456 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
Jaae 7, 1894. 
Several Hybrid Perpetuals are coming in bloom, while Teas and 
Noisettes of the earlier kinds are already expanded. Garden Roses, as 
the semi-doubles and singles are now styled, have also come on apace 
during the last week, and are very showy, Austrian and Persian Briars, 
Scotch Briars, Rugosa’s, and others being quite gay. We never had 
Mar5chal Niel better on open walls than this season, and the same may 
be said of L’Ideal, William Allen Richardson, R^ve d’Or, and several 
more. As a rule the Mar^chal is too precocious and the buds 
nipped. This season a large number were over before the late May 
frosts. The neighbouring gardens are already quite gay with Roses, as 
much so as at the end of June in most seasons. I do not se^ much 
difference in this respect and last year, but the blooms and growth are 
considerably cleaner and quite minus the distressed, parched appearance 
they presented at this date in 1893. 
I note a somewhat curious omission from the list of new Roses in our 
National Society’s report. Mrs. W. J. Grant does not figure under the 
name it won the gold medal of 1892, nor as “ Belle Seibriecht.” We 
shall, doubtless, have to call it by the latter, seeing it comes into 
commerce under the new name. It is a pity so promising a Rose should 
be comparatively lost under this name, as so many of us will associate 
Mrs. W. J. Grant with the fine blooms exhibited by the famous Irish 
firm who raised it. 
I am pleased to see the note by Mr. Grahame Cp»ge 434), calling 
attention to the important alterations in the new schedule just 
issued. It seems to me the list is now as near perfect as possible, and 
has a remarkably fair and open aspect. No fear of large growers 
“ swamping ” the smaller ones. A class for those who never won before, 
also one for new members, is certainly giving all of us the chance 
wanted, and it now only remains to go in and win, each one upon his 
merits, and in the fairest way it is possible to bring floral competitors 
together. _ 
Exhibition boxes will soon need hauling forth and repairing, ready 
for another rough time of travelling, mostly by night, and when porters 
are in a greater hurry than ever. Labels and tubes, and many other 
little details so essential towards pleasursable staging, without that 
harassing hurry which is sure to ensue when such petty items are left 
until the last moment, under the idea they will need little time. All of 
this is needed for cutting and boxing just at the last, and one never 
seems to have a surfeit of time at the show, even if an over-night 
arrival.— Practice . 
RIPENING AND PRESERVATION OF FRUITS. 
{Continuedfrom page 381.) 
Now we have reached the point where we wish to keep our fruit 
either as it is, in the fully ripe condition, or in a condition somewhat 
short of full ripeness, till a little while before it is to be consumed ; or, 
thirdly, in some artificially prepared form, as when dried or canned. 
As we all know, an immense amount of care must be bestowed on the 
fruit in order to keep it unspoiled, whether it be one or another of these 
three conditions that is to be fulfilled. 
There are two general reasons for this. First, those same agencies 
that have worked within the fruit to produce the chemical changes 
involved in the ripening, a part of which changes I have briefly 
explained, are still in full force in the ripe fruit; ferments they possibly 
are, still active since nothing is done, except when the fruit is canned, 
to make them inactive ; and their action on fruit which has reached its 
best stage of ripeness can be only harmful. Any change in fruit which 
is already at its best cannot make it any better, and can only make it 
poorer. 
Second, living organisms stand ready, great armies of them, to attack 
the fruit from without, settling down all over it and starting decay and 
rotting wherever there is a weak or broken skin. Those of you who 
have attended these meetings regularly have heard a good deal about 
bacteria ; those exceedingly minute living beings which are, according 
to their kind, friends or enemies of the farmer and the horticulturist. 
His friends, when they help to convert all the nitrogen of dead animal 
and vegetable matter into nitrate, the most useful form of nitrogen food 
for new plants that arise out of the ruins of the old ones that have done ' 
their work and died ; his friends when, working in the growing Clover, 
or Pea, or Bean, they give to the farmer or gardener the power to draw 
upon the unlimited stock of free nitrogen of the air, for the making of 
nitrogen manure for other crops which must get their nitrogen from the 
soil or not get it at all; his enemies when he must fight them all the 
time to keep his meat, or his milk, or his vegetables and fruit from 
spoiling. 
Nothing is safe from them, for the dust of the air is charged with 
them, the dust on our clothes, and on our furniture, on the shelves in our 
closets and cupboards is charged with them, and they are always ready 
to begin work afresh whenever, in the travelling that they are forced to 
do as they are borne hither and thither by currents of air, they settle 
down on any dead vegetable or animal matter. Fruit when once 
separated from its vine or shrub or tree, becomes dead vegetable matter, 
and, therefore, is open to the attacks of these unfriendly bacteria. 
A short time ago an English chemist, and at the same time a good 
bacteriologist, undertook to determine approximately how many bacteria 
there were in the dust that settled out of the air under various con¬ 
ditions in a given period of time. This number ranged all the way from 
about twenty up to 8000 on a square foot of surface in a minute of time. 
