Cranberry-Culture. 
499 
an inch apart, and to secure more firmly, each end is bound with 
hoop-iron; inch cleats are nailed on the outside of each end to pre¬ 
vent splitting and serve as handles to lift the box with. He begins 
the harvest with a small force at first, and increases it from day to 
day as he needs. He first picks strips where he wishes to run the 
main lines of his railroad, and then the track is laid on these strips. 
The track is made of two by six or eight inch pine scantling, notched 
at the ends so as to halve on each other; inch boards are nailed to 
the bottom of the scantling, covering one-half of the space between 
the rails and serve as ties. This track can easily be taken up or laid 
down in sections. All is gathered up at close of picking and housed 
or piled outside. 
Handling Fruit. —The rule holds as good with cranberries as 
with any other varieties of fruit. The least possible and the more 
careful the handling the better. The slatted bushel-box if used 
all the way through serves most admirably in this respect. When 
they are filled with berries they are set back by the boss and credit 
given for picking. They are finally gathered up by car men, and 
taken by rail, on small platform cars, to the store-house by the 
marsh, and from thence bv wagon to their store-house in Berlin. 
Curing. —To get the crop to market in good condition is of 
great importance to the grower. After getting a fine crop of ber¬ 
ries, many have suffered in not having sufficient storage and have 
piled up the berries in such large quantities as to cause the fruit to 
sweat and heat so as to destroy the enamel on the surface of the 
berry, after which more or less of them will commence to rot, and 
hence cannot be in fine condition when in market. An improve¬ 
ment on this plan is to store them in shallow bins, arranged one 
above the other, slanting backward and so arranged as to be drawn 
out from all the bins. But I regard the bushel slatted-box, before 
described, as far the best way to store. Fruit in this box can’t heat 
or sweat, and the boxes can be piled up like bricks, putting slats on 
every tier; so that the air can circulate freely among them and cure 
the fruit perfectly. 
A word to growers and cultivators in regard to the varieties. 
On examination of most any marsh which is stocked with vines, 
we find a number of distinct varieties of fruit, differing in size, 
shape, season and in solidity. The best berry is one that has a 
good form, is early in its season of ripening, solid and meaty, and 
