151 



Edible Product*. 



storage requiring little or no ventilation. The best results in the shipments to New 

 York of avocados from Cuba have been obtained with the fruit wrapped in news 

 paper and packed in open crates but one layer deep. Tissue paper was tried, but it 

 was said not to offer sufficient support and did not prove as satisfactory as the 

 newspaper. 



Florida growers report that they experience no difficulty in packing their 

 fruit so that it reaches the nothern market in good condition. The more careful 

 shippers, however, packed the wrapped fruit in excelsior. The few experiments 

 that have been tried in shipping Porto Rican avocados, other than in cold 

 storage, have, so far as can be learned, resulted in every case in almost com- 

 plete failure. Little could be learned as to methods of packing that were 

 employed. In one case, however', the fruit after being wrapped in tissue paper 

 was again wrapped in oiled paper. In this instance the fruit was practically all 

 rotten when it reached New York. It seems more than probable that the fruit 

 would have shipped better without the oiled paper, as this packing would very 

 effectually prevent all ventilation, a necessity at all ordinary temperatures. A 

 very important consideration in the keeping qualities of fruit, brought to the 

 writer's attention by Mr. William A. Taylor, of the Department of Agriculture, 

 is the climatic conditions that prevail at the time the fruit is packed. Fruit 

 packed in a dry climate has been found to keep much better than the same 

 fruit packed when the atmosphere is moist. This is doubtless true of the avocado, 

 and may explain the successful shipment from southern Mexico to New York of 

 varieties that appear to differ but slightly from those of Porto Rico. 



Cold Storage.— In co-operation with Mr. William A. Taylor, pomologist 

 in charge of field investigations, and Mr. Jared G. Smith, Director of the 

 Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station, an experiment was tried of ship- 

 ping avocados in cold storage from Hawaii to New York City. Five crates 

 of avocados was packed and shipped in cold storage from Honolulu about Sep- 

 tember 25th, reaching San Francisco on October 1th. From San Francisco they were 

 expressed to Lodi, Cal., and during this transfer they were exposed to air tem- 

 peratures from six to eight hours. At Lodi they were again placed in iced cars 

 and sent directly to New York City, where they arrived on October 20th. The 

 fruit was consigned to Messrs. Lane and Son, who forwarded samples to Washington. 

 It will thus be seen that the fruit was thirty days in transit. Although the 

 majority of the samples were found to have suffered from the long trip, some 

 of the lots were in good condition, thus demonstrating that, with a knowledge 

 of how to handle the fruit, even the more delicate forms can be successfully 

 shipped in cold storage, provided the fruit is not more than three or four weeks 

 in transit. That this experimental shipment was hardly a fair test is shown 

 by the statements of Mr. J. E. Higgins, who superintended the shipping of the 

 fruit at Honolulu. In a letter to Mr. Taylor he says :— Most of the pears 

 were by no means representative. The pear season was about over when 

 we learned from you that there was an opportunity to make the experimental 

 shipment. The fruits were inferior in size, only those marked F. 13 being first- 

 class specimens in this respect. It being the end of the season, the fruits, though 

 hard, were of course quite fully matured. The fruit was picked several days 

 before the sailing of the steamer, and was held in cold storage until it could be 

 received at the ship. 



Shipments of avocados, made at air temparatures, are frequently placed 

 in cold storage as soon as they reach New York. This process is resorted to in 

 the effort to hold the fruit for the fall trade, and, even though the loss be 

 heavy, the increased price still makes it a profitable procedure. There is a very 

 uncertain element involved in this, for with fruit that appears uniform when 