The highest figure was obtained in a barn where flail threshing of grain 
was going on, and where the air was full of dust. In a museum on a 
holiday, when a large number of people were moving about, the number 
falling on a square foot in a minute was 1750 ; and I might give many 
other interesting details of the results that were obtained. 
It follows from what I have said that fruit which has been exposed 
to the air, as is, indeed, the case with all fruit, will be liable to have 
bacteria on its surface. Both for proof of this, and to satisfy my 
curiosity as to the number of this little people likely to be found on fruit 
as usually exposed, I asked one of my students who is engaged in this 
line of study to find out for me how many bacteria there were on an 
Apple about as big as my fist, which I took from a basket of the fruit 
that had recently been left in my cellar by the grocer. He did the work 
very carefully, and reported 115,000—quite a good sized city on a very 
small piece of land one would say ; and yet not much more thickly 
settled than a Western prairie, since it would take 400,000,000 of these 
beings to cover 1 square inch of surface. But they were there, never¬ 
theless, scattered over the surface of this Apple ; some of them very 
probably of the kind that starts the rotting of fruit, and ready for work 
whenever a place should be opened, or weakened in the skin where they 
may begin. Beset, then, as the ripe fruit is from within, in such a 
mann r that it cinnot growbet*er, but must grow poorer, if it changes 
at all ; and b set with worse enemies from without, is it any wonder that 
the soft, ripe Strawberry or Blackberry or Peach, or the mellow Apple 
or Pear, is hard to keep? There is but one really effectual and prac¬ 
ticable way to meet this double evil tendency, so that it shall be entirely 
suppressed, and that is to heat the fruit up to the temperature of boiling 
water. Thus all power for evil of the ferments working within, and of 
the bacteria that stand ready to work from without is permanently 
taken from them, and we have only to prevent exposure to air com¬ 
pletely, so that no fresh bacteria dust can come in contact with the 
fruit. This is the familiar process of canning fruit. Complete drying 
also stops the action of these ferments and bacteria as effectually as heat 
does ; but really complete drying, leaving no moisture at all in the fruit, 
would yield a product so far removed from the original fruit that it 
would have little value ; and if the drying is not complete, as in the 
evaporated Apple, we must resort to other and additional means, such 
as cold storage, if it is desired to carry the fruit through the warm 
weather of the following season. This low temperature of the cold 
storage is of itself a means of checking the tendency to decay, for fer¬ 
ments and bacteria do not work well in the aold, and the latter not at 
all at very low temperature. But as there are limits to which the tem¬ 
perature must not be allowed to fall, if we would not spoil the fruit by 
the cold itself, this is but a partial and imperfect means of preservation. 
Finally, there are certain chemical substances, like borax, boracic acid, 
salicylic acid, sulphurous acid which act as poisons on bacteria ; but as 
they can be applied to fresh fruits only in such a way that harm would 
come to those who eat the fruits, their use is out of the question in such 
cases. 
Therefore it is that, if we want to enjoy all the lusciousness of the 
ripe fruit, we must usually eat that fruit just then when it is ripe. 
Canned or dried, it may be good still, but it is quite another thing. Cold 
storage may preserve the lusciousness for a while, but not for long. 
Especially is this true of the berry fruits, which have only a very thin 
protecting skin to defend them from the attack of bacteria and conse¬ 
quent decay. 
In the canning process we have, as already stated, the only way of 
preserving these tender fruits in a condition at all approaching that 
when they were picked ; so that we are at least reminded of what they 
were when fresh and of the pleasant summer days when we picked 
them, as they come upon our tables in the midst of winter. And this is 
a perfectly wholesome way of preserving fruit, when honestly done, as well 
as an entirely successful way, so far as keeping the fiuit in an eatable 
condition for an indefinite length of time is concerned. But there are 
temptations not to do it honestly which are sometimes yielded to, and 
the product so obtained cannot receive unstinted praise, and may some¬ 
times even deserve severe condemnation. 
The complete success of canning fruit as to the mere matter of 
preserving it from any further alteration, which would mean moulding 
and decay, requires that the contents of the can or glass jar shall be heated 
throughout to a temperature at least nearly as high as that of boiling 
water; to do this takes time and care. If a little salicylic acid is added to 
the contents of the can it will so far assist the action of heat in killing 
all germ?, that the heating need not be quite so thorough ; and we find 
mention made in the horticultural journals of the possible usefulness of 
such an addition. But its use is not honest. The addition of salicylic 
acid to wine has been prohibited, as well as of all other preservatives, 
in European countries ; because, while small quantities added may do 
no harm, there is no guarantee that if any at all is allowed it may not be 
used to excess. It is not harmless when taken into the system. Fruit 
properly canned without it will keep perfectly ; fruit improperly 
canned, or poor fruit canned in any way, may keep with its aid and not 
without; and the more careless and slovenly the selection and prepara¬ 
tion of the fruit, and the heating and sealing of it, the more freely must 
the preservative be added in order that it shall not spoil. Salicylic acid 
is widely used in this country (America) in the canning of vegetables 
and of Tomatoes ; probably it is also used in the canning of fruits.— 
G. C. Caldw'ELL {Western New York Horticultural Society). 
(To be ooncladed.) 
