FRUIT STORAGE 121 



roughs tells his experience of going to the straw-cov- 

 ered pile of apples, thrusting his arm in full length, 

 and feeling about for the variety of his choice. The 

 continual removal of small parcels from day to day, 

 however, is more apt to result in loss with apples than 

 with potatoes or turnips. 



Hardly any other fruit except the apple will sub- 

 mit to this method of storage, and the writer does not 

 urge even this as a brilliant success. Among vege- 

 tables it finds a wider range of usefulness. Those 

 which can be satisfactorily handled in this manner are 

 potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, cabbages, sweet potatoes, 

 beets, mangels, carrots, parsnips, salsify, and late 

 squashes. The order in which these are named is 

 approximately the order of their amenability to the 

 treatment under discussion. 



VIII. STORAGE IN " DUGOUTS " OR " CAVES " 



The "dugout," or "cave," which is frequently 

 found on western farms, is one step removed from the 

 storage pit toward the real storage house. The dug- 

 out seems to be a western institution. In the winter it 

 is used for storing fruit and vegetables, and in the sum- 

 mer it becomes a refuge from threatening cyclones. I 

 have often been waked up in the night to run for one 

 of them. I lived in Oklahoma then, and refuge from 

 cyclones was much more important than storage for 

 apples. Still, the "cave" was used for holding various 

 perishable products even during the cyclone season; 

 and the frightened denizen, precipitately arriving at 

 one o'clock in the morning, might find himself but- 

 toning his trousers and rubbing his eyes among pans 



