Jane 1896.J 



GENERAL AGRICULTURAL NOTES. 



55 



York State, where large quantities of this fruit are produced, 

 mainly for drying or evaporating, in which form it is consumed, 

 not in New York State, but west and north-west of Chicago, 

 chiefly in lumber and mining camps, and on the plains, where 

 fresh fruit is scarce. Raspberries are grown for drying to an 

 important extent in Southern Illinois and Michigan, and in 

 Arkansas. They are not exported. Some which were ex- 

 ported to France met with no sale. It is stated that these 

 dried or evaporated raspberries have as much merit in cookery 

 as the fresh berries, and are used in the same way for pies and 

 flavouring. Enormous quantities of raspberries are evaporated 

 in Wayne ; county, New York State, which is styled the 

 home of commercial fruit evaporation. There are reported to be 

 2,200 evaporators in this county. This industry has been 

 developed during the last 25 years, and owes its beginning 

 to the introduction of a small evaporator from Ohio, which 

 dried five bushels of apples in eight to ten hours. 



About 1,000 tons of evaporated raspberries are produced 

 annually in Wayne county. When they were first introduced 

 15d. to 20d. per lb. were common prices, but these were clearly 

 much in excess of the value of the goods. For the last three or 

 four years the price has averaged about Sd. or S^d. per lb. It 

 takes about 4 lbs. of berries, on the average, to make 1 lb. of 

 evaporated fruit. The cost of evaporating is about l^d. per lb. 



It would hardly pay fruit growers in England to evaporate 

 raspberries, unless the price of the fresh fruit should fall. At 

 present the average price made of fresh raspberries is about 

 2±d. per lb., taking one year with another, which would make 

 the evaporated fruit cost ] Od. per lb. before it could be put on 

 the market. Of course, if the price of fresh raspberries fell 

 considerably, or if there were a glut of this fruit in any season, 

 it might pay well to evaporate it, but so far raspberries have 

 made fairly remunerative prices in this country. 



There are five kinds of evaporators used in Western New York 

 — kilns, horizontal evaporators, towers, steam-tray evaporators, 

 and air-blast evaporators. The kiln is nothing more than a 

 slatted floor under which hot air, or smoke pipes, or steam pipes 

 are conducted. It is used for drying hops, the skins and cores 

 of apples, and for raspberries, and even for the commercial 

 grades of sliced apples. When raspberries and other fruits are 

 dried in kilns, muslin is spread over the slats. In hop-growing 

 districts of England, hop-drying kilns might be utilised for 

 evaporating fruit, fitted up with apparatus ad hoc, which 

 might be removed when the kilns were required for drying 

 hops. 



The " tower or stack " dryer far outnumbers other evaporating 

 appliances in use in New York State. The stack is a square, 

 chimney-like structure of wood or brick, resting on the basement 

 of a two-story building, and extending up through the building, 

 and projecting above the roof. A coal or wood furnace is placed 



