343 
cess to the air, or what is better still, under a shed with a 
southerly exposure. They ought to be stirred often, and not 
exceed ten inches or a foot in thickness. 
The lieaping of them out of doors is attended with several 
inconveniences. They are subject to be covered with leaves 
which get rotten in the autumn; they are exposed to the rain, 
whose moisture they imbibe, and to the frosts which discom-- 
pose them, and they are also often half buried in the mud. Irt 
consequence of all this, they are in a short time deprived of 
th eir fragrance, and commonly only afford q poor and watery 
juice. 
As to fruit for the table, a modern author* recommends to 
make it perspire together for ten or twelve days, before it be 
put in the fruit room. This method is defective in every 
point of view. The fermentation which results from it withers 
it, and shortens its duration ; and even when it does not rot it, 
the effluvia which it communicates from one to the other, in¬ 
evitably tend to impair it. 
After having bpen gathered with the hand, it sjtould be ex¬ 
posed to the sun for some days, in a room with the windows 
open; it may be then laid gently on dry fern, and shut up in 
boxes; it may be wrapped tip in paper, and hermetically 
sealed in vessels of such a size as will allow it a speedy con¬ 
sumption when it is drawn from them; or it may be placed by 
itself in a room of a moderate temperature, and as little ex¬ 
posed as possible to the variations of the atmosphere. In all 
these cases it requires to be protected against light itself, the 
effects of which contribute to impair it.f The only precau¬ 
tion of wiping it occasionally with a dry cloth, and removing 
what was rotten, would often prolopg till the summer a whole¬ 
some and delicate food, which, according to the ordinary prac¬ 
tice, is cpnfined to the first months of the winter. 
It would, however, be in vain to protect it against the incle¬ 
mency of the elements, if it was not also secured against the 
depredations of rats. An attention to this is essentially neces¬ 
sary in a country, where commerce daily introduces an almost 
innumerable quantity of those destructive animals ;. individuals 
are often deterred by prudential considerations from having re¬ 
course to the ordinary expedients for their destruction, yet no 
one ought to be ignorant of such contrivances whereby he may 
get rid of them without danger. 
In the following chapters I shall lay down the directions 
which are necessary to be observed in the raising of fine, fruit 
trees. 
* Forsyth. 
•f- Light acts chemically on bodies, that is, that it operates combinations 
and decompositions ; one may judge of this by the difference which appears 
in the same bodies when exposed to light, or when deprived £>f that pigment, 
— -Fourcroy, Phil. Chem, Til. I. No. 4. 
v 
CHAPTER 
