Fmit Fanning fo7^ Profit in California. 67 



house, for tlie purpose of making them bleach whiter. 

 Care should be taken not to pnt more sulphur in one 

 pan of coals than will completely burn ; for if too 

 much sulphur is put in at one time there will not 

 be a complete combustion, and the soft-shells on 

 being taken out will smell of the sulphur and the 

 paper-shell kernels will taste of it. Mr. Webster 

 Treat's bleaching-house is boarded with tongue and 

 groove inside and out and roofed with well-laid 

 shingles. A flue about 2 feet high is on the apex to 

 help draft the sulphur fumes up and out. The floor is 

 of 1 X 3 set up edgeways, three-eighths of an inch apart, 

 or just wide enough to admit the sulphur fumes and 

 yet near enough to prevent the nuts falling through. 

 The floor is about two and a half feet above the ground, 

 the lower space boarded up with tongue and groove 

 and fitted with small doors every five feet to admit of 

 placing the pans of burning sulphur underneath the floor. 



After being bleached the almonds are put into burlap 

 sacks, which can be bought for about 7 cents and hold 

 about 55 pounds of almonds. It costs about 2^ cents a 

 pound to gather, hull, bleach, sack and haul a couple of 

 miles and load on the cars. This is allowing a very 

 liberal estimate of the cost, for a gentleman off*ered to 

 gather, hull and bleach almonds for If cents per pound, 

 and put them in sacks (I to furnish the sacks). A 

 carload of almonds, as given by the Southern Pacific 

 Company in 1891, is 15,000 pounds at |225 per carload 

 and \\ cents for overweight ; this is the rate to Chicago, 

 To New York the rate is about $260 per carload, with 

 If cents for overweight. With a good machine to do 

 the hulling and separating, the cost would be reduced 



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