THE HARVEST OF THE APPLE-TREE 105 



cookery and manipulation, we disguise our foods and 

 show our lack of appreciation of the products themselves. 



For home use, winter apples may well be stored in 

 boxes in a cool moist cellar if such a place is available. 

 For best results in long keeping, the temperature should 

 be maintained below 40 degrees F. In a cellar containing 

 a furnace, the fruits shrivel from too much evaporation, 

 as also in an attic or other dry room. If the fruit must 

 be stored in such places, it is well to keep the box or 

 barrel tightly closed, and the individual apples may be 

 wrapped in thin paper. 



The apples must be sorted now and then, to remove 

 the decaying ones; if the fruit was carefully sprayed, 

 handled and graded in the first place and not too ripe, 

 the necessity of frequent sorting will be considerably re- 

 duced. But in any case, the keeping of apples, except 

 under good cold-storage, is at best a process of continu- 

 ally saving the most durable fruits. An "outside cellar," 

 if properly ventilated, usually is a good place in which 

 to keep apples. With the use of furnaces for heating 

 and the cramped quarters of city apartments, the keeping 

 of apples for home supply is constantly more difficult. 



There is no apple like the one that comes up fresh 

 from the cellar on a winter night, cool, crisp, solid yet 

 ready. It is the fruit of the home fireside. I often won- 

 der whether one in a hundred of the people know what a 

 really good and timely apple is. 



The yield of an apple-tree depends on many factors, — 

 age, size, thriftiness, care it has received, whether it has 

 escaped frost and other injuries ; and some varieties are 

 much more prolific than others. Some apples are "shy 

 bearers," and for this reason soon are lost to propagation 



