrees. Those were pears that were treated 

 immediately after picking, and when I left home they were 

 still in a perfectly firm, good condition. It looked as though 

 those would hold up about a month in a temperature ranging 

 irom 50 to 60. We try to put them in a condition that the 

 fruit growers would have had to have kept them in, but as 

 a matter of fact, in a temperature of 36, we found that even 

 though the pears were stored, those pears had reached their 

 limit of storage durability by the first of the year, but with 

 a decline of the temperature it looks as though they would keep 

 imtil well along in the spring. 



A Member : Are the pears any better in January than in 

 December? In other words, does it pay to hold them? 



Prof. Powell : Well, I doubt whether it would be advisable 

 to hold them. I should not want to advise that without look- 

 ing them over to see. The object of cold storage is of course 

 attained when they can be carried over until a good market 

 can be obtained for them. 



A Member : I would like to ask something which it seems 

 to me is of interest to us all, and that is, it seems to me that 

 this is largely a question of how we can carry these pears so 

 as to have them good to eat at this time of the year, and I 

 have been asking myself if we do not make a mistake by trying 

 to keep them too long. The question after all is, is the condition 

 that these pears can be brought out in so as to make them in 

 good condition to give to the public to eat. Now one great 

 trouble, it seems to me, has been that in late years when they 

 have come out of cold storage they were hard, and they have 

 had to be put in some wann place so as to bring them up to 

 the proper degree of mellowness, and in doing that they have 

 been almost invariably injurecl; two-thirds of them in some 

 cases. 



