118 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



One of my neighbors who has made apple orcharding the practi- 

 cal study of a lifetime, and who has at least twent^^-five acres in 

 bearing trees, raising from one to two thousand bushels of apples 

 annually, has explained to me his process of preparing, preserving 

 and keeping his fruit for market, which I think worthy of being 

 generally understood. 



His apples are harvested when fully ripe, being carefully picked 

 from the tree separately, by hand, and placed in small baskets, so 

 as to guard against bruises as much as possible, and special care 

 is exercised in handling them throughout. At the approach of 

 cold weather they are placed in huge bins in the house cellar, 

 where they remain until wanted for market. The windows of the 

 cellar are so arranged as to open and close easily, and when the 

 weather admits, air is kept constantly changing, fresh and new 

 supplying the place of the old B3' means of thermometers the 

 temperature is kept at from two to four degrees above freezing, 

 when possible, but pure air being an essential element. 



This, in a word, is his system of keeping apples, and the result 

 through a long period of years has been all that could be desired. 

 He loses but a small per cent, by decay, and his apples are as 

 solid, crispy and juicy in June and July as in the previous Janu- 

 ary. He markets no No. 1 winter varieties until spring or early 

 summer, and consequently obtains the highest prices. 



Some six or eight hundred bushels of Baldwins kept in this 

 manner last winter were taken from the cellar the last of June and 

 first of July and shipped to Southern ports, where they sold for 

 $2.00 and $3.00 per bushel. They were solid and in an excellent 

 state of preservation when barrelled, and were sound and in good 

 condition on their arrival at Savannah. 



My friend's theory is that the disease, or rotting and decaying 

 of apples, is due largely to miasma in the air of the cellar where, 

 they are stored, and if this can be driven out and the atmosphere 

 puriGed by currents or the admission of pure and fresh air from 

 without, the disease is avoided or stopped. 



The principal causes of the rotting and decay of apples come 

 from without and are not constitutional, if I may so term it. The 

 skin is the apple's protection against disease. If the skin is 

 broken and the pulp or flesh exposed to the air, certain chemical 

 changes immediately take place and disease or decay fastens upon 

 it. The air is the great transporter of vegetable diseases — para- 

 sitic plants it may be, whose minute spores or organs of produc- 



