Thinning, Gathering, Keeping, and Marketing. 129 



a pound. Large manufactories use the cores and skins of the ap- 

 ples for making vinegar. A convenient mode for keeping or ship- 

 ping dried fruit is in neat fifty-pound boxes. No fruit of second 

 quality should ever be used for evaporating, as drying can never 

 make a poor fruit good. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



The use of cork and cement, alluded to on page 123, for secur- 

 ing the contents of fruit-jars, has been superseded by glass covers 

 and india-rubber rings. 



It may be well to add to the remarks in the preceding chapter, 

 that fruit-houses kept cold by ice are too expensive in construction 

 and too costly in management for general use, and they are chiefly 

 applicable to the perishable fruit ripening in summer and autumn. 

 Winter fruit may be sufficiently preserved in what are termed 

 "cold-air" houses until the ripening of early strawberries and 

 other small fruits, after which there is little demand for the sup- 

 plies of the preceding year. 



The cold-air houses are separate buildings above ground, built 

 in the following manner : The walls are double, with a space filled 

 with sawdust a foot thick, and they may be all wood, or brick and 

 stone, or have a triple brick wall, the middle one with the brick on 

 edge, and all bound together. The lower and upper floors are 

 double, with the spaces filled with sawdust. The stone underpin- 

 ning gives two feet air-space beneath the lower floor. The fruit- 

 room is cooled by admitting the air from the outside through open- 

 ings in the underpinning and through the lower floor, the warm air 

 above passing out by a ventilator through the attic, which is sur- 

 mounted with an Espy or Mott ventilating-cap. This cap always 

 causes an upward current of air when there is any wind or breeze. 

 A single double-window affords sufficient light, and the fruit-room 

 is entered through double doors set in an entry. As soon as the 

 fruit-room is filled in autumn, it is cooled by the admission of cold 

 night-air, and is kept within two or three degrees of freezing. To 

 effect this cooling, the plank registers are opened in the ventilator 

 above and in the lower floor, and air is admitted through the open- 

 ings in the underpinning from without. When the thermometer 

 shows the temperature of the room to be near freezing, the openings 

 in the underpinning are shut with close-fitting wooden blocks, and 

 the plank registers in the lower floor and in the, ventilator are 



