Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1898-06-15
SuIphuring Fruits and Nuts.

great fruit country, the following
paper on the evils of sulphuring
fruits and nuts, read before the
California State Fruit Growers
Convention, Los Angeles, and pub
lished in the California Cultivator
and Poultry Keeper, will be profit
able reading:
To sulphur or not to sulphur,
that is the question. That the eye
is great factor in all our business
dealings goes without saying. The
old saying, CAN is not gold that
glitters," is also true.
The man who invented the use
of the sulphuric acid bath to
beautify our fruits, so as to make
them saleable, gave us great boon,
but he did not carry his improve
ment far enough. If he had intro
duced the same idea to bleach our
hands and faces, and our spoiled
clothes, what boon of cleanliness
he would have given us. Surely,
if sulphuric acid is good for our
Stomachs, it must be good for our
hands, clothes, etc., and, per
contra, if its use as a bleacher
would be injurious to our skin and
clothes why is it we agree it is not
injurious to our stomachs /?
Ninety-nine persons out of every
hundred will admit that sulphured
fruits are not equal in flavor to un-
sulphured, but the great majority,
if not all of that ninety-nine claim
that the use of sulphur in preparing
fruit for market is essential to pro-
duced a saleable fruit. | am in
formed the use of sulphur is not
carried to such an extreme in the
north as in Southern California;
that in the north only enough to
bleach the fruit a little is used,
while with us, am informed, our
peaches and apricots are exposed to
the sulphur bath from six to twelve
hours, or that the fruit is parboiled
in the hot sulphur bath until it is
permeated with sulphuric acid, as
indicated by the filling of the fruit
cup with the juice expelled from the
fruit by the heat.
Many reasons are given why this
is necessary. One is that it must
be done to prevent the introduction
of worms into the fruit-that worms
will not infest fruit so treated. That
is to say, the fruit is so treated with
the fumes of burning sulphur to
make it unfit for the stomachs of
the worms, in order that it may befit
for the stomachs of persons who are
not supposed to have as good
judgment {!
The walnut men, as class, were
the first to rebel at the total deStruc-
ton of the fine flavor of their fruit
by the use of sulphur, and they
found rebelliouS lot of commission
merchants, so much so that the
growers were compelled to sulphur,
or they could not sell; and suppose
it could be just the same thing if
our dried fruit men would propose
to dry their fruit without the use of
sulphur. This fact has been the
only argument which has been used
against my plan of evaporating
fruit. Has the grower any right to
expect any assistance from the
commission men? We must think
out and work out our own salvation
with, very often, opposition from
the commission men.
lrecollect some years ago the repre-
sentative of the Orange Exchange
found great opposition in placing
the now highly-prized navel orange
in the Eastern market, and is it not
so now with the California lemon /?
The Eastern merchant has his re-
gular channel from which to draw
supplies and does not wisht to change.
n