gg STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of sweets which no art of man can imitate. If there was in nature 

 Ijut one kind of sugar, the number of choice delicacies in our gar- 

 dens and fruit orchards would be lamentably small. 



But nature does not, in the bestowal of her fruits, spontaneously, 

 or of her own free will, sweeten them for us so acceptably. What 

 are designed to be luxuries and the most highly prized forms of 

 food, she ordains shall be bestowed only through the exercise of 

 labor, care, and skill, on the part of man. No one of the fruits in 

 its wild or native state holds any considerable quantity of sugar of 

 an}' kind — not enough to make it acceptable to the taste, or fit it to 

 serve as food. It is only by skillful cultivation, by hybridizing, by 

 budding and grafting, that we have secured the sweet principle in 

 fruits. We have, as it were, educated the dumb chemists in the 

 vegetable cell, and fitted them for the work which nature made them 

 competent to perform under man's guidance. 



It is indeed wonderful that we can increase or diminish the 

 amount of sugar in any kind of fruit or plant by cultivation. The 

 beet, for example, under ordinary care, will afford from four to six 

 per cent of sugar ; but, by scientific and generous culture, the 

 percentage can be nearly or quite doubled. I have succeeded in 

 increasing the sweet principle in apples, grapes, and peaches, by 

 cultivation and proper fertilization, and this, when the principle 

 was originally present in normal quantity. In increasing the sugar, 

 we also increase every other desirable quality in the fruit ; for one 

 principle cannot be forced into prominence without being accom- 

 panied by all the others. 



I will now endeavor to explain b}' the aid of chemical symbols 

 the natui-e of the different sugars, and also show the nature of the 

 sweet principle of some fruits. In the arrangement of symbols, 

 table No. 1 , I bring to view the atomic constitution of a molecule 

 of sucrose or cane sugar ; also that of starch, and the necessary 

 changes to convert starch into sugar. 



