VI. LIST OF FRUITS. 



apples are ripe. When apples are gathered, they should 

 be laid upon cloths or mats in the sun, or in some dry 

 airy place, until they become perfectly dry in every part 

 of them. If the quantity be large, they ought to be laid 

 upon a floor or upon broad fruit-shelves ; but not one 

 upon the other. Clean straw laid under them is very 

 good ; but I have found a single new mat to be better : 

 they should be looked over frequently to see if they begin 

 to rot, and such as do begin ought to be immediately 

 taken away. When there is frost, all that you have to do 

 is, to keep the apples in a state of total darkness until 

 some days after a complete thaw has come. In America 

 they are frequently frozen as hard as stones : if they thaw 

 in the light, they rot j but if they thaw in darkness, they 

 not only do not rot, but lose very little of their original 

 flavour. This may be new to the English reader ; but 

 he may depend upon it that the statement is correct. 



262. APRICOT. With regard to the propagation, 

 the planting, and the training of the tree, the instructions 

 have already been given under the head of Training and 

 Pruning. The pruning differs from the peach in that the 

 apricot generally bears upon spurs, some of which are 

 formed by nature, and others may be formed in the man- 

 ner directed in the case of the espalier apple. The 

 apricot does not require so much attention as the peach 

 and the nectarine in the providing of new wood ; because 

 those trees bear only upon the last year's wood 3 but, 

 occasionally new shoots ought to be laid in to supply the 

 place of branches taken off by the blast, which very fre- 

 quently takes off a whole branch, and even a whole limb, 

 without any apparent cause. The apricot tree is not 



