424 [ASEEMBLY 



Chairman. — Drying could be readily and effectually done by a 

 current of heated air. 



Judge Van Wyck observed that President Tallmadge had de- 

 voted some care and expense on the cultivation of grapes, and 

 desired the Chairman to call him up. 



The Chairman requested him to speak to the question. 



President Tallmadge. — My remarks will rather tend to the 

 continued growth of grapes than to any effort to preserve their 

 freshness after being ripe. I desire every effort to be made for 

 so useful a purpose, but I prefer reliance on production, and' on a 

 greatly extended production of the most precious kinds — for they 

 are few in number, and require in our climate peculiar care, 

 which, however, according to my experience, seems to me capa- 

 ble of not only extending to the mass of the people sucli whole- 

 some luxuries in plenty, but at a cheap price; and I doubt 

 whether the preservati(»n of our native grapes, Catawba and Isa- 

 bella, would quit the cost of preservation. We import grapes 

 from Portugal and Spain; they have a thick skin and solid pulp, 

 widely differing from our Catawba and Isabella, which have ten- 

 der skins and watery pulp. We may hang them in clusters by 

 strings on poles in a dry room and keep them till mid winter. 

 But they are apt to lose their flavor if the room is kept either too 

 dry or too damp. Sawdust appears to extract the flavor. And 

 the non-success of Europe in the preservation of grapes is a lesson 

 for us. 



Chairman. — The artificial climate of a green-house gives suc- 

 cess. I have found it less troublesome and less costly than pres- 

 ervation of them. 



Hon. Benjamin French, of Braintree, Massachusetts. — The 

 subject under consideration, Mr. President, is one which I deem 

 of great importance. For as we now have succeeded in growing 

 fruit in our middle States, and in our New England, superior in 

 quality to much of the European products of like kind; and the 

 preservation of them in all their freshness to a certainty is ex- 

 tremely desirable. And in this much depends on the condition 

 of the fruit to be preserved. I have known the fine Bartiett pear^ 



