Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 723 



fruit per hour, or 600 bushels per week, employing twenty -five hands, 

 mostly girls, to prepare the fruit, pass it through the machine, pack 

 and label it for market. This process is so rapid, eighty per cent 

 water evaporated from four bushels every hour, that no chemical 

 change can take place, all the saccharine matter in the fruit being 

 retained in its natural state. No chance for dust, flies, bees, or any 

 other insect to interfere with it, and is perfectly clean, as all the work 

 is done by machinery. This is believed to be the first attempt to 

 preserve tomatoes by evaporating the water from them, or any other 

 way except by canning. It is well known that most fruits contain 

 some eighty per cent water, but the tomato contains about twenty- 

 eight quarts water in every bushel. This machine is intended to 

 evaporate and carry off nearly three thousand quarts water from 

 tomatoes every twenty-four hours, leaving the tomatoes in fine condi- 

 tion for pressing and packing, with all the saccharine matter undis- 

 turbed, feeling as soft as a preserved fig, which it very much resem- 

 bles, and will in that condition keep for a long time, retaining all 

 their natural flavor, color and taste ; and when so soaked in cold water 

 and cooked are equal to fresh tomatoes and much less acid than the 

 canned tomatoes, and of much finer flavor and free from the poison- 

 ous eftects of the tin, and can be sold for one-half the price. There 

 is no one fruit more extensively used in this country than the 

 tomato, and, with this new invention, thousands of acres of land will 

 be brought into requisition to supply the demand which will soon be 

 largely increased, as the cost of transportation, when evaporated, will 

 be very small compared to the canned tomatoes ; as it takes thirty- 

 three cans to hold one bushel tomatoes, weighing, when packed for 

 transportation, nearly 100 pounds against four pounds the weight of 

 one busliel evaporated tomatoes. The peaches preserved by evapora- 

 tion are as fragrant as a fresh basket of ripe peaches, and, when 

 cooked, will have the same rich taste and aroma. The evaporated 

 apple looks as white and clean as a fresh cut apple, and, when cooked, 

 will have all the taste and fla^'or of the natural fruit, quite a difier- 

 ent article from the dried apple in every respect. Evaporated 

 potato, onions, cabbage, parsnip and turnips, when cooked, are pre- 

 cisely like the fresh article. Sweet corn, green peas and all other 

 vegetables obtain the same result by passing through the evaporating 

 process, as also the strawberry, raspberry and all other small fruit. 

 J^o fruit need now be lost even in the remotest parts of our country 

 for want of a market to dispose of it at a fair price. Knowing that it 



