CROPPING. 
59 - 
Apples, liowever, should be left on the trees as late as may be in safety 
until they prove fit for gathering by the simple tests here given. It is 
almost better to leave them too late than to gather them too soon. In 
the latter case their beauty is quickly marred by irrevocable shrivelling 
which also lowers their quality and destroys their flavour. 
The mode of gathering apples is hardly of secondary moment to 
the time. They should be gathered in dry weather, and handled as 
gently as if they were balls of blown glass. It is not always possible 
to gather apples dry, and some contend that they keep equally well 
when laid up wet. Others, again, recommend them to be spread out 
to dry before being placed in store. The injury of frequent removals is 
so great that, when gabhered wet, as the least of two evils they had 
better be stored wet. The rubbing of apples dry, or drying and a 
second removal, would injure them more than the little wet that would 
adhere to their smooth surface in store. But always, when possible, 
they should be gathered in a dry state in fine weather. They are less 
easily injured when gathered dry, and also keep better. It is impossible 
to go to extremes in the matter of gentle handling in gathering. Could 
each fruit be touched softly and laid singly on a soft, elastic base, there 
would be few complafints of imperfect keeping. All choice applies 
should be gathered carefully and laid gently in baskets or trays in singl^e 
file only, and so conveyed to the store room. If anyone wants to know 
how not to have his apples keep, here is a sure recipe : Shake''the fruit 
from the tree to the ground, gather it up into deep baskets or wheel¬ 
barrows, convey it roughly to the fruit room, and then pitch it up on to 
the shelves. Full half of it will have rotted within the first two 
months. 
V—Storing. 
There is an almost endless diversity of modes for storing apples. 
Some recommend casks, others boxes, jars, flower pots, pits in the earth, 
&c. The packing material prescribed is as various as the methods of 
storing—sand, sawdust, dry earth, charcoal, paper, shavings, moss, chaff, 
cotton wool, malt coombs, hay, straw, &c. Every variety of place, from 
highest garret to the lowest cellar or cave, has also been recommended 
for storing apples. It must also be admitted that all the places, methods, 
and accompaniments have proved more or less successful. It may, how¬ 
ever, be stated that the simplest way is the best, and perhaps there is 
no simpler method than the choosing or forming some room or place, 
free from all extremes of heajj and cold, dryness or damp, where a tempera¬ 
ture as near 45° as may be is maintained for the apples. A plan of a fruit 
