10 



been partly fixed and the rest removed, the fruit or vegetable tissue remain in- 

 corruptible by the further access of oxygen, to indefinite time. 



At first, while fresh and wet on the surface, the vegetative tissue will endure 

 for a few moments a high degree of heat, not only without scalding, but without 

 becoming heated ; just as one may pick up a living coal or snuff a candle with 

 a moistened thumb and finger. As the^surface moisture evaporates, that within 

 is drawn forth, by the law of equilibrium, to take its place. In this manner an 

 internal circulation is excited and kept up throughout the process, answering to 

 that in living fruit on the tree, and with similar effect. The active circulation 

 of the acidulated and oxygenated juice, at the proper temperature, through the 

 mass of crude material, brings the combining atoms into contact, and is actually 

 found to effect a preternaturally rapid oxidization of the mucous or starchy in- 

 gredients ; " ripening" them, in other words, to saccharine matter, to the 

 amount, in two or three hours, of nearly twenty-five per cent, on the whole 

 amount of such matter .developed by weeks of ripening on the tree. This 

 marvellous result has been incontestably ascertained by chemical analysis of the 

 highest authority. 



As soon, however, as the average moisture of the fruit begins to diminish in 

 the heated current, so as to raise its temperature, the fruit is moved upward a 

 regular stage, and a fresh screen of fruit is introduced in its place and beneath 

 it. The fresh screen of fruit takes uj) its quota of heat from the air current, 

 leaving the latter to pass upwards to the first screen, just as much less hot as the 

 fruit above is- less moist and less able to absorb the heat by evaporation. (All 

 know that evaporation is cooling.) At intervals, scientifically adjusted, the 

 whole series of fruit screens in the evaporator is moved upward at once (being 

 carried b}- an endless chain), so that every screen of fruit, at every stage of its 

 progress, preserves a uniform proportion of heat to moisture, and therefore a 

 uniform temperature. As the moisture of the fruit diminishes, so does the heat 

 of the air current that strikes it ; and thus the finished fruit coming out at the 

 top of the evaporator with the tepid and vaporous exhaust of the air current, is 

 actually neither cooler nor warmer than the fresh fruit while passing through 

 the fresh heat at the beginning. 



In the course of the first five or six hours (or with some fruits and vegetables 

 a longer time), the first screen of fruit introduced has reached the top of the 

 evaporator in a finished state, proof henceforth against decay. The whole shaft 

 is now filled with say one thousand pounds. Going off finished, one screen at 

 a time, every few minutes, in another six hours, more or less, the whole shaft 

 full will be issued (giving place to as many more) in two modes ; eighty per 

 cent, of it, say eight hundred pounds, having flown away on the wings of the 

 wind as vaporized water, and two hundred pounds having been lifted off and 

 laid aside by human hands as Alden Fruit, imperishable, but bright, clean and 

 fresh, in color and t:iste, as it first went in. All the moisture that has not 

 become chemically engaged as hydrate, in the glucose syrup that gives Alden 

 Fruit it peculiar soft and moist feel to the fingers, has been carried oft' in the 



