The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1893-10-18


rapid grower, and, with one or two ex-
ceptions, the youngest bearer, and the
most profuse bearer, of all the apples
in our orchards. 1t is now, October 8,
just fit for eating, and will keep, good
for month longer. The flesh is as
white as that of Fameuse, and the
quality is about AS good, though the
flavor is different.
SPEAKING of apples, has the reader
ever eaten canned apples as old as
Christianity? 1t is said, we think au-
thenticaly, that the canning of fruit
was suggested by finding some canned
fruit in perfect order among the ruins
of Pompeii. We cut the following ac-
count of an antiquarian feast from an
exchange: 60 have eaten apples that
ripened more than eighteen hundred
years ago, bread made from wheat
grown before the Children of Israel
passed through the Red Sea, spread it
with butter that was made when Eiz-
abeth was queen of England, and washed
down the repast with wine that was
old when Columbus was playing bare
foot with the boys of Genoa was the
remarkable statement made by ANA
ziah Dukes, a New York broker. The
remarkable spread was given by an
antiquary named Goebel, in the city of
Brussels, in 1871. The apples were
from an earthen jar taken from the
ruins of Pompeii, the buried city to
whose people we owe our knowledge of
canning fruit. The wheat was taken
from chamber in one of the pyramids;
the butter from stone shelf in an old
well in Scotland, where for centuries it
had lain in an earthen crock in icy
water, and the wine was recovered
from an old vault in the city of Corlnth.
There were six guests at the table, and
each had mouthful of the bread and
teaspoonful of the wine, but was per-
mitted to help himself literally to the
butter, there being several pounds of
it. The apple jar held about two-thirds
of gallon, and the fruit was sweet and
the flavor as fine as though put up yes
terday.'"
WHILE we are on this topic we will
add few lines from paper recently
read before the Missouri Horticultural
Society by j. B. Durand: "All fruit
growers, and more especially of the ap-
pie, know that much of their fruit is
unfit for market, being either wormy,
speckled, scabby, knotty or small. Now,
all this fruit can be utilized by the evap-
orator, and placed upon the market at
remunerative prices. 1t is not neces-
sary to have a large establishment to
accomplish this result. There are driers
with their capacities ranging from one
to two bushels of green apples per day
up to thousands. The work can be
done just as well and as cheaply on
ten-bushel machine as in any other"
THE course of sap in tree has been
discussed several times in these col
umns by our old friend and CORE
spondent, Timothy Wheeler, and other
writers. We find in an exchange the
following discussion of the subject by
| Professor Barnes of Wisconsin,: " Be
fore passing from this topic of the move
ment of water which supplies evapora-
ton, l must allude to very common
and widespread idea-at least l judge
it to be widespread, because it is so
frequently propound9d by my students
that the sap goes down in the winter
and up in spring. Just where the sap
is supposed to 60 in winter is not ex-
actly clear, since, If the roots are alb
sorbing water in the fall when the evap-
Grafton is diminished, they are likely to
have quite as much water as they can
hold already. The conception, appar-
emily, is that all of the water lodged in
the trunk and spreading branches goes
downward into these roots. 1t needs e.,
however, only the most casual examina-
ton of trees in winter to discover that
at this time they are almost saturated
with water. The twigs of the hickory
tree, for example, will be frozen on a
cold day in winter, so that they arc as
brittle, almost, as glass, and one can
SNAP off a tWio half an inch in diameter
as though it were an icice. The same
twig, when not frozen, on a mild day
will be so tough that there will be no
possibility of breaking it. Again, if
one cuts off branch from a tree in
winter and brings it into warm room,
he will quickly discover that water is
oozing from the cut end, showing that
the twigs are almost saturated with it,
AS matter Of fact, the water in trees
increases from midsummer or early