FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 71 



are liable to form a solid mass and harden. Unless they are .stirred daily to keep 

 this cake thoroughly broken up the drying process will be seriously delayed. 

 After a week or ten days, however, this troublesome condition ceases. 



During the drying process heat may be used all the time, or only at the finish. 

 A large box-stove in the room, combined with ample means for ventilation, will 

 greatly facilitate the work. Should the weather be damp and cloudy, and no heat 

 be used, the cones will lie on the racks for weeks without showing any signs of 

 opening; but if the air in the room be warmed and dried, in a few days you will 

 both see and hear the scales open. 



When the drying and opening process is fairly under way the partly opened 

 cones are assorted and placed in some warmer spot, after which the basal scales 

 will also yield and liberate their seeds. While the cones are drying considerable 

 moisture is thrown off, necessitating a complete ventilation of the room and a 

 daily stirring of the cones to prevent mildew. Should mildew appear the cones 

 must all be picked over and any thus affected thrown away. The racks must be 

 stirred twice each day and better ventilation provided. 



The Spruce cone is frequently infested with a borer which burrows in it and 

 destroys it without eating the seed. It usually bores into the smaller end, making 

 a hole scarcely larger than a pinhead. On this job the cones were all picked over 

 carefully by two men, who removed and burned the ones thus infested, after 

 which I had no further trouble from these worms. 



The cones, as fast as they opened fully, were picked out of the bins and 

 thrashed at the rate of ten bushels per day. A bushel of green cones doubles its 

 bulk in the opening process. The removal of the opened cones depleted the 

 contents of the racks so that the remaining ones dried much faster — so rapidly 

 that we were soon able to take them off the upper bins- by the double handful 

 and to reduce the temperature in the room. Towards the close of the work three 

 rren could assort and thrash forty bushels of open cones per day. 



Tl)rasl)ing Out deed. 



When the cones were fully opened, ready for thrashing, they were sacked and 

 left until ten bushels had accumulated. Then a peck of the opened cones were 

 put into a two-bushel bag, swung in the air and pounded on the floor, first 

 swinging the bag over one shoulder and then over the other so that the bag 

 would strike alternately on opposite sides. About twenty-five hard strokes removes 

 the seeds from the cones. The contents of the bag were then poured out on a 

 wire screen with a quarter-inch mesh (a ' sand screen") through which the little 



