Tomatoes should be taken fresh, ripe, but not soft. Scald them ten minutes in their own liquor; add nothing, not even salt. Put them into cans the moment they are scalded. Tin cans will keep them good longest because they do not admit the light.

Gilmore's cans are made of best tin, are most easily closed; and experience proves them to be perfectly adapted for keeping fruit. Put them into hot water; drain them quickly one at a time; set it by the side of the preserving-kettle; fill it, and instantly put on the cover, and turn down the screw. These directions apply to all the various kinds of cans.

Peaches should be ripe enough to eat, but not soft. Pare, stone, and weigh them. For two pounds of peaches make a syrup of two heaping cups of sugar and three of water. Then add the peaches, and boil them ten or twelve minutes; then lay them with a silver spoon into a quart can or glass jar; fill it with the syrup, and screw down the cover; then add to the remaining syrup two pounds more of peaches, boil as before, and these will fill another jar. "Mason's improved jar" is highly recommended.

Before using glass cans, fill them with quite warm water, and then with boiling water. Drain it out quickly, set the can by the kettle, fill it full, put on the rubber ring, then press the cover on. Care is necessary to avoid breaking glass cans.

Allow for preserving strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, a heaping cup of fine sugar to a pound of fruit. Spread it over them a little while before you are ready to stew them. Boil them gently till cooked.

For cherries and plums, quinces and pears, a sryup should be made. Allow a full cup of sugar with half a cup of water for every pound of fruit. Cherries and plums will require twenty minutes' boiling; quinces and pears should be boiled till beginning to be tender.

Pine-apple should be sliced, pared, and the prickly eyes taken out; then weighed, and put into a tray, and chopped with a chopping-knife. Drain the juice which flows out into the preserving-kettle, and put to it sugar, half the weight of the fruit. When the syrup boils up, put in the chopped pine-apple. Scald it eight minutes, then put it into cans.

Apple stewed and canned without sugar will keep good a long time; the spice and sugar to be added when made into pies.

Whortleberries stewed and canned make as nice pies, months afterward, as fresh berries. Allow a half a cup of sugar to a quart of berries. When made into pies, more sugar can be added if they are not sweet enough.

If you use cans which are closed with rosin, proceed in the same way. Have the rosin ready hot, and dip it into the groove with a small tin ladle made for the purpose. Avoid getting any of the rosin into the fruit, as a single drop will make the whole contents of the can bitter. To open a can closed in this way, set it where the rosin will become a little warm, so that the lid can be easily removed. If it is melted, it will be difficult to prevent some of it from falling into the open place. The essentials to success are, to have the can hot, to fill it full, and to close it immediately.